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Bad Science: The story of being wary of more than bad 80s movies!

September 03, 2025 • Kris Hiney

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In this episode, Dr. Brian Nielsen, of Michigan State University shares what 35 years of being in the "research business" have taught him to spotting bad science. Don't worry, science is still good - we just need to know what to look out for!

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Kris Hiney: Okay. Welcome to Extension Horses podcast, Tack Box Talk, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney with Oklahoma State University, and today we're going to come back to a conversation we had at the recent Equine Science Society meetings.

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Kris Hiney: And we're going to talk about research again, but talking about… sometimes there may be research that doesn't always, hand out. So our…

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Kris Hiney: person who loves talking about bad research, back to the podcast is Dr. Brian Nielsen from Michigan State University. Welcome back, Brian.

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Brian D Nielsen: Dr. Hiney, thank you so much for having me. Yes, this will be a fun conversation.

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Kris Hiney: your favorite thing, right?

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Brian D Nielsen: It kind of is, because, you know, people like to talk about their pet peeves and things that irritate them, and bad science is very prevalent. And I will also…

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Brian D Nielsen: acknowledge that there's reasons, sometimes, honorable or at least not bad reasons for having bad science. And so, as we get into it, there's bad science because somebody has an agenda they're trying to drive.

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Brian D Nielsen: Or bad science because, well, people are trying, and they're stuck with limitations. And those are two different things, but they can both

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Brian D Nielsen: Steer science in the wrong directions.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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Brian D Nielsen: What kind of fun stuff we'll chat about.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: All right, so let's talk about… we'll just go in the order that you mention them, and then I'll jump in whenever I feel like it. So, agendas, because I think we really need to be upfront about, hey, guess what out there, listeners? There's not a lot of funding for horse research.

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Kris Hiney: Not the big grant pools that the cow guys have to pull from.

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Brian D Nielsen: Until we start eating horses on a regular basis, people won't consider us important, and when we start actually eating horses, people will be so disgusted with us, there won't be funding for that reason either, so….

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Kris Hiney: Will it just be, like, cut from the program. So I like to always acknowledge, like, listen, there are some legitimate hard things out there, and funding, and in listeners.

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Kris Hiney: it's real expensive to do research. It's not just like we can do whatever we want. We've got to pay for it, you gotta pay for the animals, you gotta pay for the analysis, you gotta pay for the grad, students

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Kris Hiney: It’s Real expensive.

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Brian D Nielsen: Really expensive.

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Kris Hiney: All right, well, with that, let's talk… I'll let you start talking about agendas, and kind of, what might be behind some of that.

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Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, you know, what we should always strive for in science, and where some of the bad research

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Brian D Nielsen: Where there's a lot of bad research is in terms of supplements, as well as various treatments, and even we can even go along with ways to handle horses.

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Brian D Nielsen: And a lot of these are due to agendas. We want to prove something works, or we want to prove this is the best way.

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Brian D Nielsen: Those should never be what we're trying to do. We should be trying to find out if something works, or find out if this is the best way. But when we go out trying to prove something works, or something's the best.

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Brian D Nielsen: We've already admitted that we have an agenda. And when you have an agenda, you are trying really hard to prove something, whether it's true or not.

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Brian D Nielsen: And… that's where we get ourselves into trouble. So that's kind of my biggest concern, and …

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Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, yeah, I… there… go ahead, you….

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, so I'm gonna jump, because… so I think those are two separate things, right? Because, there's the what money is behind it, which we'll get into a little bit more, but to some extent.

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Kris Hiney: I would argue all research, like, you had a premise, an idea, and a hypothesis, and so you're attempting to prove it, right? So I set things up because I think this is going to happen. And it's really hard to remove any sort of confirmational bias, right? Because we are humans, are we not?

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Brian D Nielsen: Yes. So, a way I've heard it said is your agenda should always be to do good science.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I think if you do that, you're fine. And I'll go back to my very first graduate student, and the project we had, and our premise, our thought, or our hypothesis was that putting horses into stalls without access to high-speed exercise

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Brian D Nielsen: impairs bone formation, and for those who aren't familiar, Dr. Hiney continued with work like that when she was at Michigan State, and there's some really neat work.

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Brian D Nielsen: My opinion, that has documented just how little high-speed exercise you need, but you need some to make bones stronger.

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Brian D Nielsen: But going back to that original study, we did have the hypothesis that putting horses into stalls and not allowing them to have any access to high-speed exercise compared to horses on pasture would impair their bone strength. And what I said to her is, if this proves to be correct.

