And now, the salt

I have always found interesting how things that we take as truth are so often debunked by new experiments.

I grew up listening people and doctors saying salt is not good for our health, specially for our blood pressure. But today I found this article which shows that the scientific evidences we have against salt are minimal if any. I am not here defending the consumption of salt but rather commenting on the bad statistical practice that we find so often in the field of medicine. We believe in so many things that has no statistical foundation and perhaps others that come from bad statistical practice, from which I would mention the lack of replication of experiments.

I am always careful on interpreting published experimental evidences that we often see in the media but for the majority of the population these things are taken as truth. Statistical analysis became widespread which is good but I think we reached a point where maybe statisticians should be hold more accountable for their analyses and every experiment should be followed by a statistician or someone recognized versed on statistics.