Raw Truth. Real Health

Episode 6 - Digging Deeper into "science"

• Dr. Roz (PhD) • Season 1 • Episode 6

Share episode

In this episode I chat about the need to questions and be more critical in our decision making when choosing what's right for our pets. There isn't one best way or one best study. I go over my top tips for determining good and bad "studies".

To follow and connect with Dr. Roz and Australian Pet Nutrition
Follow on socials - @australianpetnutrition or connect for education, nutraceuticals, food and more at australianpetnutrition.com.au

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Raw Truth Real Health. It's been a little bit between episodes and that in all honesty is because I've been sitting on this episode for a long time. I have been sitting back and observing some trends in the pet industry and I really wanted to come from an honest place but also share a lot of my background in this episode to educate you as whether you're a pet owner, a vet student, a vet nurse student, a veterinarian, a scientist, whatever your background may be, to start thinking differently about science, to start thinking differently about research. I'm seeing an incredible trend at the moment, particularly in social media and businesses and influences, sharing what they believe to be true about pet health. And we'll go into a bit more of that in detail, but not coming from a place of grounded logic and potentially well-balanced science. So I want to, first of all, delve a bit deeper into that topic about science. What should we be looking for when we look at studies? How can we, as animal lovers and pet carers and pet health professionals, really dig a bit deeper into what we're looking at when we're looking at reviewing research or making decisions for our health. Now I want to start this episode with a story. One to contextualize a little bit about how my thinking works on this topic, but also how I feel the industry is trending at the moment. We operate in this paradigm where we rely on validation of social media influences or companies that have a high social media following. We're all guilty of it and as business owners we're trying to attract

following, but in doing or utilizing influences, are we causing detriment to science? Now, the story behind my precursor is I watched a video from a dog influencer over the weekend that basically said you should only take vet advice, but you should take my advice in only taking vet advice and then buy all of these products because I'm a pet influencer. Now that circularity of that absolute nonsense made no sense to me, but that's the rhetoric of the pet industry at the moment. We're paying people with no qualifications and skills to endorse products who don't have a good grounding in the science, as well as we've got scientifically developed formulas that I argue are or are not particularly scientifically developed. And also one person's advice, is going to vary from the next because of their knowledge, because of their training, because of their personal values and beliefs which shape that and also because of the research in which that was structured. So I'm grounding this conversation today in just that, in saying there really isn't one best way, there really is never one best study. But that's kind of the mindset that we're taking in the industry. So I want to encourage you today to think about things differently when you're making decisions for your pets. But also if you're in that science-based industry, how can we be critiquing research and just doing things better generally in that space? Research is something that is deeply ingrained in me. I taught it, I lived it, I designed it for many, many years and I still do that because you can't take that out of me. And that logical, critical brain, I would love to transfer to lots of different pet owners to make informed decisions. I don't come from a place where I like to sit on my hoi horse and say, this product's the best or this product's the best. I think we need to be making informed decisions because there's no one best product for anything. There's a range on the market for a reason because they'll solve different problems for different pets based on different reasons. And if we can use our critical and deductive reasoning to choose which one from the many is best for our pet and it helps our pet, that's what we want. So let's launch into that a little bit more. So I'm always asked in consultations, what's the best advice to follow for feeding my dog? Now, I think in an age of technology and arguably information, it's not a question I can just answer easily. And I'm sure most people sit in that same boat as me.

So this chat today is really about when we get questions like that or we ask ourselves these deep philosophical questions, what's best for my pet or my dog has this condition or my cat has this condition, what is the best path to take? These are the things I encourage you to consider. Now we can deep dive on this further, but this is an introduction to how to be a bit more critical in our thinking and decision making process and not be so easily influenced by masses. So I hope that I trigger your critical mind and your aspirations to not just take things for what they are. So if you were to Google, what should I feed my dog? And you were to Google it in different browsers, you would get different answers. Does it mean that one search engine has a better answer than the other?

Well, possibly, because there's factors involved in that. But what you will get is probably 20 plus different approaches to feeding your dog, each arguing that that approach is the best to feed a dog. Whether it's kibble, breed-specific kibble, condition-specific kibble, raw, lightly cooked, sous vide, bath, complete and balanced, hybrid, rotational mono-feeding, prey. Which one's right? Now.

My answer's probably gonna sound like I'm sitting on the fence, but my beliefs and my values and my research and my knowledge trigger me to rule some out and rule some in. Does that mean that the ones I'm ruling out are wrong? No, but I'm being critical about the evidence that I have on those and I'm narrowing down my search list. So the first thing is there's not necessarily one best way, but what's right and wrong is based on good science or what's more likely to be our best option should be based on what is good science. Now I want to foreground that good unbiased science where we haven't seen funding provided to give a predetermined assumption or outcome is not a static concept. So research is just like our own knowledge. It constantly evolves.

