Fog and a faux road.

Lessons from a hungry coyote, a bird that runs really fast, and a road that leads to nowhere.

Leading up to my PhD studies, I requested for some reads to start of whilst I took a little holiday between my contract expiry and the 8 Aug.

Is the finding really true?

First, I was fed a series of 4 papers from back in 2006. The first in the series reported a statistically significant association of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) to obesity in adults and children. The authors managed to replicate these findings in 4 out of 5 populations that they studied; in total they surveyed more than 3000 obese individuals as well over 6000 lean adult controls.

The other three papers in the series were rebuttals; groups from other parts of the world tested the supposedly “statistically significant” finding on other populations, but did not observe the same results as the first paper although the studies were conducted in much the similar fashion and composed of largely similar sample sizes.

Confusion, and the fog.

I did not understand this. I had to wrap my head around an entirely new notion: published≠truth. It sounded ridiculous. As I’m writing this, I understand the foolishness of my naivety.

Perhaps I had too great a faith in humanity, a faith so great that I refused to believe that people will report a false positive and attempt to defend it like the truth.

The Korean dramas that depicted characters doing whatever it takes to come up tops in a power struggle/attempt to survive/trying to gain a promotion…were forgotten when I was searching on PubMed, or Web of Science.

Sunshine, and the dispersing of the fog

But I’m glad that I learned this lesson through the mistakes of others. There were many studies afterward that reported weak associations of that particular SNP to obesity, others failed to replicate. It is most likely a false positive that serves little more than a “end of road” sign at the edge of an unfinished highway.

Sitting on the edge of that highway that leads to nowhere

I felt repulsed after reading the series. Frustrated at the confusion it threw up. Annoyed that I seem to have wasted my time on something that taught me nothing new about the disease. I said to myself, that I won’t ever build a road that leads to nowhere; it’s a waste of time and energy and money. That is what fools do. And learning how to identify the tell-tale signs of such a road is a skill that I’m learning right now.

Brings back memories of the Roadrunner cartoon, and how Coyote always seemed to set up a picture/painting/banner of an imaginary road, hoping to trap Roadrunner, but instead he always gets caught in his own trap instead. I laughed at Coyote’s seeming stupidity for coming up with such far-fetched ideas to trap the darn bird, and the great lengths that he takes to set up said elaborate traps.

It did not occur to me that these cartoons were teaching me life lessons when I was 6! I only truly learned the lessons within when I’m 25. But better now than never right?

Until next time, Godspeed. E.