Larvatus Prodeo

Fairfax has a piece on myths about obesity that is sensible and properly science-based, and which they are promoting in the banner area of the front page? Maybe there’s something to all this approaching-2012-apocalypso after all.

The layout is better in the dead-tree edition, where the SMH felt no need to illustrate it with a headless torso as they have done in the web version (at least it’s not an OMGDeathFatz headless torso this time).

Gary Egger and Sam Egger originally published a version of this article in Australian Family Physician, and the gist is this:

We assessed the best available evidence on weight loss and maintenance and used this to compile a 20-statement survey – with true or false responses – which we then gave to two groups of people: 173 GPs and 129 truck drivers and tradesmen.

We found doctors were almost as confused as truckies and tradies. The doctors disagreed with most of the supporting evidence on 40 per cent of our questions, the others on 49 per cent.

Another failing of the web edition is that it does not reproduce the table of results for the survey which is shown in the dead-tree edition. Here’s the data in the table seen in the dead-tree version reproduced manually using a spreadsheet:
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