Skip to main content

Snake Oil Superfoods by InformationIsBeautiful

In my stats classes, we discuss popular claims that have been proven/disproven by research. So, learning styles. Vitamins. One claim we dig into are the wide array of claims made about the health benefits of different foods and folk beliefs about nutrition. But how to get into it? That is such a big field, looking at different foods used for different conditions. Send your students to InformationIsBeautiful's Snake Oil Super foods, which sorted through all of good studies and created an interactive data viz to summarize.


For instance, these are three foods, backed by science, for very specific issues:

BUT GET THIS: If you scroll over any of them, you get a quick summary of the findings AND a link to the research article. See below for Oats. NOICE.



The information isn't limited to slam dunks, either, it fleshes out promising foods and weak links as well.


AND...this is great...below the visualization there is all sorts of information on their methodology AND a link to their data. See below.




How to use in class:
1) Again, this can be a useful discussion prompt for evaluating scientific/click bait nutritional research.
2) I think this reminds students that research has to research very specific claims. No where in the data viz does it say "Garlic be good", instead, it looks at specific health claims and garlic. While Garlic:Cancer Treatment is in the "No Evidence" category, Garlic:Colds is in the "Inconclusive" category.
3) Plenty of links to published research, speadsheet provided to play with.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr.  Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales.  2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables.  So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes:  1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales.  3) Daily check-in with your students.  1. Teach your students the basics...

Using pulse rates to determine the scariest of scary movies

  The Science of Scare project, conducted by MoneySuperMarket.com, recorded heart rates in participants watching fifty horror movies to determine the scariest of scary movies. Below is a screenshot of the original variables and data for 12 of the 50 movies provided by MoneySuperMarket.com: https://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/features/science-of-scare/ https://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/features/science-of-scare/ Here is my version of the data in Excel format . It includes the original data plus four additional columns (so you can run more analyses on the data): -Year of Release -Rotten Tomato rating -Does this movie have a sequel (yes or no)? -Is this movie a sequel (yes or no)? Here are some ways you could use this in class: 1. Correlation : Rotten Tomato rating does not correlate with the overall scare score ( r = 0.13, p = 0.36).   2. Within-subject research design : Baseline, average, and maximum heart rates are reported for each film.   3. ...

Rouse, Russel, & Campbell (2025) is a curated list of Psi Chi journals that are perfect for Intro Stats.

This summer, the Psi Chi Journal of Psychology Research published  Rouse, Russel, and Campbell's Beyond the textbook: Psi Chi Journal articles in introductory psychology courses. It is a curated list of paywall-free Psi Chi articles, mostly with student co-authors, that are peer-reviewed and of an appropriate writing level and length to use in an Introduction to Psychology course. The authors provide the following information for each of the articles: In addition to being appropriate for Into Psych, these articles are also perfect for Intro Stats. In my classes, I emphasize the ability to read and write simple result sections. One way I would review this skill is by showing my students Results sections from published research and asking them to identify the test statistics, effect size, and other relevant information. This selection of articles features clear and concise results sections for t -tests, ANOVA, factorial ANOVA, regression, and correlation. I created a spreadsheet...