Hi Doug
@Osidge You give in too easily. I think it is good to query what those in the upper echelons in government and the NHS base their decisions on since it (a) influences the lives of a great many people (b) costs a lot of other people a great deal of money in taxes, and(c) costs a lot of money that maybe would be better spent in other ways
I felt the Ascot report was not quite right, and seemed to draw conclusions that were not supported by the evidence, and that the trial was funded by one of the protagonists so there seemed to be a possible query over independence. I expressed some concern over the methodology used in the trial that may have contaminated results. Now maybe my questions can be answered satisfactorily and we have nothing to worry about, So far noone has come back at me, but you have indicated you will contact the ASCOT team for a response, which I welcome, I mean I was working on the fly after a quick read so may be wrong. It just did not seem to stack up
The second report you introduced me to is a different kettle of fish (with added Omega 3?). It seems to have been more professionally done, and has not flagged up any warning signs so far. Yes, there appears to be a query over the funding, and the independance of the chairman, but so far that is heresay, and in any case should not have influenced the research. The claims are more realistic too, and because it is a meta study there is less chance of outside interference. The methodology does seem to be more robust, although as I stated previously I have concerns about how they normalised between the different trials, and also the weighting they applied to each set of results. I do like the Blobbograms in the 2012 report though and I am currently cross checking to make sure the claims being made are properly interpreted from the data.