A new study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health shows that obesity research may be misrepresented by scientists operating with particular biases on topics related to weight, nutrition and the food industry.
The researchers refer to "white-hat bias," a tendency to distort information about products such as sugar-sweetened beverages or practices like breastfeeding, regardless of the facts, when the distortions are perceived to serve good ends. The name for the bias is a reference to do-good characters often portrayed in early Hollywood Westerns as cowboys who wore white hats.
The findings, published in the International Journal of Obesity, reveal biases sufficient to mislead readers, says public health professor David B. Allison, Ph.D., director of UAB's Nutrition and Obesity Research Center and study co-author.
"White-hat bias is a slippery slope that science and medicine need to resist; hopefully our study sounds a warning bell," Allison says. "The field of obesity must be vigilant to minimize and remove these biases."
Allison worked with his co-author Mark Cope, Ph.D., formerly a UAB research associate and now a scientist at Solae LLC in St. Louis. They examined ways in which scientists writing new research papers referenced two studies reporting effects of sugar-sweetened beverages on body weight. The UAB study did likewise with a lengthy World Health Organization report on the protective effects of breastfeeding.