Will This End Up Labelled As Bad Science?

[Hypognosis]

Counter intuitive and currently on my 'interesting if true' list.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2514102/How-turning-central-heating-slim-Study-uncovers-link-higher-temperatures-lower-levels-fat.html

However, the story makes no attempt to tackle the issue of cause and effect. It suggests that the researchers are claiming that a warmer household causes the inhabitants to avoid becoming obese.(*)

It would be more logical, to me, if they claimed that non-obese people are more prone to feel the cold and hence turn their heating up higher.

So, as per the thread title, do any of you think this will end up labelled as Bad Science? Do you expect a contrdictory piece of research to emerge within the next two or three years?


* or at least there are no claims that weight loss is achievable - that would have been even more headline-grabbing, especially in the face of the exhorbitant fuel pricing, of late.

[Canary42]

Thin people have less natural insulation so they turn up the heat - simple.

Bad science indeed (probably research financed by fuel companies)

[woofgang]

In that case, why has obesity risen as more people have had central heating?

[Canary42]

So if two things rise, there has to be a connection ?

You're having a laugh !

[woofgang]

no but canary, if there was a causal link, people would have got thinner as there was more central heating, not fatter.

[ChillDoubt]

In that case, why has obesity risen as more people have had central heating?
---------------------
Increased sedentary lifestyle in the last 30 years?

[Hypognosis]

@canary42 (00:37)
Glad to see you agree. :-)

Good point, @woofgang.

It wasn't that long ago that people lived in draughty houses with open fireplaces and sash windows. I always wondered if the shift to double glazing and central heating was correlated with increasing obesity because we're expending less energy on keeping warm yet our appetite and diet remain unchanged.

Chilldoubt rightly points out the shift to more sedentary lifestyles. As usual, too many variables are changing simultaneously over the same time period, so nobody can categorically claim that any given change factor is the real cause.

The fat as insulation thing is still something I treat as largely folkloric. We are not seals - we do not possess blubber. I have also known overweight people who routinely announced feeling cold before anyone else in the same room or outdoor situation. (Although, paradoxically, they would also be the first to show signs of discomfort in hot weather...)

There is a school of thought which says that obesity results from the metabolism slowing down, the so-called "starvation mode" response to reducing calorie intake and so on. As soon as the person comes off their n-week crash diet, nearly everything they eat turns to fat because their metabolism never returns to normal. Still in the realms of speculation, for now and something of a sidebar to this story, unless you want to suggest that a warmer house somehow causes a person to reduce their calorie intake.

[jake-the-peg]

I don' see why you think it's counter intuititive , bodies at higher temperatures burning more fat - reactions generally run faster at higher temperatures.

That's not the real issue -

This is not bad science - it's bad science journalism

The question is whether or not it's a significant effect.

The Daily Mule love these sorts of stories and typically if you go to the bother of actually reading the research the results are much less dramatic that the paper makes them out to be because that's what makes the story.

Papers love to feed you images of 'daft' professors conducting barmy research because it makes readers feel superior.

Telling you that you may not have an armfull of diplomas but you've more common sense than all of Oxford and Cambridge combined makes you feel good.

Flattery sells papers

[tamborine]

Obesity doesnt appear often in tropical climates; maybe due to heat & sweat? So, if we live in hot homes we can sweat off the lard.

[Hypognosis]

//Telling you that you may not have an armfull of diplomas but you've more common sense than all of Oxford and Cambridge combined makes you feel good.

Flattery sells papers //

I'm a cynic about many things, so I don't know why that possibility hadn't occurred to me. Thanks for pointing it out, jake.

However,
//bodies at higher temperatures burning more fat//

Not so. Have you not heard of homeostasis? Body core temperature stays at 36C practically regardless of ambient conditions.

Okay, I'll grant that skin and peripheral temperatures would be higher and your argument could hold but it might take infra-red photography on some volunteer obese people to convince skeptical sorts that they are literally walking about with sizeable parts of their body running cool, with correspondingly slowed down metabolism.

[Hypognosis]

@tambo,

You're forgetting Tonga, where they like 'em big. I mean BIIIGGGG! *

Otherwise, that generally holds true.

