Shifting Sands: Flimsy Food Findings examines how irreproducible science affects select areas of government policy and regulation governed by different federal agencies. This second report focuses on Food Frequency Questionnaire and irreproducible research in the field of nutritional epidemiology, which informs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) policies and regulations. The report finds compelling circumstantial evidence that the nutritional epidemiology literature—specifically the literature that relies on Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs)—has been affected by statistical practices that have rendered the underlying research untrustworthy.