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Brian D Nielsen: We'll celebrate with champagne.

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Brian D Nielsen: If it proves out, there's no difference, then we celebrate with beer. By the way, these were figuratively, we didn't do either of those.

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Brian D Nielsen: But the point is, is what is more fun if our hypothesis turns out to be correct.

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Brian D Nielsen: But, even if it doesn't, as long as it's contributing to good science and advancing knowledge, it's useful information.

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Brian D Nielsen: But like you said, you have this idea, sometimes you get married to it, and it's like, oh, I really want to prove that correct, but you always need to pull yourself back.

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Brian D Nielsen: And… one clue, like, when I'm reviewing research papers that an author has an agenda.

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Brian D Nielsen: Is when there are results, and they're talking about something, you know, this value was, you know, this thing that they measured was numerically higher, but not statistically significant.

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Brian D Nielsen: Right there, that told me they had an agenda. They wanted to show that it was higher.

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Brian D Nielsen: Statistically, it wasn't, so they tell you it's numerically higher. Now, let's think about if you had, … let's use heart rate, and you had 10 horses in one treatment, 10 horses in another, you averaged all their heart rates together.

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Brian D Nielsen: Would they, likely, the average of those 10 horses in each group, be exactly the same?

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Brian D Nielsen: Probably not.

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Brian D Nielsen: They're, you know, depending whether they're resting or exercising, they're probably going to not have the exact same number to the tenth of a heartbeat, like you could ever measure that.

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Brian D Nielsen: And so, it's always going to be numerically different.

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Brian D Nielsen: Now, if your hypothesis was this wonder drug, this wonder supplement decreases heart rate, then if it was… that number was on the low side, you'd say, well, it wasn't different, but it was numerically different.

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Brian D Nielsen: But if that was still your agenda, you wouldn't say it the other way around. I hope I didn't confuse listeners to that. But if somebody's trying to say that they were different, but they really weren't different, then they're lying to you. We do stats to find out if they're statistically different.

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Brian D Nielsen: And normally, we don't even have to say, stay… let's try that again… say statistically…

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Brian D Nielsen: because I had trouble doing that. Because either they're different, or they're not different.

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Brian D Nielsen: And so if you're trying to lead your…

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Brian D Nielsen: readers into believing something was different when it really wasn't. You need your hand slapped. Does that make sense?

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, and I'm gonna put… because reader or listeners love nuance, and that's Extension's job, like, well, it depends! Yup. So, but I also, like, as a researcher, like, if you start to see patterns, and you're like, hey, everything is kind of moving me this way, then I tend to be like…

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Kris Hiney: hey, there may be something to it, and maybe we gotta change our parameters, or what, you know, tighten our model down, or put more N in there, like, if there's a…

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Kris Hiney: Well, this all has kind of taken me a different.

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Brian D Nielsen: Sure.

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Kris Hiney: And then there's another kind of…

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Kris Hiney: type of data that I think… and I've seen some papers that do mention it, when the outcome of something has a health implication, and you're like, -oh.

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Kris Hiney: a couple of these horses are doing things that may not be in their best interest. I think those kind of little individual results are worth, bringing out, because it can, you know, be important, I think.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, I would totally agree with you. When you see some patterns, and it's very consistent,

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Brian D Nielsen: But part of it is, realistically, is there anything leading you to believe that if you added a few more horses, if you conducted the study a little longer.

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Brian D Nielsen: would it potentially end up being different? So, one of the big challenges we have with horse research is a lack of power, meaning we don't have enough horses on a study to detect a difference, when there actually might be one. And sometimes you'll get

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Brian D Nielsen: a trend, and that's when this p-value, which is between .05 and 0.1, again, for people who aren't into stats, that means, yeah, they're not different, but maybe if we had a few more, you might see something that doesn't guarantee it. Then I think it's legitimate to talk about that.

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Brian D Nielsen: If your p-value is .5 or 0.6, and you're talking numerical differences.

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Brian D Nielsen: then it really tells me you have an agenda. But this also brings up another point, and I saw this around Father's Day. It was a little cartoon, and a stats nerd would love it. A father received World's Greatest Dad.

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Brian D Nielsen: coffee mug from his son. And the dad goes, Son?

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Brian D Nielsen: Well…

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Brian D Nielsen: This is a failure of an underpowered study and a research bias. And as a scientist, I thought it was really hilarious. Underpowered study, yeah, when N is 1, you don't have a lot of power. This person might not actually be the world's greatest dad, but we only had one subject.

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Kris Hiney: One observation.

