> It's a classic p-hacking trick
It's a hypothesis seeking study. It just invalidated 8 of them and picked 1 ok-ish candidate to run an actual study in.
The only thing wrong here is there's only one format for submitting a paper.
> It's a classic p-hacking trick
It's a hypothesis seeking study. It just invalidated 8 of them and picked 1 ok-ish candidate to run an actual study in.
The only thing wrong here is there's only one format for submitting a paper.
And if the 1 ok-ish candidate study turns out to have significant results, publication bias has to be considered: that dozens or more other studies of vitamin D (or whatever) may have not found significant results of previously ok-ish hypothesis candidates and those negative studies are often not published.
I think this is quite the case for vitamin D which has multiple physiologic roles and is studied extensively for relation to many categories of health issues. One more reason why it can be stunningly impressive when something/anything health-related is eventually proven.