Fish Oil Salesmen

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Tue, 2007-09-25 09:18

Fish Oil Salesmen

http://www.badscience.net/?p=538

Durham Council and a company Equazen are carrying out an experiment. Durham Council is paying to give GCSE age young people a daily dose Omega-3 supplement. If the do better in their GCSEs, Equazen claim this will be conclusive prof that Omega-3 makes you cleverer.

Great you say. Lots of science and a good result.

Wrong.

Equazen are a company that makes the pills. They are carrying out a trail without a control group, which makes it useless. A control group is a similar group to the one's that you are experimenting on, except you don't do anything to them. What's the point of that, you ask? Well, a control group tells you whether your results would have happened if you hadn't done what you did to the others.

They are carrying out a PR exercise, and a local council, through good intentions and a ad grasp of science, are paying for it. They're too far in do anything but defend their 'partners' Equazen.

As I understand it, manufacturers of vitamins and the like don't really want to prove their claims, because if they do their products will bender regulation like medicines, in that they have a proven medicinal effect, and need to be licensed as such.

Therefore, Equazen enter into this in the knowledge of how bad their science is, and now that the point is to convince the public and sell more fish oil.

In our fear of being seen to do nothing, do we risk falling prey to the machinations of snake oil sales men and women? It's the proper impulse for a council to try to help it's residents, but is this being taken advantage of?

Does our wish for a 'cure' rather than a palliative for social ills leaves us uniquely placed for gullibility?

Is our understanding of science as poor as the cynical nature of the fish oil trial suggests?

(I love Ben Goldacre's Bad Science Column in The Guardian. the blog as linked above s great too)

Cheers,

Mark

Tue, 2007-09-25 09:56

Yan2

Take the homeopathic medicine market. Don't work! Never has done! Never will! proven fact!! But-people-still-buy into it... **rubs head** The residents of Durham need to be informed! Something fis....nah! :D When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

~It's a maze for rats to try, it's a race for rats to die.~

Tue, 2007-09-25 10:41

brooosh

I totally agree Mark. Should have been a double blind trial where neither the kids nor the researchers knew who was taking the Omega tablets and who was taking the pretend ones. It's well known that if you do a trial like this without a control the results are likely to be skewed by the placebo effect i.e. where the kids feel more motivated to do well because they believe the tablets are working for them. As the blogger rightly points out the fact that they only saw a net improvement of 1.5 per cent above the national average suggests the tablets actually lowered the kids' performance (allowing for placebo effect and statistical errors). So if you have an overperforming kid and are concerned about them getting sucked into the higher education system what with spiralling costs of university fees and so on it might be a good move to dumb them down a bit with a regular daily dose of this stuff.

Tue, 2007-09-25 19:02

_jacobea_

Fish oil never seemed to do me any good during my GCSEs, so it might only work on some.

Wed, 2007-09-26 16:17

styx

Can we give a spellchecker Omega 3?

Fri, 2007-09-28 14:02

tcook

Homeopathic medicine doesn't work? Not in my experience - it seems to work some time for some people. My wife cleared up a chronic ear problem with homeopathic medicine - recommended the same pills to my old business partner and they worked on him too. My daughter has had some great results with homeopathic pills. I take homeopathic arnica when going through airports - I have complete and utter airport phobia - and they work. I could not fly without them. They are not a 'prop' - they work, I am sure of it. However I have tried homeopathic cures for other things and got zilch out of them. I think it's a case of suck them and see.

Mon, 2007-10-01 11:23

poetjude

Omega 3 does not make you cleverer. However it has been shown to play a clear role in brain development and some independent studies do indicate that it raises concentration levels in children . I agree that this particular study is flawed and discountable but other valid studies also show it has small but statistically significant effect on mood. These conclusions were drawn from double-blind clinical trials (i.e. having a 'control' group who were given a placebo). I think the actual differene it will make is pretty insignificant but it won't do any harm and has other benefits. My mother was always shovelling raw codliver oil down our neck 'for the joints' ... yuck! However, the Superdrug's own brand or actually including fresh fish in the diet will do the same job. In a similar vein, recent research has indicated that breastfeeding does not improve IQ as has been touted for many years. In fact, women who tend to breastfeed also tend to be cleverer and therefore have cleverer children! But since breastfeeding has many other benefits the false claim couldn't have done any harm. I take omega 3 plus a range of medications designed to improve cognitive function after vascular damage following a stroke. I have no doubt this has a tangible effect on my mental functioning although I think the Omega 3 probably isn't part of this but there's no harm in taking it. I think anyone who is foolish enough to be duped by this kind of shoddy scientific survey without doing their own independent research deserves it.