The more we observe, the more we do, the more we learn, the more we understand the world around us, our values, our beliefs, our views evolve. We learn more things about how things are or once were, and we can do better based on that research. Now, this concept applies to every industry, but particularly in this context, I'm talking about it in relation to pet's health. However, we get lost along the way. Someone tells us to feed a certain way or do a certain thing or we put on a pedestal one particular person's advice or information or hearsay and we run with it without going through a bit of a critical checklist in our mind. And that's what I wish pet owners would do a bit more of and feel more confident to do that critical checklist in their mind when they're making decisions for their pet. Because fundamentally only you know your pet the best. There are experts and we want to draw on those experts for advice, but we need to know how to sort the good from the bad in terms of advice. So I've got a bit of a critical thinking checklist to help you work out maybe what's crap research, what's crap information, and what might stay on your I'll consider list. So when we think about knowledge in the research space, we tend to break knowledge up into a couple of very broad categories. Common knowledge and New knowledge. So common knowledge refers to things that we can largely agree on as a society that don't need to be supported by evidence because we en masse generally believe them to be irrefutably true. So for example, healthy dogs have four legs. Dogs need water for hydration. This is what we call common knowledge. And most people wouldn't disagree with you on those things. But when something is said to be true that can't be proven to be irrefutably true or irrefutably false, this is what we want to dig a bit deeper on and find some new knowledge on. So my personal favorites in the pet health industry that I think we should be digging a lot deeper on is pets don't need a variety of foods in their diet. Dogs should only consume dry food to reduce bacterial intestinal load. Dogs have evolved well beyond walls. We shouldn't even link the two. Right, I've probably made some of you uncomfortable with just reading out those sweeping statements or sweeping assumptions. But it's not even that the information of those statements is completely outlandish. It's the fact that your brain on some level perhaps is having their values and beliefs challenged. And you need to go and look for evidence to work out whether you want to stick with those values and beliefs or you want to learn something new and maybe change those values and beliefs and knowledge about that particular opinion or assumption you've had. Many of the assumptions and opinions that we form actually adjust through repetition of hearing it, seeing it, living it.

They don't actually ever come from us experiencing or grounding it in evidence. So this is why I'm really encouraging people to determine what is the information that they're consuming and is it valid scientific, credible information or is it just that, something that's been through repetition of exposure that's not actually grounded in anything or we haven't validated it to be credible.

Because it might be, but it has never been validated or you've never dug deeper to validate that information that has shaped your values, beliefs and behaviours. So let's talk about sources of information, where information comes from. So lots of people now are getting on the trend and great for them of quoting academic journal articles. And that's fantastic, but there's more to it than that, than just saying this study says this and that means it's science because it's in an academic paper and I'm going to base my opinion and decision making on that. That doesn't make it unbiased and it certainly doesn't make it factual and it certainly doesn't make it truthful. If the publication is, if the journal in which the publication is published is owned or funded by an interested party or business, hold certain views and values, then this means that these publications are asked to support these particular studies, not challenge them, not question the validity of the structure of their study, their trial methods and methodology, their literature reviews, not challenge any of that because that arguably goes against the standards of that journal. Now I have sat on many journals and being a blind peer reviewer and while you are asked to review the paper in its merit, you have to review with the guidelines of that publication in mind. So we can accept or reject papers purely based on whether it fits the modus operandi, if you will, of that particular journal, doesn't mean that the study isn't fantastic and scientifically sound and of great merit and should be published to the world, but it might not get through based on those grounds because journals are big business and big money. So that's something to be aware of for potential bias. Also, it is well within the rights of the reviewers for that journal, to ask for elements of that paper to be modified to fit the requirements of the journal to then allow for publication. I have seen minor changes that doesn't impact the authenticity of the study all the way through to huge issues where data has been modified to meet the outcome of that journal, and that is hugely problematic. But to the reader, which might be another researcher, or to the general public reading that, they're not aware of that. But just going on and looking at the mission statement of journals and what kind of articles they publish, we can start to get a little bit of information about potential bias and things like that. So we can start to make decisions on if there's anything else underlying information in this study.

