American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 71, No. 1, 156,
January 2000
© 2000 American Society for Clinical Nutrition
Importance of consistency in reporting of research
Robert Granger
Parkview Hospital, 329 Maine Street, Brunswick, ME 04011, E-mail: rgranger{at}parkviewhospital.org
Dear Sir:
Perhaps the conflicts and confusion that are often associated with interpreting the results of studies in nutritional epidemiology may be tackled by a tangential application of one of Hill's (1) criteria for causality. What might happen if we applied the criterion of consistency to the reporting of our research? I see this issue as more of an editorial responsibility than anything else. To illustrate, here is an example taken from the June 1999 supplement to the Journal entitled "The Role of Epidemiology in Determining When Evidence is Sufficient to Support Nutrition Recommendations." Byers (2) says that "superbly reasoned arguments for why the human body needs only 
70 µg Se/d can be turned upside down by a single study showing lower cancer rates among those given 3 times that amount" (page 1307S, emphasis mine). Just a few pages later in another article, Freudenheim (3) suggests otherwise by saying that "in the interpretation of epidemiologic studies, no one study can be considered definitive" (page 1317S, emphasis mine). This is where editorial privilege (some would say abuse) could have been exerted to reword the passage to create unity, consistency, and accuracy without compromising the intent of the authors' contributions. By the way, I agree with Freudenheim.
REFERENCES
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Hill A. The environment and disease: association or causal? Proc R Soc Med 1965;58:295–300.[Medline]
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Byers T. The role of epidemiology in developing nutritional recommendations: past, present, and future. Am J Clin Nutr 1999; 69(suppl):1304S–8S.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
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Freudenheim JL. Study design and hypothesis testing: issues in the evaluation of evidence from research in nutritional epidemiology. Am J Clin Nutr 1999;69(suppl):1315S–21S.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
