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News in perspective Upfront – The reasons for the bias are unclear, but could include a failure to publish unfavourable findings, or a tendency for firms to back studies likely to show their products in a positive light. Ludwig says governments should invest more in nutritional research as a public health measure to counter industry bias. “It’s a poor trade-off to save money on research and base nutritional policy on a flawed scientific database,” he argues. BEING released from prison may be far riskier than anyone thought. Former inmates of Washington state prisons were 3.5 times more likely to die during their first two years after release than people of the same age, sex and race who had never been incarcerated. The danger was greatest during the first two weeks, when former inmates were 13 times more likely to die than their non-incarcerated peers (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 356, p 157). The study tracked 30,237 “THE buttocks are full, but her waist is narrow, the one for whom the sun shines.” So runs a telling epithet from more than 3000 years ago describing Queen Nefertari, the favourite wife of the Egyptian king Ramses II. Telling, because it reveals that the writer intuitively knew what modern biology has since demonstrated – that a narrow waist is the most visible proven hallmark of health and fertility in women. Now, by screening historical literature from the UK, India and China, researchers have shown that for centuries, writers and poets have cited narrow waists more often than any other bodily feature as a mark of beauty. Devendra Singh of the University of Texas, Austin, and his colleagues screened works of English literature between 1501 and 1799 for references to various bodily features and found the waist had most entries. “There were 66 romantic descriptions, and every one of them referred to narrow waist,” they write in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.0239). The same pattern emerged in 6th- century Chinese poetry and 1st and 3rd-century Indian literature. CONFUSED by conflicting advice on nutrition? Perhaps it’s best to ignore conclusions drawn from studies backed by the beverage industry. It seems that corporate funding of research into non-alcoholic drinks may bias findings in favour of manufacturers’ products. Since funding from the drug industry is known to bias published research, David Ludwig of the Children’s Hospital Boston wondered whether the same was true for studies of nutrition. He focused on the beverage industry, which is often blamed for promoting obesity, diabetes and poor dental health. Ludwig’s team examined 206 scientific papers on the health effects of soft drinks, fruit juice and milk, 111 of which declared their funding source. They found that industry-backed papers were more than seven times as likely to produce a conclusion favouring a company’s product (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pmed.0040005). As North Americans basked in a January heat wave last weekend, people in Bangladesh were freezing to death. Across the world, the media reported sunbathing New Yorkers enjoying temperatures that topped 18 °C, up from the usual January daily maximum of 3 °C. But there were fewer stories about how residents in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka were enduring temperatures that fell from the daily average of 18 °C to between 5 and 8 °C. The government called on affluent people to donate warm clothes and blankets to the poor, as doctors reported that more than 100 people had died from the sudden cold. Meteorologists suspect the extreme US weather was caused by the North Atlantic Oscillation, a distant cousin of El Niño. In Bangladesh, cold air sweeping in from Tibet was compounded by dense smog that prevented the sun warming the ground – smog made all the denser as people burned fuel to keep warm. HOT ’N’ COLD ABIR ABDULLAH/EPA/CORBIS –He’s so narrow-minded– MOVIESTORE COLLECTION “For centuries, writers and poets have cited narrow waists as a mark of beauty” –Shivering in the tropics– Waist of words Spinning drinks Perils of freedom 4 | NewScientist | 13 January 2007 www.newscientist.com
