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This review found 396 cases between 2003 and 2017 in which a randomized controlled trial indicated an intervention already in clinical use (such as a drug, procedure, vitamin or supplement, device, or more systemic change) lacked an evidential basis. The reversals spread across a spectrum of medical fields, including cardiovascular disease, preventive medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology. This review reinforces the importance of basing clinical recommendations on randomized controlled trial data rather than less rigorous standards of evidence. It indicates a significant share of treatments — even if they are in widespread use — will be found ineffective when tested in a rigorous clinical trial.

In this 2011 trial, resistance exercise is shown to reduce liver fat content even in the absence of weight loss. Resistance exercise improves muscle’s ability to effectively regulate circulating glucose and fat levels, a change that reduces insulin resistance and liver fat buildup. At minimum, this indicates resistance exercise alone may help reverse insulin resistance and fatty liver disease. More importantly, it suggests treatments that induce weight loss, such as other changes to diet and exercise, may drive more rapid and effective metabolic improvements when paired with resistance training.

“Although industrial processing strips food of much of its natural vitamin content, manufacturers can add synthetic vitamins back in—and promptly start advertising everything from doughnuts to beer as filled with the ingredients essential for health. Today, celebrities swear by the miraculous powers of vitamin mega-doses, and more than half of Americans take a dietary supplement every day. But where do all these synthetic vitamins come from—and are they actually doing us any good?”

This 2019 review analyzed randomized controlled trials testing the effect of one or more dietary factors on heart disease incidence, heart disease mortality, or overall mortality. It found that nearly all common dietary patterns and supplements fail to reduce cardiovascular risk or overall mortality. Notably, no diet focused on modifying the amount or type of fat in the diet had any significant impact on overall mortality, cardiovascular mortality, or cardiovascular risk.

This 2019 piece documents the work of English anesthetist John Carlisle, who has developed and used statistical methods to identify published research papers with questionable results. Carlisle’s work has found data issues within and outside the anesthesiological research space and has led to high-profile retractions, such as that of the PREDIMED, a study that drove increased interest in the Mediterranean diet in 2013.

Dr. Michael Eades argues insulinocentric bias has kept most researchers focused on using insulin over the past 90 years of Type 1 diabetes treatment. The problem, he claims, is that the treatment has proven largely ineffective at getting and keeping patients’ blood glucose levels in normal ranges. Citing a landmark study by Dr. Robert Unger, Eades observes that glucagon, not insulin, may be the primary hormone causing the metabolic chaos seen in the disease. But despite the promise of alternative T1DM treatments emerging in clinical studies with animals, mainstream medicine continues to pursue insulin pumps and an ever-expanding array of injectable insulins and insulin analogs.

“Millions of Americans use dietary supplements and a variety of diets to protect their heart health. But a large new analysis found that there was strikingly little proof from rigorous studies that supplements and some widely recommended diets have the power to prevent heart disease. The findings are likely to elicit controversy and continued debate. But the researchers said one clear message from their analysis was that the more than half of Americans who use dietary supplements should be wary of claims that multivitamins and other supplements will improve their heart health. …When [the authors] looked at various diets recommended for cardiovascular prevention, they found a similar lack of solid evidence. That was certainly the case for low-fat diets, which health authorities have recommended for decades as a way to lower cholesterol and heart disease risk. ...the most rigorous randomized trials provided no evidence that eating less fat, including saturated fat, had an impact on mortality or cardiovascular outcomes.”

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick offers a brief history of Type 2 diabetes, from references to the disease by ancient Roman physicians, through a well-known 17th-century discourse, and into the 20th century, when a shift in eating habits corresponded to a sudden rise in diabetes incidence. Kendrick observes that the shift occurred as the diet-heart hypothesis, the belief that consuming saturated fat raises cholesterol levels and promotes heart disease, became more widely accepted. As the dietary guidelines changed, people began consuming less fat and more carbohydrates — to devastating effect.