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Brian D Nielsen: It's an observation, and the selection bias, well, you really didn't have a lot to choose from there. So, you can make wrong conclusions because of setting up a study wrong. And anybody who does a lot of horse research.

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Brian D Nielsen: sometimes it happens, and I'll be the first to admit, I've had studies that were underpowered, because

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Brian D Nielsen: Doing horse research is expensive. You can't necessarily have 800 horses on a study. Sometimes we're lucky to get 5 or 6 per treatment. And I often compare it to poultry studies, where they might have 1,000 or more birds, 10,000 birds, and we're lucky to have 10.

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Brian D Nielsen: Hard to find differences when we have underpowered studies, and then we also have this challenge of, are the subjects that we're choosing appropriate for what we're looking at? And,

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Brian D Nielsen: Other species, I would say, have it a little simpler, if you're… I mean, come on! Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Easy peasy, you breed them all alike, genetically, they're all alike, they're the same age weight.

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Brian D Nielsen: Okay, I have to tell you of a study that… well, first of all, I'm going to tell you about the study we're getting ready to start here, and you will be so jealous. But you think about when we're gathering up a pool of horses to do research with, oftentimes at a university.

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Brian D Nielsen: It can be a real hodgepodge of horses, you know, a lot of variation in age, a lot of difference in sizes, sometimes different breeds, sometimes different sexes, and sometimes that's actually useful, because then can you apply the results to a greater pool of animals?

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Brian D Nielsen: If you're finding differences with a lot of variation, assuming you have this study set up correctly, that's pretty cool! But it's also harder to detect differences. So, Dr. Hiney, you're gonna be jealous, a study we're starting up here really soon, beginning of this fall semester.

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Brian D Nielsen: We're doing some research with sheep, and that part you're not jealous of, I saw the look on your face, because I'm seeing your video. But not only are the sheep

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Brian D Nielsen: born all very similar in age. Like, I'm thinking these were all, lambed within a couple of weeks of each other. The genetics are very similar, and in fact.

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Kris Hiney: we have 6 pairs of twins that we'll be using, so we're gonna have a twin on each treatment. That is pretty cool.

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Brian D Nielsen: we don't really get to do that with horses too often. There's not that many twins born, and we don't want twins born in. So, again, the point I'm making is horse research is tough, and so we can be critical of studies, recognizing that there are challenges, particularly trying to design the right one.

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Brian D Nielsen: But as long as you have set it up properly, and again, it's that bias, that's the agenda of somebody. And I'll give you a couple of examples where

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Brian D Nielsen: Have chatted with folks where their research results

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Brian D Nielsen: That they were trying to sell as, these are really positive things, When questioned.

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Brian D Nielsen: They're like, … well, we were surprised when we got the results, because we thought it would go the other way, and so we had to come up with an explanation for it. I'm like, huh.

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Brian D Nielsen: So you got the results, which didn't agree with your hypothesis, so you pretended the opposite is actually a positive thing. When you are doing that.

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Brian D Nielsen: Houston, we have a problem, because your bias shows.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I often say, To my students, it's like.

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Brian D Nielsen: You would love people… something that's come out in the last few years is, you know, trust science.

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Brian D Nielsen: Nope. Good scientists don't trust science. That's why we go through the peer review process. We… if somebody is submitting a paper for, to publish in a journal, it goes to reviewers that, look at it and look for issues with that.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I'm sure you've been in similar boats where you're a reviewer, somebody else has reviewed it, and you have completely different opinions. You either thought this paper was really bad and should not be published, and then the other person said it was great.

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Brian D Nielsen: So sometimes you can have bad stuff published just because you happened in the review process, like two people who

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Brian D Nielsen: may also be biased, or don't have the knowledge to know that it was bad, because there are lots of things, trust me, lots of things, where I have to say, man, I can't… I can't review this, because I don't know enough about this topic to give you a….

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Kris Hiney: send you all kinds of things. I'm like, I don't know anything about elephants.

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Brian D Nielsen: Oh my gosh, yes, yes. Oh, there are so many strange ones that you get, and it's like, oh, no, I don't, have any clue. And that's the right thing to do, is if you don't know.

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Brian D Nielsen: you should probably recuse yourself and not volunteer or accept the invitation to review. So, yeah, all kinds of challenges.

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Kris Hiney: So, you know, and I think…

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Kris Hiney: these are great things when we're training students, training graduate students, but… but in my little extension-y world, right? Again, it leaves the, what does the average person… what…

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Kris Hiney: Tools do they have to try to read in?

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Kris Hiney: to some of the things that they are going to encounter when they are receiving information, and we all know a lot from social media, and here we are talking about research, right? So, literally.