Mon, 2007-10-01 16:47

pepsoid

What about... ...erm... ...reading lots and studying hard?? pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

The All New Pepsoid the Umpteenth!

Mon, 2007-10-01 19:27

poetjude

Well that leads to an interesting point. The nootropics revolution hasn't had much of an impact because in normal healthy subjects a nootropic like piracetam raises IQ by 1-2 points so it isn't going to have a huge effect on academic achievement. In those with brain damage and cognitive deficit due to stroke infarction or diseases like parkinsons it is more likely to produce a statistically significant improvement. Drugs like hydergine and nicergoline also help memory retention and protect the brain from decline due to cell death. But what if a new exciting nootropic was discovered tomorrow that raises the IQ of most normal adults and children by around 20-50 IQ points. It improves not just memory retention and comprehension but all cognitive abilities such as critical analysis, creativity, attention and motivation. If it were viewed like steroids in sport as 'cheating' and banned would we be depriving ourselves of an accelerated culture and a productive and advanced society? jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

Mon, 2007-10-01 21:20

#10

poetjude

as a postscript and sorry to bore you - I ought to get back in the habit of defending and explaining my claims such as 'other valid studies also show it has small but statistically significant effect ...' So if anyone is interested: Effects of an open-label pilot study with high-dose EPA/DHA concentrates on plasma phospholipids and behavior in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.Sorgi PJ, Hallowell EM, Hutchins HL, Sears B. Effects of n-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation on visual and cognitive development throughout childhood: a review of human studies.Eilander A, Hundscheid DC, Osendarp SJ, Transler C, Zock PL. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2007 Apr;76(4):189-203. Epub 2007 Mar 21. Cognitive assessment at 21/2 years following fish oil supplementation in pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial. Dunstan JA, Simmer K, Dixon G, Prescott SL. : Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2006 Dec 21; You can access the abstracts of these free on PubMed. Most of the research concludes that use of DHA (the main lipid in Omega 3) is promising but needs more research. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

Tue, 2007-10-02 11:25

#11

bobblehat2023

"If it were viewed like steroids in sport as 'cheating' and banned would we be depriving ourselves of an accelerated culture and a productive and advanced society?" I think the question would be about the side effects. Athletes are allowed to use natural 'supplements' that aid their performance. My understanding of the stuff that's banned is that it improves your performance in the short term but is ultimately extremely bad for you - and it would wrong to restrict sporting success to those who are prepared to jeopardize their long-term health in a bid to achieve it.

Tue, 2007-10-02 12:11

#12

markbrown

The story here, though, isn't about whether fish oil is good for you or not (I take flaxseed oil as a substitute because I don't eat fish). The issue here is that the 'trial' in question can 'prove' nothing, and that both a company and a local council are prepared to defend, and spend, to the death despite the seemingly obvious knowledge that nothing will be proven. As I understand it, it's not the company giving the omega 3 supplements, the council is paying for them. So it feels, to me, that it's probably wrong that a local council is paying for the privilege of featuring in what is basically an advertising stunt. I also think the story here is about the wish to do good leading to people grabbing at straws. So you've got a company defending it's 'science' and a local council defending a company's 'science' despite everyone telling them it's not science. Cheers, Mark

Tue, 2007-10-02 12:47

#13

tcook

You are absolutely correct, Mark, but I do believe that some of these supplements can do you good. I take Gingko for my hopeless memory and I do find that it has helped (I think) but it is marginal. Mind you if I laid off the wine etc. that would probably have a far greater benefit - but life's too short to not enjoy yourself.

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