Investigate the Alternate Hypothesis
September 25, 2008 at 2:55 pm 3 comments
Ever since the publication of Gary’s Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories, folks within the low-carb community have suggested and discussed various study designs to investigate the alternate hypothesis, the “Carbohydrate Hypothesis”, explored in the book. The biggest issue isn’t so much designing a study, but funding a study large enough and controlled enough to reach valid conclusions.
With obesity considered one of the most pressing health issues of our time, wouldn’t it be great if we could find the resources necessary to investigate, in a really well done trial, that alternate hypothesis?
Enter Project 10100 – a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.
Project 10100 is accepting submissions of ideas for projects until October 20, 2008. One hundred ideas will be selected for public review and voting to narrow the field to twenty semi-finalists. An advisory board will then select five projects to fund from a commitment by Google of $10-million dollars.
One category is “Health” and the critera provided to help those submitting ideas includes:
Criteria:
- Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
- Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
- Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
- Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
- Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?
Project 10100 may be a way to fund a study to investigate the Carbohydrate Hypothesis!
If you’d like to submit your ideas, you can go to the Project 10100 website, or directly to the submission page.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: Gary Taubes, low carb, research.
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Weight of the Evidence 
1.
Christie | October 1, 2008 at 4:14 am
I found your blog thru Jimmy Moore’s ‘Livin la Vida Low Carb.’ Although I don’t have an idea for a study, it’s comforting to know that someone might have the opportunity to challenge the low-fat thinking that dominates our society. Thanks for getting the word out.
2.
Judy Barnes Baker | October 3, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Regina, I hope you plan to submit an idea for a study. Nobody could do it better!
However, it might have a better chance of being selected if it were described as a comparison of several different diets and their impact on health and obesity rather than just a test of the carbohydrate hypothesis. That way, no matter what system the voters favor, they will vote for a study that they believe will “prove” that they are right.
3.
Per Wikholm | October 9, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Regina, we have the very same discussion over here in the swedish low carb high fat community. How to get a study done that proves our case?
Problems are 1)funding 2)get it through an ethical commity
Dr Annika Dahlqvist puts all her revinues from the selling of her books into a research fund, but it will take a long time before that would be able to finance a large study. Here are some of the ideas that has come up here som far:
Make a small randomized dietary intervention study on diabetics already scheduled for amputations of feets and see if the intervention could reverse the need for amputation. This idea actually came quite far but was ruled out as “unethical” by established reserchers.
Another idea would be to make a randomized dietary intervention trial om people who had already suffered a heart attack. Mortality in this group is so high that a trial could reach statistical significanse on “hard endpoints” in a few years with only some hundreds of participants.
Per Wikholm
author of a swedish book called (in translation) “The Ideology and Money Behind the Dietary Guidelines