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Brian D Nielsen: publications. Right. Is there any way that a….

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Kris Hiney: regular old horse owner is gonna know that they see, you know, a product will be, like, here's the… here's the reference, right? And sometimes they can even make those up, but, like, here's the reference of the paper, like.

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Kris Hiney: Do they have any options, or you're like, ugh, do you throw your hands in the air?

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Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, to be honest, it's way tougher than it should be. I often tell my students, I really don't know how the average horse owner knows. Because, like you said, sometimes companies will provide the literature, and…

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Brian D Nielsen: But that requires a person who doesn't spend their life reading boring journal articles, and who hasn't had that experience to know whether that's good science or not. But we'll start with a few things.

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Brian D Nielsen: If it is not a controlled study, meaning if you just do a treatment, whether it's a supplement or some medical treatment, and they're trying to claim that this supplement or treatment

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Brian D Nielsen: Worked?

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Brian D Nielsen: But there was no control that went along with it.

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Brian D Nielsen: I would be very skeptical. It doesn't mean it didn't work, but it actually provided no proof that it did. I always say.

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Brian D Nielsen: time heals all things, even when it doesn't. You know, a lot of times, you do nothing, and you get better.

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Kris Hiney: Rest is an amazing thing.

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Brian D Nielsen: It is so amazing.

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Kris Hiney: You know.

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Brian D Nielsen: As a runner, I get crippled periodically because I'm stupid. And I do dumb things, and do I take any medical treatment for it? No. But give me enough time, then I'll be healed and running again. If I take some time off, or I decrease the intensity, or… it just… the body is an amazing thing in terms of healing.

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Brian D Nielsen: The other thing is time, in terms of, like, season.

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Brian D Nielsen: I, …

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Brian D Nielsen: I'm going to give a little background. I had a student once who was talking about this vitamin-mineral mix that she loved and her horses did so great on, and then she took the horses off of it, and they started, looking really bad again, and then she put them back on, and they started looking really good again.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I asked her, so when did you start putting the horses back on it again? And she said, well, it was around finals time last spring.

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Brian D Nielsen: Okay, folks, I live in Michigan. Around finals time is the beginning of May. It is a wonderful time here after this cold, hard winter when the horses have had their long hair coats, and suddenly we got sunshine and green grass.

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Brian D Nielsen: Dr. Green and, old Mr. Sunshine do amazing things to horses which have nothing to do with supplements.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, that's the thing, is we have changes that occur regardless of anything that we do to the horse that can influence how it looks.

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Brian D Nielsen: I was visiting with some feed dealers later on that October, and I… this is many years ago, and I was mentioning that, and they said, oh yeah, we love when we get new customers in the springtime because they think our feed is so great. And I think they actually had good feed, I'm not knocking on them, but it was funny because they've even seen

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Brian D Nielsen: People believing that, wow, their feed is magical just because they made the switch sometime in the springtime when grass started to get green and we got sunshine.

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Brian D Nielsen: So without controls, most studies… they're not actually studies, they're just observations, and observations don't necessarily mean anything.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, if they're trying to convince you of something, and there is no controls.

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Brian D Nielsen: don't believe it at all. Doesn't mean it's not true, but I would not believe it, especially if somebody's providing that information to me, and they are trying to make money by you believing that.

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Brian D Nielsen: The other part to it is, I would really love to see blinded studies, but that's also really hard. So a blinded study means the people making the measurements, the observations, they don't know what animals are on what treatment.

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Brian D Nielsen: And that's useful because, you know, we all admit, we all kind of have a little agenda.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, we do.

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Brian D Nielsen: And the way you handle a horse, or what you do with it, could be influenced.

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Brian D Nielsen: Where that one's a little bit more challenging and a little bit more forgiving is research is expensive, and hiring people is challenging, and often the grad students

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Brian D Nielsen: They're the ones who are doing the work, and… because you're doing it, you have to kind of know something as to what's going along. So I don't think that's a deal killer, but I would look for clues as to how they are going ahead and…

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Brian D Nielsen: selling the results. And if they're trying to oversell something, and that happens a bunch.

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Brian D Nielsen: And the reason it happens a bunch is…

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Brian D Nielsen: Even people at universities, and we'll talk about, you know, company-funded work and things like that, but even at universities.

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Brian D Nielsen: The way you get to keep your job, or potentially get raises or promotions, is by getting research grants.

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Brian D Nielsen: And it's much easier to get research grants if you find something that's pretty cool, especially if you're getting funded by a company. So oftentimes, people will work a little harder to try to find something under those circumstances. I get it, it's their career.