The other big one is funding. It's very, very rare these days to find studies that are independently funded and run because to run large-scale studies costs money, particularly ones involving animals, natural medicines, pharmaceutical drugs. They're big scale and they are very expensive to run. That's just a fact. So there's usually a funding body involved. When you're trying to avoid bias and conflicts,

That is still possible with funding bodies involved, but we need to understand the intentions of the funding body as well. So when funding is awarded for research to take place, it means that those researchers have been granted funding to align with a particular brief that was put out by that funding body looking for research on a particular area. So there's still a values and belief alignment that has to occur because it's going to benefit the funder. They're not going to fund research that goes against them or is counter to what their organisation is about. That's just common sense. I'm not going to fund a dry food study when I'm a raw food business owner. I might. There could be a great study there, but that's a different conversation. So if you look historically back at years and years ago, when we were told that soft drink was really great for our health, tobacco was really great for our health. So we had lots of people smoking, had lots of people consuming soft drink. When we dug deeper into who funded those studies, it was the companies themselves. This is aligning research with our business. Well, we don't see many natural or holistic studies that do that. That's often because funders are
have heavier pockets and are more aligned to certain industries. But we can also see it, we can also see holistic and natural studies being aligned to particular funding bodies. And it's not saying again that the research isn't credible and the outcomes of that research are not credible. But it's really important to understand that there is a link and it is a flag to consider when we're decision making about the outcomes and what that study's saying we, should or shouldn't consider as part of our decision making process for our pet's health. Now, affiliations and endorsements. if you follow, this is more of a less academic capacity, but it's huge in the social media space. Lots of companies create affiliate programs and they create endorsement programs. Basically, the more people you send to us, we'll give you a kickback, from our products doesn't mean our products are great, but it's a brilliant marketing model. It's worth questioning people's affiliations and endorsements because money is what talks in any industry, including research, including science. It is all fundamentally driven by money. So big companies pay big money for affiliations and endorsements. We see so many celebrities endorsing products for that reason, that's the same about research can be affiliated and endorsed that way as well. And in many instances is fame and influence comes at the behest of actual quality products or truth of information or quality of research. So dig deep, don't just take it for what it is. Hence my story about influences at the beginning. We should always be questioning and digging deeper to advocate for what really is right.

Let's switch it back to something really nerdy now, something that I'm particularly passionate about and it's a big factor if you are reviewing a journal article and what I would be pulling apart as well. And this is examples given or a case study if it's a single case study, meaning it's one perhaps animal or person or whatever the study is based on or is it a group of participants. might be a clinical trial. It might be a longitudinal study conducted in a particular clinic or there's many other options for participants. But if you're reading a study or skimming, go and have a look at the participants section and have a look or the data set is what you'd be looking for. What's in it? If it's a single case study, is it 10 participants, 20 participants?

Are they looking at dogs, cats, multiple animals? What was the data set that they had to test, observe, have a look at that then made them come up with the findings in that paper? It's important to think about this because I see so many people saying, I read this study and so and so told me this study and just remember it's one study. I don't read a study and go, I'm gonna change everything I do with my pets based on this single study because there's so much in that study we need to consider. And it's also just one study that has that particular study been replicated and we've had the same results or magically not or it's not able to be replicated and all these things and we're now doing things based on fundamentally dodgy science. And I see that a lot. So if we were looking at a case study, we would be looking at probably an individual dog or an individual cat, a single case. And this usually probably comes from clinicians reporting on a case that they managed in their clinic. Now case studies are fantastic. But remember, we're looking at an individual dog that's been dealt with individually. So there's a lot of factors just within that make us consider that it's useful information, it's potentially a well-structured case study that we can learn things from and consider things either in practice in clinic or for our pets, depending on what they were looking at. But do I want to change everything about my values and beliefs about that? No, because it might be a study on desexed male German shepherds and their behaviour in closed environments. And I have a trained hunting German shorthead pointer who is in tyre and has never been crate trained. So I'm not going to make behavioural connections around that, although some people will. But we have to assess the validity and the relevance to what we're comparing it to. We might take pieces of that information, but we need to consider that we're not dealing with correlation there. And that's really important because I see so many people saying, this study did this and now I'm going to put this in my dog's diet. And that just doesn't make any sense because you haven't analyzed the study in detail. Particularly if it's a case study, it's definitely got merit and definitely should make us dig deeper and think differently about things. But it's certainly not where I go and start changing what I'm doing then we will see much larger sample sizes, arguably not huge sample sizes in animals. I'm always cautious about that because a sample size matters. tells us it's a representation of a population. So if we've got a sample size of 10 versus 500, that's significantly different data that we're going to yield and significantly different information statistically about a population that we're honing in on certain factors about that is going to determine the outcomes of that research. So things to look at, look at the sample size in a study. Was it 200 dogs? Was it two dogs? Was it seven dogs? And then think about, you know, is that actually going to be statistically significant data? Or is it really a ripple in the ocean? And that's what I say to people.

Studies are there to inform decision making, particularly researchers and things like that, there's not a lot of very significantly large-scale or large-scale longitudinal pet studies. So it doesn't mean it's not a good study, but we're never going to capture huge, huge sample sizes, particularly in pets. just not a feasible study to do. But we definitely want to consider sample size. And then...

