Originally published March 29 2014
Much-touted CDC study claiming obesity has plummeted in preschoolers found to be junk science propaganda
by L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
(NaturalNews) Who can trust the American Medical Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control -- two institutions engaged in suppressing self-empowered natural healing? These institutions work by misinforming the public through their vast media influence and control. It's no surprise that a new claim projected by the CDC and promoted by the AMA is merely just political propaganda based on junk science.
The report, published in late February in the Journal of the American Medical Association, brings forth findings from the CDC which say that obesity in American preschoolers has fallen 43 percent in the past decade.
The First Lady was quick to promote the findings, reveling in the federal government's success at fighting the national obesity epidemic in recent years through federal nutrition initiatives. Big government enthusiasts touted programs that bring more physical activity to child care programs, including federal nutrition programs for low income women and children (WIC).
As this government drivel hit the headlines, skeptical researchers dug in deeper, finding no supporting evidence for the study.
Skeptical researchers find no supporting evidence for CDC's misleading political propaganda
When obesity specialists and researchers looked into the data, they found out that the 43 percent drop in preschooler obesity was indeed too good to be true. After comparing the highly broadcasted study with similar studies that involved more participants, the researchers found no statistical correlations that even came close. Upon further investigation into state WIC assessments, the researchers actually found data that suggested a continual trend of rising obesity in preschoolers, instead of a 43 percent decline.
"You need to have a healthy degree of skepticism about the validity of this finding," said Dr. Lee Kaplan, director of the weight center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Lee went on to say that there is no supporting evidence suggesting that changes in childhood behavior could have made such a major 43 percent shift in less than eight years.
A 2013 study on the federal WIC program, which included 200,000 children, found virtually no change in obesity rates in preschoolers. California's Los Angeles County WIC program actually correlated with higher obesity rates in three- and four-year-olds. The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report even recognized this in 2013, showing the obesity rate rise from 17 percent to 20.4 percent.
Researchers debunk false CDC study
The CDC's misleading fluke study included data from only 871 children between the ages of two and five in 2011 and 2012. The skeptical researchers first pointed out that the CDC goes by a vague chart when determining childhood obesity, based on a child's age and gender-specific growth. (In contrast, adult obesity is measured more comprehensively by body mass index -- a ratio of weight to height.)
Furthermore, the skeptical researchers showed how easy it was for errors to creep into a small sample of 871 children. The data set, which was selected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, could theoretically be picked through and tailored to fit a researcher's bias, agenda or special interest.
Basically, it could have been very easy by random chance for errors to creep into the study when such a small sample of children were studied.
"In small samples like this, you are going to have chance fluctuations," said epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. [emphasis added]
Large margin of error suggests that study's outcome could actually be reversed
Furthermore, the CDC study rounded the percentages in the study. The reported 43 percent drop in obesity comes from a 13.9 percent rate in 2003 and 2004, which was rounded to 14 percent, that decreased to an 8.4 percent rate in 2011 and 2012, which was rounded down to 8 percent -- an obvious manipulation of data. Again, how can these institutions be trusted?
The CDC-projected data also recognizes a margin of error for the 2003 data that could be up to 6.8 percent too low and a margin of error for the 2011 data that could be up to 5.7 percent too high!
These variables imply that the obesity rate could actually have statistically increased!
Sadly, incompetents working for the Journal of the American Medical Association published the imprecise CDC study, promoting a misleading falsehood.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.reuters.com
http://science.naturalnews.com
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