the control group.
Thus, both papers dealt with the same subject and were published in the same journal and no one has questioned the honesty of the experimenters or the quality of the studies. Reasonably, they should have been cited almost equally often. That the LRC trial, at least according to its directors, was supportive, and the Miettinen trial was not, is unimportant because the aim of research is to find the truth, whether it is happy or not. Here you can see how often the two papers have been cited by other scientists during the first four years after their publication:
Needless to say, the paper by Miettinen has been cited mainly by more critical scientists.
An example of an unsupportive study which has been cited, many, many times, as if it was supportive is the Japanese migrant study. In Japan coronary heart disease is uncommon, allegedly due to the lean Japanese diet. A large study of Japanese emigrants (112) is often used as evidence because after migration to the United States, where the food generally is much fatter than in Japan, the serum cholesterol of these emigrants increased and they died from heart attacks almost as often as did Americans. The increased coronary mortality after migration was not associated with the diet or the serum cholesterol, however, but with the cultural upbringing: those who lived according to Japanese traditions were protected against heart attacks.
Here is another example. A common message from the American Heart Association and The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to doctors is that there exist a close correspondence between degree of cholesterol lowering and degree of mortality reduction. Listen for example to the words from The Cholesterol Facts (114): ”The results of the Framingham study indicate that a 1% reduction of cholesterol corresponds to a 2% reduction in CHD (coronary heart disease) risk.” This statement was followed by a reference to a paper which reported the 30 years experience from Framingham (115).
in that paper you can read the following statement:
The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Here is a systematic review of the way the three largest, authoritative reviews have misquoted the literature:
More recent examples of false citations are given in the following papers:
U, Allan C, Atrens D, Enig MG, Groves B, Kaufman J, Kroneld R, Rosch PJ,
Rosenman R, Werkö L, Nielsen JV, Wilske J, Worm N. Studies
of dietary fat and heart disease. Science 2002; 295:1464-1465.
Some of my scientific papers about this and similar issues:
questionable role of saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids in
cardiovascular disease. J Clin Epidemiol 1998;51:443-460.
Read also a dissent to the paper: Golomb BA. Dietary fats and heart
disease-dogma challenged? and my answer; same journal and same issue.
This paper won the Skrabanek award 1999
popular-scientific books, where you can read much more: