A couple of weeks ago I posted on the large JAMA study showing that, contrary to what we’ve heard ad nauseum over the past decade, fiber consumption produced no protective effect against colon cancer. Now comes one of the more bizarre studies that I’ve ever read.

The British journal Colorectal Disease published a paper a few months ago with the promising title “Diet and colorectal cancer: implications for the obese and devotees of the Atkins diet.” Hey, now were getting somewhere thinks I when this little baby fell into my hands through the agency of the university inter-library loan department. Then I began to read it.

I don’t know if medical journals have the equivalent of slow news days or if this particular journal, which I hadn’t previously seen, is a lower tier journal, but I can’t figure how this paper got published. I’m glad it did because most people will only get to read the abstract (my university didn’t have a subscription to the journal, thus my reliance on inter-library loan), and the abstract implies much that isn’t developed in the paper. I’m sure many people writing articles on low-carb diets will in the future reference this paper as one that shows low-carb diets to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. The paper, however, doesn’t really do that. In fact, it doesn’t do much of anything.

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