Previous: Reference Padding in Fitness Articles | Table Of Contents In the last section, I discussed references to research studies and the dishonest practice of reference padding. Another type of reference is a quote. Since much of the online fitness industry consists of cross-promotion, quotes in fitness articles are often a kind of name-dropping. By … Read more
Previous: Self Plagiarism, Salami Slicing, and Publish or Perish | Table of Contents Lack of proper citations in articles about fitness and nutrition is certainly a common problem. But it has an equally problematic opposite: Reference padding. Reference padding is the practice of “padding” the source list of an article with many more citations than should … Read more
Previous: Assertions Based On Single Studies | Table Of Contents Famous food researcher Brian Wansink, director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab and considered a world-renowned expert on eating, was fairly recently accused of academic misconduct. Many of his papers were retracted by JAMA in one single day. For years, my bullshit meter had been … Read more
Previous: What Should I Read to Learn About Fitness? | Table Of Contents I wonder how many of my readers have recently read a news or magazine article, on the web or elsewhere, explaining the results of one study and making concrete conclusions based on that one study. All of you? I figured as much. … Read more
Previous: Bullshit and Common Sense | Table Of Contents Do you need more convincing about the value of skepticism? I can understand if you do. Skepticism and even bullshit-detecting can seem so negative. Skeptics are often seen as viewing everything with negativity and as being contrarians. I have certainly been accused of this when I … Read more
Previous: Bullshit and Semantics | Table Of Contents Fitness if full of common sense approaches. What people call common sense produces much of the world’s bullshit. Common sense, itself, is hard to define. It may not actually exist in the way we think it does. Yet, since most people think rational thought and indeed, critical … Read more