Science of Eating Disorders (SEDs) is dedicated to making peer-reviewed eating disorder research accessible to the public and ending the myths that surround eating disorders and those affected by them.
The goal of SEDs is more than just a one-way dissemination of knowledge; it is also to foster an interaction between the writers and the readers. The idea is to foster meaningful conversations and ultimately enrich the content of the website.
At the present time, the specific goals of SEDs include:
- provide accurate and easy to understand critical analysis of the findings in eating disorder research
- provide first-person adult perspectives on the experience of struggling with and recovering from an eating disorder in the context of the research discussed
- provide a platform for contributors to write about peer-reviewed literature of interest to them
- enable readers to provide meaningful feedback, ask questions or seek clarification, share their own experiences
- compile and organize resources from the web (lectures, articles) about the science of eating disorders or generally good articles about eating disorders; compile resources about biology and psychology pertinent to eating disorders
Along with what SEDs is about, it is also important to state what you WILL NOT find:
- endorsement or promotion of any specific treatment, a particular way to recover, or what recovery means:
- SEDs writers will critically analyse treatment studies because it is important to know what doesn’t work, what is more likely to work and for what subset of patients (i.e., evidence-based medicine), but no study will ever show 100% efficacy and no treatment will work for everyone. Treatment studies can’t look in-depth into family dynamics, relationships, friendships, life history and circumstances, and so on. SEDs is about critical and thoughtful translation and dissemination of research findings. What SEDs bloggers will discount is pseudoscience that doesn’t work because it can’t work given the laws of physics and chemistry: homeopathy, reflexology, faith healing and so on..
- discounting ideas/hypotheses because they have yet to be empirically supported:
- Just because it hasn’t been tested doesn’t mean it is invalid, and just because someone didn’t find grant money to fund a particular study doesn’t mean it is untenable. All SEDs bloggers have personal experiences with eating disorders and naturally, we have lots of ideas and hypotheses based on personal experiences. Conversely, SEDs won’t blindly accept something as fact just because it is published: peer-review is good but it is not perfect, not even close. And scientific research is a process, not a bunch of facts.
- discounting findings that don’t support our biases or what we wish to be true:
- Never, ever, ever. Indeed, our goal is the exact opposite: to identify and evaluate inconsistent and contradictory evidence (see diagnostic crossover: how does one square the notion that anorexics and bulimics have different personality types if there’s so much diagnostic crossover?). Science does not and cannot move forward without this.
Please keep in mind that I try to give as much freedom as possible to contributors to write about whatever interests them. That means that we don’t all necessary agree; there is no joint agenda. My primary reason for wanting blog contributors is to broaden the content and vary the writing styles. And perhaps more importantly, to negate the individual biases we all bring to the table. What we share in common is our desire to understand, summarize, and disseminate peer-reviewed eating disorder literature.
A bit on why do this?
I want to do this because I like science, I really enjoy science writing, and I’m horrified at the quality of journalism in many (though not all) media outlets with regard to eating disorders and science more broadly. I am inspired by blogs on ResearchBlogging.org and ScienceSeeker.org. I wanted to blog about peer-reviewed research, and I decided I felt the most comfortable writing about eating disorders, which is not surprising, given my education and personal experience.
Disclaimer
I am not doing research in the field of eating disorders, human genetics, brain imaging (unless you count worm brain imaging), or indeed most of what I hope to write about. I study neuronal development and neural circuitry in C. elegans. That means I’ll probably get stuff wrong (or just not quite right). While I do have a degree in neuroscience and have taken many courses in cellular, molecular, and behavioural neuroscience, as well as some molecular biology and genetics, I may misinterpret results, or miss obvious flaws in the methodology, for example.
But here’s the great part: you can comment or email to tell me about it! In fact, please do! Especially if you happen to be a grad student studying eating disorders or using the methods I mention, an eating disorder expert, or better yet co-author of the paper. I’d love to correct myself in the post and make a note about the correction in the following one. That’s the beauty of blogging. I know some things about neurobiology, genetics and eating disorders, and I’d like to share that knowledge with others who may be interested, because I have the desire and the time, but many people know way more about these topics than I do, and I’d love it if they shared their knowledge with me.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Tetyana
Science of Eating Disorders by Tetyana Pekar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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