[davidparks21]

I think this is a fair point. I see other comments pointing out the value in this as exploratory research. There's some middle ground here though. I think studies like would serve the lay reader and non-scientific community by including a disclaimer sentence in the abstract about not extrapolating conclusions from this. Their opening sentence does the opposite, "Soybean oil consumption has increased greatly in the past half-century", which seems to set up the reader to think about the impact to humans. This paper is written by scientists, for scientists, but the scientific community as a whole would be well advised to realize that lay readers and lay press will skim these articles, in particular the abstract, for the key takeaways.

[xracy]

If you want something to be written by scientists for scientists, you have to make it inaccessible to non-scientists. Otherwise people are going to take it as the gospel truth. And honestly, they should put up major guard rails on any article interpreting a scientific study. It's too easy to miss things that other people will take to heart.

As a lay-person, when I come to this article, I have no idea of the information in the study. Which is why the veneer of a scientific study on this makes it actively worse for me to trust. And then if I ever find out the study is wrong, I trust science less, because I put my bets on a finding that was basically a coin-flip conclusion.

Now, I'm not inclined to trust the scientific process less because it finds something is wrong, but I also don't think I'm the average internet person.

[datavirtue]

I feel like they are leading so that very thing happens. Noteriety and buzz are the goals.

[antattack]

The article also states: "A caveat for readers concerned about their most recent meal is that this study was conducted on mice, and mouse studies do not always translate to the same results in humans."