Posted on 11/24/2004 12:56:13 PM PST by weegee
ATLANTA -- A widely reported government study that said obesity is about to overtake smoking as the No. 1 cause of death in the United States contained statistical errors and may have overstated the problem, health officials acknowledged today.
The government is working on a rare correction to the study.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in March in a study co-authored by its director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, that a poor diet and physical inactivity were responsible for 400,000 deaths in 2000, a 33 percent jump from 1990.
However, the CDC admitted today that it made an error in calculating how many people died from obesity in the last decade.
Although CDC officials declined to specify the corrected number of deaths, The Wall Street Journal reported that the agency may have overstated the number by 80,000, representing an increase of less than 10 percent from 1990 to 2000. The errors were first reported by the Journal today.
The mistakes consisted of simple mathematical errors, such as including total deaths from the wrong year, the newspaper reported.
"I think there were some statistical miscalculations, but I also think there is a differing of opinions in regards to methodologies to make these calculations," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. "This is certainly not scientific misconduct; there's no allegation anyone had any intent to falsify data."
Skinner said the CDC plans to submit a correction to the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study in March. He said the correction will explain how the error was made.
The agency also has asked the Institute of Medicine, a federal scientific advisory organization, to hold a two-day workshop next month to reach a consensus on the proper way to calculate the health effects of obesity, Skinner said.
In addition, the agency is reviewing how to prevent "miscommunication" among scientists when subjecting studies to expert review before they are published.
The errors apparently were discovered soon after the CDC study was published, as scientists inside and outside the agency began to dispute its findings, publishing letters in JAMA and the journal Science. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., also asked the General Accounting Office, the auditing arm of Congress, to investigate.
That prompted the CDC to begin an internal review.
The agency originally announced that more Americans could soon be dying of obesity instead of smoking if current trends persisted. It put the number of obesity deaths at 400,000, compared with 435,000 from tobacco.
But even when the errors are corrected, Skinner said, "it's not going to change the fact that obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death."
Whew, just in time for thanksgiving!! Pass the gravy!
I wonder how many times they DON'T admit their errors.
I wonder if there has been any lawsuit using this error result as an argument against somebody or some company.
"I wonder how many times they DON'T admit their errors."
...when it concerns gun "studies" and smoking.
The diet industry is more interested in selling diet solutions than presenting a correct assessment of obesity. Sure people die from obesity related illness, but I think the CDC is just their willing cohort here.
Hey! This happened on the Clinton watch, no wonder it's being corrected
LOL! Screw the carbs. Leave some stuffing for me!
Do these JAMA's make my ass look fat ?
Didn't the standard weights for obesity get readjusted? "More" can be a relative term.
Weight is relative, and a perception thing. My wife perceives that she is 8 pounds overweight, I'm about 10 pounds underweight.
Doesn't the CDC have anything better to focus on? Sheeeesh!
You beat me to it!!!!
This is another case of "scientists" with no common sense. Didn't anyone, anyone of those scientists, question their calculations? Is the computer output the absolute answer anymore??
When it comes to the lifestyle nannies, the answer is yes.
This is funny... the people who are complainng the most about this are those employed in the Anti-smoking movement -
If they are not the big killer on the block, they figure that their funding will go down as money gets siphoned off to the Anti-fat movement.
You make a very valid point.........that is EXACTLY why the anti-smokers are complaining about this. Of course they aren't complaining the statistical processes used to come up with the smoking numbers are just as manipulated.
To do that would jeapordize their cushy jobs.
"To do that would jeapordize their cushy jobs."
Kind of gives them an incentive to make sure that they dont do their jobs TOO well also - can't really have people quit smoking, now can we ?
Exactly...I could not believe that they actually tried to get involved in/support the anti-gun lobby with that BS they put out concerning handgun violence....better stick to what they know best (or not, as it appears)
Obesity implies pentiful amounts of food that are easily obtained for consumption.
Throughout history, man has had to struggle for a reliable source of food.
I would rather die fat and happy then thin and starving.
What *else* are they wrong about?
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