NYT coverage of salt study by Gina Kolata
May. 4th, 2011 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.html?_r=1
They went after some details that would require actual JAMA access.
"But among the study’s other problems, Dr. Briss said, its subjects who seemed to consume the smallest amount of sodium also provided less urine than those consuming more, an indication that they might not have collected all of their urine in an 24-hour period."
NYT says Staessen is the lead author, which sort of made me scratch my head. He's the last listed, an important spot -- but not the first spot, which is what I understand "lead author" to mean. I think Staessen may be a bit of a media ho, and would prefer to demonstrate that high blood pressure is an artifact of heavy metal poisoning rather than salt in the diet. I have mixed feelings about including a bunch of quotes from Alderman, since he was shilling for the Salt Institute at one point, but NYT does include that which might have the (desirable) effect of making everything he says extra suspicious in the minds of alert readers.
NYT does _not_ point out (and I wish they had) that the "low" sodium tertile in the study was consuming about what is recommended for a "normal" diet -- it wasn't anywhere near what a "low sodium" diet is considered in medical terms.
They went after some details that would require actual JAMA access.
"But among the study’s other problems, Dr. Briss said, its subjects who seemed to consume the smallest amount of sodium also provided less urine than those consuming more, an indication that they might not have collected all of their urine in an 24-hour period."
NYT says Staessen is the lead author, which sort of made me scratch my head. He's the last listed, an important spot -- but not the first spot, which is what I understand "lead author" to mean. I think Staessen may be a bit of a media ho, and would prefer to demonstrate that high blood pressure is an artifact of heavy metal poisoning rather than salt in the diet. I have mixed feelings about including a bunch of quotes from Alderman, since he was shilling for the Salt Institute at one point, but NYT does include that which might have the (desirable) effect of making everything he says extra suspicious in the minds of alert readers.
NYT does _not_ point out (and I wish they had) that the "low" sodium tertile in the study was consuming about what is recommended for a "normal" diet -- it wasn't anywhere near what a "low sodium" diet is considered in medical terms.
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Date: 2011-05-05 02:17 pm (UTC)Also, it's hard sometimes to judge the importance of authorship just by name placement in the list. All "first-authorship" truly means is that individual is the one who wrote the darn thing, whether or not they did the majority of the work...
I'd love a copy of the study
Date: 2011-05-05 11:54 pm (UTC)I know it's hard to judge importance of authorship by name placement, altho in this case, I found a big chunk of what went into the JAMA study in a symposium slide show credited to the first author listed. That was one of the reasons mis-citing the last author listed as "lead author" caught my eye: he seems to be the big name on the list (_lots_ of articles in PubMed) which may explain why he got the last position.