What about that sample size? Because I can guarantee you a well-structured research project is probably looking at a particular breed, neutered, not-neutered, an age category, a particular health issue, and then testing it against one and control group, and then maybe two variable groups with two different drugs or two different herbs or topical medications or behavioral applications. So, if your dogs don't fit into any of those particular criteria, it's not going to necessarily be as applicable to you. It doesn't mean it's not informing, but it might not be as particularly applicable in a crossover there. So these are things to consider. So we want to look at, you know, in that data set, what have they honed in on? What's the health status that they have or haven't considered? These are all things to critique as well.

They haven't even factored in various aspects of their health status. It's a variable maybe they didn't control or couldn't control and it's a flaw of the study or it's a weakness of the study. Age, breed, did they take a full history of the diet and pre-existing health conditions? How long did the study go for? Did it go for five days? Did it go for 50 days? Did it go for one day? Was it over a period of hours? Did they replicate it multiple times to compare what happened again and again?

Was their medication involved? In what environment did they conduct the research? Was it in a clinical environment? Was it dogs in their natural environment? Was it at kennels? Was it at boarding facilities? The list goes on. These are all things that we want to critique because they impact the outcome of the overall study. A good study will control key variables and hone in and focus on their research. But also, if they're not acknowledging variables that they haven't controlled that may impact the outcome of the study,

That's also not great either. We want to see thoroughness in research. But there's always going to be things that are out of scope for a study. But it's how they manage that scope and how they deal with what they're ruling in and what they're ruling out and how they make sure things that they've ruled in and things that they've ruled out don't impact the overall data that they're trying to collect. So my point is every study should be analyzed in those kind of basic details, and then we can judge its merit based on that. And we haven't even got to critiquing the analysis of their data, but purely looking at how they've set up their method to collect that. But this comes down to, is this information irrefutably true or irrefutably false? We're looking at new knowledge. Studies aren't around these days to really replicate old information. We're trying to find something new in the field. That's job of a scientist and a researcher. So I freely encourage you to dig a bit deeper.

when you look at a study or if someone pops a study online and says, found a study about the importance of giving Saccharomyces belatio to dogs that are being treated for hemorrhagic gastroenteritis simultaneously while being given metronidazole, great. Is there more than one study? Did they look at it over a longitudinal period of time? What were the pre-existing conditions of that dog? Who funded that study? Was it the drug company because they've named the drug metronidazole? probiotic company because they've named the brand that they've used, how many participants over how long, in what environment, age of dog, breed of dog, health status of the dog, medical history of the dog. All these things are important to understand because they help us make decision making rather than me rushing out and buying Saccharomyces beladii or probiotics because a study set it over an influencer, an influencer named a study or a business named a study. We need to go and take that information and then dig a bit deeper and assess. One study is never the be all and end all. If you've been to university, you've ever sat in one of my classes, you would have heard this lecture many, many, many, many times over, but, or you would have failed. We don't go and write a reference list with one reference, we're looking for an exhaustive reference list, cross section of research to validate the opinion that we're putting forward. So for me to say all dogs who are experiencing hemorrhagic gastroenteritis should be prescribed Saccharomyces boulardii alongside their antibiotic treatment is foolish, because there's so much more to that than just making that claim.

And I think some of those studies have some flaws too. But I want to be able to assess that and validate that. Also, because I want pet owners to save money, don't go and buy it if it's not relevant to what you're dealing with for your dog as well. Or there might be another study talking about a similar probiotic that more fits the clinical symptoms, signs, et cetera, et cetera, that are relevant to what your pet's experiencing or what you're seeing in clinical practice.

So in trying to keep this episode short and sweet, but also to inspire you to be more critical minded of information out there and studies and things like that is to explore widely and critically. And I'm not here to tell you what to feed your pet or what supplement to give, but I am here to tell you to not just listen to the to podcasts or people talk about this study or just read one paper or an influencer says, you know, this study is now available and this is what we should be doing for worming because it's just not the way research is intended and it's not the way research is designed. And it's not, it's putting research on a pedestal that just isn't the way academia is anymore. But also we're foolish to think that one study is always the truth and that truth can't change. There's a great saying, saying the truth is only the truth until it becomes a lie because we've learned something new. That's a terrible paraphrase of it, but you understand the intention behind that. question everything, pull these articles apart, question people's sources if they say that you should feed concedes to your dog to get rid of worms. I'm going to do a whole episode on that because if you look at the studies there's just no evidence of it in that form. So this is what we want to be encouraging each other to critique and to participate in. There is nothing more refreshing than really rigorous academic debate. It's not personal, it's purely debating the research and the merit of it and that's where I think we should be going in the pet industry because we're to get better outcomes for health when we really critique the science and not each other and their beliefs because our beliefs can then be informed by better research. So that's my hopefully inspiring few words on what can you do to question science a little bit more closely, question influences, question where all this information is coming from in an age of information overload and feel empowered to make better decisions about what things to give and not to give to your pets. Enjoy.