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Brian D Nielsen: But that's why I'm very skeptical of science, and that's why everybody should be skeptical of science. Good scientists are skeptical of science.

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Brian D Nielsen: But it's all we have. It's the best… That, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Do we still need it, right? Still need it.

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Brian D Nielsen: 100%, yes. …

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Brian D Nielsen: But, you know, going back to, like, the company-funded research, I've done a lot of that. I think it's great.

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Brian D Nielsen: And… I have worked for… when I say work for, I have had…

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Brian D Nielsen: Companies sponsor research, and the people being very much, cool, whatever the results are, that's great.

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Brian D Nielsen: I was doing research for a company once, I won't bore you with the details on it. Turned out it didn't do anything, and their response back was, oh, that's cool, we won't spend any more time on that.

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Brian D Nielsen: they took it wonderfully. I love that. That was a very good company. I was working for another company, and I, again, not working for them, but I had some research funded by another individual once.

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Brian D Nielsen: He didn't like the result.

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Brian D Nielsen: And, I was very concerned about being sued by this individual, because he didn't like the results, and the guy was a retired attorney. And I was just like, oh, I just… so we've never published that, because I'm actually scared of that, which is ridiculous.

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Brian D Nielsen: But people, legal system, if they don't like something.

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Brian D Nielsen: you know, you can have that type of, of issue. So…

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Brian D Nielsen: what I'm saying is, just because a company funds research, it doesn't mean it's good or bad. It really doesn't. It does mean you should pay attention a little bit more, and look if somebody's trying to oversell, or if they are conducting research to try and find a result.

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Brian D Nielsen: In a way, this goes along with the selection bias.

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Brian D Nielsen: … I'm going to give an analogy.

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Brian D Nielsen: I could give you the real example, but I'll give you an analogy instead that will hopefully be not as confusing.

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Kris Hiney: ….

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Brian D Nielsen: If I was selecting participants in a study.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I said, if you participate in this study, as a…

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Brian D Nielsen: Award for that, or for you doing it, we will give you an anchovy pizza.

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Brian D Nielsen: Okay? Again, I'm going to emphasize an anchovy pizza. …

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Brian D Nielsen: If you brought them pizzas, and one of the pizzas was anchovy pizza, do you think it would be received very highly?

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Kris Hiney: They like anchovies.

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Brian D Nielsen: Well, I'm thinking your incentive for them to participate in the study is, if you do this, you'll get an anchovy pizza.

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Kris Hiney: Yes.

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Brian D Nielsen: Do you think that the people tasting the pizza, the anchovy pizza, will tend to like it more than the average population?

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Kris Hiney: Yes, because they signed up for it.

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Brian D Nielsen: Yes, and I'm like, like, anchovies on my pizza, I love pizza, I'm not touching that. So, that goes back to the world's greatest dad, the selection bias things, and sometimes you find…

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Brian D Nielsen: And again, there are so many things, but I'm not gonna throw any companies, any people under the bus on this.

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Brian D Nielsen: But if you select your subjects?

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Brian D Nielsen: and those subjects might be more inclined to a problem, or more inclined to view something favorably, well, you're probably going to find more of that. Again, it's….

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Kris Hiney: I'm just gonna throw out, sometimes we can't help it, right? Because we're looking for volunteers and.

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Brian D Nielsen: Yes.

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Kris Hiney: But I think, you know, to speak to, you know, good research is that the researchers will be like, hey, we realized this population was skewed, but what were we gonna do about it, right? Like, I mean, that's just… reality sometimes sets in. I'm defending myself at this point.

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Brian D Nielsen: No, no, no, that's good! And I think it's actually really important in papers that people acknowledge the limitations. I don't know if we've ever done a study that's 100% perfect. You always try to point out things that didn't work as well as they should.

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Brian D Nielsen: Where we get into problems, and I know you've already, in previous podcasts, talked about abstracts.

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Brian D Nielsen: A dear friend who passed away a couple years ago, you remember Jim Leisman, former research assistant in our department. I loved how he worded abstract. He goes, abstracts are an advertisement. They're just to try and get you to read the paper or come to the presentation.

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Brian D Nielsen: And… and where we get into trouble is…

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Brian D Nielsen: abstracts are short, so you can't put all the limitations in there. And then it's when people take

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Brian D Nielsen: the abstract as being gospel, when it's just really… it's a commercial. It's not the full movie, it's just the trailer for the movie, and you can't put in all the good stuff

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Brian D Nielsen: In the trailer or the commercial.