Incidentally, I found something on the 'net recently in connection with the heatwave conditions we had last summer. In parts of SE Asia, the public are advised not to sit in front of cooling fans for prolonged periods and that there are stories linking deaths to this practice. I pooh-poohed this, at first but the in-depth explanation was that, once the ambient temperature has gone above body temperature, the victim is subjecting themself to net heat transfer from the moving air to their body and they die from heat stroke and/or dehydration once they've lost consciousness.


* spot the film reference?

[factor-fiction]

Another factor may simply be that people who spend a lot of money on food have less available to spend on heating.

[Hypognosis]

@factorfiction

That's a reasonable stance but the penultimate para of the article says:-

"This is not just about people who live in well-heated homes being in the financial position to afford more expensive low-calorie foods, exercise classes and sporting activities and therefore finding it easier to maintain a low BMI level. The study took age, gender, social class and other factors into account."

So it appears that socioeconomic factors have been dealt with.

In fact, nothing would get through peer review or get published if it was that easy to pick holes in. ;-)

All the same, now you've mentioned food spending habits, it would be interesting to see a study analysing people's total groceries + takeaways + booze + sugary-drink bills, to see whether those with high BMI really do "hardly eat anything" (we all meet a denialist, sooner or later), or whether some groups eat the same calories as healthy-BMI people but genuinely suffer from a slower metabolism.

[LazyGun]

Not sure that it should be though of as "bad science" just yet, Hypo, since we have seen precious little science on which to judge the study - just a newspaper report which cannot even be bothered to offer links or extracts from the original research.So, bad science journalism, for starters.

And you have to question just how valid drawing such conclusions is, how good they have been at excluding confounding factors. Use of BMI as a measure of obesity is also somewhat suspect. and although basic measures of height and weight are taken for each subject, such objective evidence is lacking when it comes to talking about heat in homes - this has to be subjective and based upon imperfect recall.

So not necessarily bad science, but a rather bold conclusion to draw from what amounts to an analysis of data sets from a general health survey.

[jomifl]

jake-the-peg

/I don' see why you think it's counter intuititive , bodies at higher temperatures burning more fat - reactions generally run faster at higher temperatures. /

Humans aren't lizards Jake, they are mammals and maintain a steady body temperature, It's called homeothermy.

[Hypognosis]

@LazyGun,

It would be an all too obvious cheap-shot to imply a science reporter is from the humanities stable, so I'll avoid that, as best I can. I have no idea if that is applicable, in this case and do not wish to cast aspertions.

Also, I have to say that I don't envy them the core of the job - ploughing through dozens of publications every month and trying to sift the newsworthy (affects most/all of us) from the narrow-field-of-interest (fewer than 50 research teams, worldwide).

Even the interesting stuff doesn't often fit the 5-minute-read mould...

http://dmm.biologists.org/content/5/5/595.full

...which I'll revisit later (I fast-forwarded through some of the middle)

[pixie373]

Yes, if your body is cold over a constant time, it maintains more levels of fat to warm itself. People who wear miniskirts a lot are much more prone to cellulite around thighs.

[Hypognosis]

That makes sense to me, pixie. Cold makes the blood vessels under the skin contract and shut off the blood flow to conserve heat. If that effect extends to the fat layer under the skin then the stored fat can't be sent into circulation, for use in whatever exercise is in progress.

A warm environment and vigourous exercise ought to counter that, bringing blood to the skin.

(Is that a single entendre?)

[woofgang]

Hypgnosis, thank for the link....most interesting

[Hypognosis]

My pleasure, woofgang.

I found it while trying (and failing) to trace signs of the research referred to in the news article. It's less of an experiment & results paper and more a synthesis of the dozens of articles listed in the references section. Instant reading list, for those who need it.

[solvitquick]

Dear Hypo,
Bad science or not it's bad use of research money and bad reporting. No statement as to the degree of significance. To believe it, I would expect a statistical significance of 0.5% or less. In fact even 0.5% has often been insufficient and over-turned - so 0.1% needed to take it really seriously.
There is an unheathy trend in science for research-workers to leak their published results to the press. I don't believe that the editorial staff of the Daily Mail read the journal "Obesity"!
SIQ.