Michael Nelson - Statistics in Nutrition and Dietetics

7 7‘The term “belief” is taken to cover our critical acceptance of scientific theories – a tentative acceptance combined with an eagerness to revise the theory if we succeed in designing a test which it cannot pass’ [1, p. 51]. It is important to get used to the idea that any ‘truth’ which we hope to observe is likely to be superseded by a more convincing ‘truth’ based on a more robust experiment or set of observations using better measuring instruments, and which takes into account some important details which we did not observe the first time.

8 8This is the hypothesis – short and sweet. The study protocol will specify which subjects we choose, the dosage of the supplement, how often it is administered over what period, how walking distance is measured in a standardized way, what we mean by ‘improve,’ whether we measure blood parameters to confirm compliance with the protocol, etc.

9 9The word ‘data’ is plural, by the way – she should have said ‘I have collected all these data’ – but we will come to that later.

10 10The UK rules governing labelling and packaging can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/food‐labelling‐and‐packaging/nutrition‐health‐claims‐and‐supplement‐labelling. Two things are immediately apparent: there are lots of exceptions; and the EU has a lot to say.

11 11Randomization is usually carried out by computer. You could do it equally well by simply tossing a coin, but if the coin is not tossed in exactly the same way for every pair, the randomization may be biased by the way in which the coin was tossed from one matched pair to the next. This introduces additional ‘noise’ in the system and is easily avoided by using the computer to generate the random numbers needed.

12 12On the other hand, keep all the significant digits when doing your calculations. We will see how this works in later chapters.

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