The fatter you are, the more likely you are to have sleep apnea and the more likely you are to have it severely – at least that is what we all hear, right? And a fancy-pants study seemed to prove it.
Uh-oh. Looks like data got falsified because it wasn’t supporting the hypothesis (i.e., fat people are fatties who have sleep apnea because they are fat)!
PHS found that Respondent engaged in scientific misconduct by falsifying and fabricating baseline data from a study of sleep apnea in severely obese patients published in the following paper: Fogel, R.B., Malhotra, A., Dalagiorgou, G., Robinson, M.K., Jakab, M., Kikinis, R., Pittman, S.D., and White, D.P. “Anatomic and physiologic predictors of apnea severity in morbidly obese subjects.” Sleep 2:150155, 2003 (hereafter referred to as the “Sleep paper”); and in a preliminary abstract reporting on this work.
Specifically, PHS found that for the data reported in the Sleep paper, the Respondent:
Changed/falsified roughly half of the physiologic data
Fabricated roughly 20% of the anatomic data that were supposedly obtained from Computed Tomography (CT) images
Changed/falsified 50 to 80 percent of the other anatomic data
Changed/falsified roughly 40 to 50 percent of the sleep data so that those data would better conform to his hypothesis.
You mean a scientist allowed personal bias to not just inform his scientific opinion when he was drafting his hypothesis, he went so far as to FALSIFY DATA?
*handtoforehead*
I am SHOCKED, just SHOCKED that anyone in the medical community has anything other than the very best opinions of fat people. I mean, surely NONE OF US have ever experience mistreatment at the hands of biased medical professionals! That’s just laughable!
Except, oh, wait, it isn’t. I hope y’all will forgive me – I cannot stop laughing at this. I mean, seriously? He changed or flat-out lied about, well, more than a statistically significant portion of his data.
*LAUGH*
Sometimes people who aren’t into Fat Acceptance ask why I have to be so militant – as if it is a bad thing to have firm beliefs on this issue. THIS SORT OF THING IS EXACTLY WHY.
(With thanks to kmd for the link.)
13 Comments
I’m pretty sure I know this guy…I grew up in the neighborhood in which he lives, and his older daughter went to school with my younger brother.
I think fatness might just cause bad science to happen. Lets all jiggle and see if we can get scientists to prove that the Earth is flat.
I read an article about this and all I could think of what I wasn’t at all surprised
Seems like every time I turn around some researcher is getting busted for fudging the data to get the results they or the people who are paying them wanted.
It’s amazing that he even bothered to change the data. It seems like a lot of these studies just present the data and then claim it proves the hypothesis, even when it clearly does not. And news media and general public read just the hypothesis and the conclusions and say, “See, that proves it! All the Fatty McFattersons out there are going to DIE!”
I have sleep apnea and I am a fatty. (all together now, “Hello Regina”).
Anyway….when this was first diagnosed and I saw my pulmonary doctor for the first time, the very first words out of his mouth, I kid you not, were “Plenty of average size people have sleep apnea, too. Weight does not determine whether you have sleep apnea or not. In fact, most of my patients with sleep apnea are average size”.
At that point, I exhaled.
I gave this now retired doctor points right away for making it clear to me that it wasn’t the fat. Was I offended that his first assumption was that I was blaming myself for this disorder? Not at all. I KNOW I’m fat, and guess what? So do the other people who see me! It was a relief to be told that losing weight would do little to nothing to change my sleep apnea. This doctor treated me just like he treated all his other patients, fat or thin.
As for this lying SOB in the study….no big suprise there. ANY study can be skewed to the outcome that is trying to be achieved. The sickest part is that he actually falisified the numbers, making his profession look even more unethical and less concerned about REAL patient care.
I need to find a good Shaman!
Lol Heathen!
As fiance says, “Way to fail at science, dude!”
I always kind of assumed my sleep apnea was because of my obesity. My sleep doctor said that it looks like it is just they way I was made, but I thought he was just trying to be nice. I mean, both my mom and dad have it and they are both obese too.
Only recently have I begun to think that it is actually maybe a genetic thing – my 9 year old, very thin son has it too!
Apparently, it is just the way I was made. Imagine that!
When my husband was diagnosed with sleep apnea, we were living in an area that had a dedicated sleep research lab and his specialist was not only the top dog at the lab, but a professor at the local university. My husband’s test results were so severe, the dr. asked permission to use his case with his students as an example of how extreme apnea can get! I think he’s in textbooks now.
My husband had been sick for a long time and, in the process, gained a lot of weight. When going over the test results with us, the dr. made a point of saying that weight was not to blame. He told my husband that if he lost weight, he might be able to use his CPAP at a lower pressure, and might even be able to sleep the odd night without it, but ultimately, he’ll have apnea the rest of his life, regardless of what he weighs.
The dr. was perfectly right. After treatment for apnea, my husband’s health improved dramatically, and he lost about 100 pounds in a year. Last year, he was re-tested and the pressure on his CPAP was dropped dramatically. And yes, he can even sleep the odd night without it.
Oh, and my husband still weighs over 300 pounds.
WOW.
Nice. Very fucking nice.
I have tons of faith in science. In scientists…well, sometimes, not so much.
It’s not just personal bias that leads a scientist to falsify data. It’s also that if they seem to have really clear data their study is more likely to bring them fame, tenure, and more funding. (Not that this makes falsifying any better. But I think it’s good to understand all the motivations.)
There’s a lot of effort going into finding fraudulent scientific studies right now. The way I see it, the motivation is that if the studies are found to be fraudulent, new studies have to be done, and funding is likely to be available for this. I am hoping that the new studies are examined more closely and that this turns out to be an example of self-promoting behavior on the part of scientists/medical researchers that might actually result in some valid carefully done research.
For me personally, weight and sleep apnea do seem to have some correlation. But I don’t do weight loss, so this knowledge is mainly useful to me for managing my apnea properly, e.g., if I gain weight sometimes I need to change the pressure on my CPAP machine.
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this.
Wow, thank you for posting this. I’m numb after reading it because a dear friend of mine just had gastric bypass 2 days ago to correct… Sleep apnea. I’m really just speechless that she risked her life for apparently nothing.