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Access our Range of Parent Resources More News Human and Economic Cost of Heart Disease in Europe Rising Obesity Levels: A Cancer Time Bomb Sign up to the RedBranch email newsletter for regular updates on health issues, including practical tips for parents, teachers and schools.
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Lifestyle and ScienceThis section of the site is a resource for teachers, students and parents who are interested in sourcing scientific information. You will find many useful links relating to lifestyle science on our links page (click here). Science and the Peer Review Process
Science and the Peer Review ProcessScience is about the sytematic search for knowledge. Scientists build on knowledge gained by their predecessors and their peers. The usual way that scientists report on their work is by publishing results in peer reviewed journals. These publications are more than just magazines. The peer review process is designed to ensure that the work being published is a valid, be it an experiment, an observation or a deduction. How does the peer-review process work? In short, the scientist (or group of scientists) that wish to be published submit their work to a process of review, which is carried out by other scientists. If the work passes muster, it is published. The process is not without it's critics, and, occasionally, fraudulent work creeps into the scientific literature (click here for a description of a recent scientific scandal!)...but in general, peer review gives a scientific report some weight and respectability. PubMed MedlineHow can you find the information you need, from the hundreds of peer reviewed journals that are published? In medicine and the life sciences, all peer-reviewed journals are indexed on a database called "MedLine". Luckily enough, the US National Library of Medicine provides a free service called PubMed which allows you to search Medline. You can find a description of PubMed, and some guidelines for using the service by clicking this link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=helppubmed.chapter.pubmedhelp You can find the PubMed search interface here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=Search&DB=pubmed How do I carry out a PubMed search?Searching PubMed is not so difficult once you have mastered the basics. It is something like using google or a similar search engine. There are some concepts that you will need to understand to make your searches efficient, and we'd recommend that you take a look at the PubMed help pages here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=helppubmed.section.pubmedhelp.PubMed_Quick_Start What does my search produce?If you carry out a PubMed search, you will be able to look at the "abstract" of your search results. An abstract is a brief overview of a scientific article, and it should give you an idea of how the study was carried out, the scale of the study, the methods used and the results of the study. Remember, just because an abstract (or a scientific paper) says something, it doesn't necessarily make it true! Scientific theories are usually built upon hundreds of studies. What you see when you look at a single study is usually only a small part of the whole picture. Remember also that just because a study has been peer-reviewed, it does not guarantee that it is flawless. Perhaps you might even spot some errors or omissions yourself! How can you access the full article?Unfortunately, this usually involves money! You can either go to a library that subscribes to a print copy of the journal that contains the article you're interested in, or you can access the article electronically (usually by paying a fee to the publisher). Some articles are available free, and if this is the case, the PubMed citation will have a link that you can follow. Many libraries can order photocopies of single journal articles for you...usually at a cost, but this is typically more reasonable than the publishers fees. Here are some tips on accessing full articles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=helppubmed.section.pubmedhelp.How_to_Get_the_Journ Other Sources of InformationYou could also access public bodies like the World Health Organisation or the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, who will have reviewed the scientific literature for you. Be careful that the website you are looking at is independent. Many bodies may have a vested interest in one particular viewpoint. For example, the US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for the interests of both public nutrition and agriculture. Some people have argued that this has biased USDA recommendations on nutrition (click here to see some of the arguments). Make sure that the site is not sponsored by vested interests that might bias the message presented on-line. Links to some of the organisations that we access regularly are presented below. WHO on Lifestyle related illnesses Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC's "Preventing Chronic Disease" Journal (free resource)
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