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Kris Hiney: Well, they… or they put… that's all the good stuff, was literally….

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Brian D Nielsen: in the trailer.

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Kris Hiney: And then you watch it, and you're like, well, that was a waste.

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Brian D Nielsen: Okay, so along that line, here is the next part. I'm so glad you mentioned that, regarding, yeah, they put all the good stuff in there.

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Brian D Nielsen: You know, when we talk about a p-value, like.05 or so, again, to most people, they're like, okay, what language are they talking?

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Brian D Nielsen: We're talking about probabilities of if we see differences, are these real differences? And, …

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Brian D Nielsen: If you get a p-value of .05, most of the times when you see differences, those are real. But every once in a while, nope, it's a false positive.

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Brian D Nielsen: If you measure enough things, you're gonna find a few false positives. That's how probabilities work.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, when… a paper.

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Brian D Nielsen: Talks about how great things were in these changes, but you look through, and they measured 30, 40, a lot of different things, and they find only one or two minor little things that changed.

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Brian D Nielsen: And they are talking about it making a big difference. I'm thinking.

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Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, no, … those are probably false positives, because why didn't all the other things change? I'm looking for that preponderance of evidence. And if it's only one or two things.

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Brian D Nielsen: Oh, I think I'm going to be a little skeptical. And, you know, having been doing research since, like, 1990, yep, 35 years on this whole thing,

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Brian D Nielsen: I have seen, in various areas that pertain to horses, where, you know, back in the 90s, we had these beliefs, and you… you put together a study like that, where you see a couple things that are being changed, and you're like, huh, maybe there's there, or that's… there's something to that.

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Brian D Nielsen: Now we're in 2025,

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Brian D Nielsen: And that's all I'm still seeing from studies, is these one or two little things that are altered.

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Brian D Nielsen: And there's no good studies that show, wow, this was definitely changed, then you really should begin to get skeptical. Because if we're not seeing studies that clearly show benefits.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I'm talking about well-designed studies, plenty of horses, or other animals, whatever it is, and that are blinded and controlled, that are really showing it, and everybody's just, here's a little thing, or this may indicate that it changes.

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Brian D Nielsen: This is when we really need to get skeptical, because people in studies often Want to find a difference.

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Kris Hiney: Right.

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Brian D Nielsen: So they'll take one or two little things that change, and say, yep, it made a difference. When you had

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Brian D Nielsen: 20, 30 things that didn't change, that there weren't treatment differences. So…

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Brian D Nielsen: That's what happens. And I… it's really hard for somebody who doesn't make their living doing this.

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Brian D Nielsen: To fully appreciate how important that is. And I… again, I don't know how to…

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Brian D Nielsen: have the average horse owner figure this out. Because who also are the experts?

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Brian D Nielsen: There's lots of folks that have PhDs that either are for companies or even at universities that provide false information, because they have an agenda for whatever reason, whether it's selling a product, or whether it's…

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Brian D Nielsen: Getting a… Yeah, exactly. Because at a university, getting published

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Brian D Nielsen: Getting grants, that's how you survive.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, no, I get it. So, I guess we're mostly making people despair, I don't know. But I think, you know, from our perspective, and maybe this is just fun for listeners to hear, like, there is nothing more nerve-wracking than waiting for the statistical output, right? And to be like.

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Kris Hiney: I don't know how I'm gonna peek at this, because it is, like…

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Kris Hiney: what if everything you thought, like, if it doesn't work out, then you're, like, you feel a little crushed, right? So, like, it is… it is hard in our shoes to, like, wait to see what the heck happens, so….

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Brian D Nielsen: Well, here's a really fun little lesson, that…

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Brian D Nielsen: I didn't realize it was happening back in that January evening of 1991 or 1992 there in the lab in Kleberg Hall or Kleburg Center, Kleburg Building, the Animal Science Building at Texas A&M. I know Dr. Hiney spent a lot of time of her life there.

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Brian D Nielsen: as did I, and I was analyzing the results from my master's research, and looking at these x-rays of horses, and what's happening with these horses in race training, from when they started training to, you know, before they started entering any speed work, and then when they were racing.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I remember there was this big drop from the start of training until about, oh, 60, 90, I don't recall specifically how many days out, and then it starts to slowly go back up, and I'm like, I've screwed something up.

