O.k., I just couldn't let this one slide. I've seen the results of this study in JAMA Pediatrics discussed in a variety of news outlets with the claim that researchers have found a link between mothers drinking artificially sweetened beverages and the subsequent weight of their infants.
I'm going to be harsh here, but this sort of study represents everything wrong with a big chunk of the nutritional and epidemiology studies that are published and how they're covered by the media.
First, what did the authors do? They looked at the weight of babies one year after birth and looked at how those baby weights correlated with whether (and how much) Coke and Diet Coke the mom drank, as indicated in a survey, during pregnancy.
The headline result is that moms who drank artificially sweetened beverages every day in pregnancy had slightly larger babies, on average, a year later than the babies from moms who didn't drink any artificially sweetened beverages at all. Before I get to the fundamental problem with this result, it is useful to look at a few more results contained in the same study which might give us pause.
- Mom's drinking sugar sweetened beverages (in any amount) had no effect on infants' later body weights. So drinking a lot of sugar didn't affect babys' outcomes at all but drinking artificial sweeteners did?
- The researchers only found an effect for moms who drank artificially sweetened beverages every day. Compared to moms who never drink them, those who drink diet sodas less than once a week actually had lighter babies! (though the result isn't statistically significant). Also, moms drinking artificially sweetened beverages 2-6 times per week had roughly the same weight babies as moms who never drank artificially sweetened beverages. In short, there is no evidence of a dose-response relationship that one would expect to find if there was a causal relationship at play.
And, that's the big issue here: causality. The researchers have found a single statistically significant correlation in one of six comparisons they made (three levels of drinking compared to none for sugar sweetened beverages and for artificially sweetened beverages). But, as the researchers themselves admit, this is NOT a casual link (somehow that didn't prevent the NYT editors from using the word "link" in the title of their story).
Causality is what we want to know. An expecting mother wants to know: if I stop drinking Diet Coke every day will that lower the weight of my baby? That's a very different question than what the researchers actually answered: are the types of moms who drink Diet Coke every day different from moms who never drink Diet Coke in a whole host of ways, including how much their infants weigh?
Why might this finding be only a correlation and not causation? There are a bunch of possible reasons. For example, moms who expect their future children might have weight problems may choose to drink diet instead of regular. If so, the the moms drinking diet have selected themselves into a group that is already likely to have heavy children. Another possible explanation: moms who never drink Diet Cokes may be more health conscious overall. This is an attitude that is likely to carry over to how they feed and raise their children which will affect their weight in ways that has nothing to do with artificially sweetened beverages.
Fortunately economics (at least applied microeconomics) has undergone a bit of credibility revolution. If you attend a research seminar in virtually any economist department these days, you're almost certain to hear questions like, "what is your identification strategy?" or "how did you deal with endogeneity or selection?" In short, the question is: how do we know the effects you're reporting are causal effects and not just correlations.
Its high time for a credibility revolution in nutrition and epidemiology.