
Secret to longevity may lie in the microbiome and the gut - Mrtierne
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180531114611.htm
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gojomo
I'm a believer in the importance of the microbiome, but this study seems
fishy:

* the authors have already started a company and pursued a patent on their ayurvedic-derived formulation

* the figure 1(a) in their paper ([https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25382-z#Fig1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25382-z#Fig1)) doesn't show a big difference from plain probiotics to their formulation, but does show some oddities in the Y-axis where, for the control group, there were clearly exactly just 10 flies' mortality measured (integer steps down), but apparently many, many more for other cases scaled to the 0-10 axis.

* it's unclear if the treatments/evaluations where blinded – the word 'blind' is not found in the Nature article

* the 1st comment on the Nature article wonders: "the control flies didn't live to their normal expected age or even close. What gives?"

(Perhaps the flies that lived longer just had more food in total?)

~~~
chmike
I would´t trust my nose to detect fishiness. These expermients simply need to
be reproduced independently to be verified. Until then, it's anti-scientific
to assume anything about fishiness. The reported facts do NOT PROVE that the
results were forged.

~~~
krageon
Nobody is claiming that it does. They are indicating possible economic
investment in the results and some questionable statistics. It is perfectly
scientific to take these pieces of evidence and adjust the possibility of this
study being fishy upwards.

~~~
chmike
Claiming the presented result as fishy based on the given argument is
equivalent to claiming the data has been forged, the scientists are dishonnest
and have unethical behavior. Unless the results are proven wrong, such claims
of fishyness is defamatory. This is what I call judging by its nose. It's not
because such behavior has become common place that it is correct and
acceptable.

It would make a huge difference if the OP simply called to be cautious for the
given reason. This preserves the status of unknown to the validity of the
reported fact without taking position one way or the other.

It is very disapointing that people can't make the difference and I maintain
that such behavior is anti-scientific. Claiming the opposit doesn't make your
point true.

People who make claims like this fishyness are people who have a very high
opinion on their ability to distinguish true from false facts just by
guessing. That's monkey science.

~~~
gojomo
'Fishy' doesn't mean 'forged', just 'suspicious'.

The factors I mention – fast patenting/profit-seeking, odd axes/combinations
to get a result, unclear blinding, inconsistency with other expected fly
lifetimes – are all the kinds of things correlated with flimsy results. It's
usually wishful thinking, not conscious forgery, that leads such authors to
overlook the weaknesses in their setup when they get a publishable/profitable
result.

I do have a high opinion of my ability to detect flimsy results from the
details (or missing details!) of a scientific paper, from decades of reading
and watching which results hold up, and which don't.

You're practicing scientism – sacralizing certain procedures, titles, or
outlets – rather than science here. Science requires a high standard of proof,
and recognizing patterns of misreporting. There's even a strong case to be
made that "most published research findings are false":

[http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

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avip
I’m working in proximate space. Every research paper about nutrition in
general and gut bacteria specifically should be assumed shit science.

~~~
3eto
Interested in learning more if you have time to expand. Cheers

~~~
avip
Sure. I see 3 recurring issues with "nutritional research" I'm exposed to:

1\. Wayyyyy too much industry involvement, much of it not properly disclosed
(OP here is a classical and representative example).

2\. Lots of research from relatively small and "less known" institutes, done
by researchers with hard to verify credentials.

3\. Low scientific standards. That'd include:

    
    
      - Refusal to share data
      - Refusal to share data analysis methods
      - Not keeping the basics of a double-blinded test
      - No reproduction, and not even the possibility of independent reproducibility, as the methods are described so vaguely.
    

That's in a nutshell.

~~~
ianai
You identified the problem. What’s the solution?

~~~
neuronic
The solution is identification of bad methods and subsequent ignorance.

If only we had a metric for credible science that takes authors, institutions,
publisher and funding sources into account....

~~~
betageek
This seems like a great idea - is there some reason this doesn't exist?

~~~
ianai
Something that takes only authors, publishers, and institutions into account
sounds counterproductive.

I think it’d be better to have an agreement that only reporducible papers are
credible. Ie data the paper is reported on (to include “cleaned” data) and any
tools developed (software tools) must always be included. As well as funding
for everything disclosed.

Ultimately though I think we may just be seeing the obsolescence of current
statistical theory. Science needs hypotheses to be testable in “trustable”
metrics. But there are too many loop holes if things like p-hacking are
possible.

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unicornporn
In a few years we might look back at this period and think: oh, it was at the
time when we thought gut bacteria was the solution to every health problem
known to mankind.

Remember when it was vitamin D?

~~~
maxxxxx
Maybe one day we'll realize that there is no single factor for good health.
Maybe it's Vitamin D AND gut bacteria AND lot of other factors that are even
individually different?

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deepsun
Advertisement of a herbal supplement.

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gweinberg
I think there's been very little evolutionary pressure to increase lifespan in
creatures like fruit flies since despite their short lifespan few of them die
from age related causes. I would assume it's pretty easy to increase the
lifetime of short-lived creatures in a protected environment, and pretty
unlikely that the methods which accomplish this would also extend the lives of
long-lived creatures.

~~~
kojon55
What do fruit flies usually die from?

~~~
ItsMe000001
Looks silly at first glance, but I think it is a very interesting question.
Asking Google I found a lot of "they die", but no good research about the
cause (admittedly, I only spend a few minutes). Only one other - still open -
question on Quora: [https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-tracked-the-cause-of-
death-...](https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-tracked-the-cause-of-death-in-
fruit-fly-aging-studies) \-- The only answer says it has not been studied
thoroughly, but it is from someone whose professional and job title
("Biomedical gerontologist, Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation") sound
like he would/should know.

I think it is _implied_ that the cause of death is ageing? What else would it
be (lab fruit flies don't have predators)?

I found a hint here:
[http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Dr...](http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Drosophila_melanogaster)

> _Little is known about causes of death in old fruit flies but cardiac ageing
> has been reported [0981]._

That sentence indicates that the question is not very well researched?

If that is true I find it amazing that there are ageing studies, shouldn't
their own cause of death be well-known?

To @gweinberg, if you are reading this, what do you base this on? You wrote

> _few of them die from age related causes_

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ogennadi
> Scientists fed fruit flies with a combination of probiotics and an herbal
> supplement called Triphala that was able to prolong the flies' longevity by
> 60 percent and protect them against chronic diseases associated with aging.

For comparison, dietary restriction increases longevity in rats and mice by up
to 45%, but this may only be in lab animals

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299887/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299887/)

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Latteland
Wait, it's an internet law that every article that asks if "<something> may be
the solution to <some problem>" it is never the solution.

~~~
relaunched
_Clickbait 's Law_

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baxtr
The topic microbime is definitely on the rise right now. It will soon reach
mainstream media.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=Microbiome)