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Brian D Nielsen: Because… what happens to muscle when you put it in training? It's stronger. What happens to the cardiovascular system? It gets stronger. Why is bone getting weaker? I really thought…

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Brian D Nielsen: I'd mess things up. Analyze some more study or radiographs, x-rays from 90 days before they entered training, and

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Brian D Nielsen: yeah, from that point until they started training, it started to go back up. It was like…

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Brian D Nielsen: The point is, is I saw something really weird that I didn't believe at the time, or I couldn't understand, and we tried to explain

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Brian D Nielsen: Who would have known that that incidental finding would pretty much…

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Brian D Nielsen: provide the map for my career, because as a lot of us have done work in this area, we figured out what was causing it. It was something that we did not know existed.

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Brian D Nielsen: So as long as you do good research, the results, even if they're unexpected, or they're not nearly as exciting as you wanted, they can be really useful, because

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Brian D Nielsen: We may be headed in the wrong direction, and the study that showed, ugh, it really didn't do anything, or gave you totally unexpected results.

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Brian D Nielsen: might be the correct direction.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, try something.

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Brian D Nielsen: Along that line, I have known people who have had unsuspected results.

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Brian D Nielsen: And they never published them, because they assumed it was wrong, and I'm like… I also believe…

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Brian D Nielsen: It's okay to publish something that seems really strange.

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Brian D Nielsen: Now, one, you probably need to come up with an explanation, And two…

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Brian D Nielsen: I think it's okay to say, really didn't expect to see this. We may not know what it is, but it's actually good to get it out there in the literature, because what if we've all been steering in the wrong direction this whole time?

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Brian D Nielsen: But yeah, it's fun. It's like Christmas morning when you start to get your results, it's like, oh, what are we gonna see? And sometimes it's like, oh, I got socks.

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Brian D Nielsen: It's not nearly exciting, it's sure it's useful, but, you know, you want the toys.

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Kris Hiney: No, it is way more fun. So, one of the most fun ones, and I won't say what it was or anything, but… but it was, like, a p-value that came back at a .000, you know, like, so many zeros, and so that's a good thing out there, people. Like, whoa! Like, our little guess was, like, right!

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Brian D Nielsen: Yes! Yes!

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Kris Hiney: Super, super fun, so….

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Brian D Nielsen: And it is a good feeling when you're like, oh my gosh, I did know what I was talking about, this hypothesis we had was correct.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, yeah, science can actually be fun. I say that because Dr. Hiney and I both know it also means many sleepless nights, cold days, hot days, collecting lots of urine, lots of feces, lots of unglamorous things, for those few minutes when you get those really exciting results, and I was like, oh, that was really…

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Brian D Nielsen: Kinda neat.

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Brian D Nielsen: Oh, so, I will also throw out…

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Brian D Nielsen: Another little thing regarding where science fails us.

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Brian D Nielsen: Again, it's fun when you get these treatment differences.

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Brian D Nielsen: And I'm also equally as willing, sometimes I'm very happy, to accept a research paper if I'm a reviewer when they don't find any treatment differences.

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Brian D Nielsen: But there is a lot of studies that do not get published because they had what we refer to as negative results.

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Brian D Nielsen: they didn't find a difference. There are certain countries that are actually very well known for this, that if you don't find positive results, papers don't get published. And what that can do

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Brian D Nielsen: Is create this illusion that, for instance, a treatment or a supplement works, because the only papers that appear

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Brian D Nielsen: in the published research are ones that showed a difference.

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Brian D Nielsen: Whereas, every time somebody does a study and there's no differences found, they often don't publish it because it's not exciting. So, story for you.

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Brian D Nielsen: there was this young prisoner, just went to jail, and he got stuck in a cell with this old guy, he'd been in there for 30 years. The young guy was so frustrated, and he decided he was gonna dig his way out of prison, and so he starts doing it, and he's working on it for about a year. It's his last day, he knows he's gonna get out, he goes out there through this tunnel.

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Brian D Nielsen: And then he comes back, and he's very dejected. The old man goes, let me guess what happened. He goes.

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Brian D Nielsen: You were digging this whole time, and you got out to where that old oak tree is, and you hit the roots, and you couldn't go any farther.

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Brian D Nielsen: And the young guy goes, Yeah!

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Brian D Nielsen: How'd you know that? The old guy goes, I did that same thing 30 years ago. The young guy goes, well, why didn't you tell me? The old guy goes, well, we don't publish negative results.

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Kris Hiney: That's a.

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Brian D Nielsen: It's a nerdy science joke that only a few people would get.

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Brian D Nielsen: But that's why we should publish negative results. They're not as exciting, but it prevents you from digging for many days, trying to get out of jail, or just having to repeat science over and over again when everybody else has done it.

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Brian D Nielsen: But I will also confess, there are some studies that I have done where we got negative results and we haven't published.

