Former CDC Scientist and Stanford Epidemiologist Discusses Controversial Obesity Article

Dr. Katherine Flegal discusses the widespread controversy surrounding her article on mortality associated with obese and overweight people. At the time of her research, a similar investigation showing different findings was being carried out by a separate research group that led to a publication by Mokdad et al. in JAMA. The Mokdad et al. paper included a host of flaws in data selection and statistical methods, but the contrasting views led to Dr. Flegal’s paper being attacked from numerous angles, beyond the normal channels used to voice scientific disagreement.

“We found that obesity was indeed associated with excess deaths relative to normal weight, although our estimate of less than 5% of deaths was considerably lower than the 2004 Mokdad et al. estimate of over 15%. CDC accepted our results for obesity as the better estimate a month after our article was published. We also found that overweight was associated with slightly but significantly fewer deaths than normal weight.” Read the article here.

(Source: Katherine Flegal, Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 6/15/21)