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Brian D Nielsen: And part of the issue is.

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Brian D Nielsen: As you know, our days are busy, and full of meetings…

Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, oh, the point is, we are, there's only so many hours in the day, and, you know, before I retire, I'm trying to get all these, studies we've done published. I'm sure there will be some that will not get published.

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Brian D Nielsen: And it's much easier, the ones that, we didn't find anything exciting, to not get published. I'm thinking of one in my head, even the guy who sponsored it. He was very surprised, he's now passed away, but he was really surprised we didn't see any differences.

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Brian D Nielsen: And, I just, like… I'm probably…

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Brian D Nielsen: Given the hours in the day, not going to publish that, because, it would be a challenge, and we kind of, like, …

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Brian D Nielsen: Maybe we'll get around to it someday.

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Brian D Nielsen: And so that's a failure of those of us in science, myself included, where we didn't publish negative results.

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Brian D Nielsen: In my case, it wasn't because I was trying to hide anything, it's just because, well, I need to focus my attention on getting the next grant funded, and writing up the next one, and this wasn't part of a graduate student program, it was just a side project, and

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Brian D Nielsen: But I'm gonna guess that there is a lot of research out there that shows things don't work, that have never been published, and so all you see is this stuff where, oh, we measured 20 things, and we saw this one little thing, and we're gonna pretend that made a difference.

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Brian D Nielsen: But the interesting thing is, if it comes up the other way.

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Brian D Nielsen: Where you've analyzed things, and actually the positive treatment response is for the control?

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Brian D Nielsen: Sometimes it gets buried, and people don't want to highlight, or they acknowledge it, but they don't really make a big deal out of it.

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Brian D Nielsen: And again, it's this thing, we do find false positives sometimes. We should try to not make too big of a deal out of them, but that's what we tend to do, because it's more exciting.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Well, this has been, this has been really fun, really fun for me. Again, hopefully people, when they listen to it, won't be like, what on earth, all this science jibber-jabber?

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Kris Hiney: But it… but I think it is good for people to kind of understand where we're coming from, and how these things actually happen, and why there is so much debate out there, and, like, your confirmational bias, if you're looking to prove something, like, you can drive yourself down that… that rabbit trail.

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Kris Hiney: Pretty, pretty easily. So, like, being self-aware, or am I trying to do that, I think is, is really, really important.

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Brian D Nielsen: So, Dr. Hiney, I'm going to leave your listeners with one tip. For instance, if this is a commercial product or commercial treatment.

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Brian D Nielsen: That somebody's trying to sell you something, Have them send you… The complete, published.

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Brian D Nielsen: In a peer-reviewed journal, studies that demonstrated works.

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Brian D Nielsen: If they won't do that.

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Brian D Nielsen: I would be extremely skeptical. If they can only send you one paper, I would be skeptical. If they can send you multiple ones, and they're properly done with controls and multiple things that are absolutely showing improvement.

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Brian D Nielsen: then it would be worth it. I've often heard people say, well, research is expensive, so, you know, that's why we haven't done the research.

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Brian D Nielsen: But you want the horse owners to buy your stuff.

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Brian D Nielsen: Even though you're not willing to believe it enough to do the research yourself, but you just want them to…

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Brian D Nielsen: Trust me, it'll help your horse. Don't trust somebody. Ask for the published research if they can't do that, and if it's not good research.

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Brian D Nielsen: then I'd probably just recommend saving your money. But it's hard when somebody with a, you know, has initials after their name is telling you this, and, you want to believe it. But that's your only, your only hope.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, good advice! Or contact a trusted nutritionist.

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Brian D Nielsen: There you go, exactly, yeah. It's nutrition, otherwise contact the right person, so… And I gotta throw out, some of the people, I was having this conversation in this last week.

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Brian D Nielsen: Some of the folks out there who you believe are trusted nutritionists.

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Brian D Nielsen: Actually don't have the qualifications, or they have agendas.

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Kris Hiney: We need another podcast?

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Brian D Nielsen: I don't know. All I know is, like, the thing is, it's a small world. We tend to know, but you also can't just go out there and say, oh, stay away from this person.

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Brian D Nielsen: Yeah, it's… it's tough. Anyway….

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Kris Hiney: Well, again, really, really appreciate your time. There may be some follow-up here, and especially if you retire, you'll have way too much free time, so you might be on all the time, so….

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Brian D Nielsen: It's always great to visit with you, pretty much any time works for me.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, all very, very fun. So, we're gonna wrap it up with our normal. This has been another episode of our Tack Box Talk for Stories with a purpose.