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[enki23]

38. That study (published in 2010, btw) is a complete mess

Short term (eight week) study: 4 treatment groups
1. chow only
2. chow plus 12hr access to sucrose solution
3. chow plus 12hr access to HFCS solution
4. chow plus 24hr access to HFCS soolution

Groups 1,2 and 4 were statistically indistinguishable. Having 24 hour access to HFCS had no statistically significant effect on weight gain in the rats. Group 3, however, appeared to have a statistically significant weight gain.

Problems:
*What possible mechanism is there to explain why the 12hr access to HFCS caused significantly increased weight gain that would not affect the group with 24hr access?

*The study could just as easily be read as "24 hour access to HFCS has NO EFFECT on weight gain in rats in an 8 week study.

*The result for group 3 is, in fact, *not* statistically significant when a reasonable multiple comparisons correction is applied. Stats 101 may not cover this, but stats 102 sure as hell should.
http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=19

Taken together, these problems give absolutely no valid, evidence-based reason to attribute the 12hr HFCS groups weight value as due to anything but chance.

Long term/chronic (six month) rodent study: 2 treatment groups.
1. chow only
2. chow plus HFCS solution

The group with access to the HFCS solution gained significantly more weight than the chow only group. For this study, there are no multiple-comparisons problems to deal with. They really did gain more weight.

Problems:
*There was absolutely no sucrose solution control. Why? Because, according to the researchers, the *first* study already showed that HFCS was the only group that showed a significant weight gain at eight weeks.
The entire premise of leaving out the sucrose control is based on a completely erroneous assumption from the first study. This was completely wrong, and compounded by the fact that studies conducted elsewhere have (inconveniently, for the alarmists) found no difference between HFCS and sucrose with respect to weight gain.

As it was conducted, all this study proves is that a rats with six month access to a sugar solution will gain more weight than rats with no sugar solution access

Actual conclusions:

Eight-week study
1.Over an eight week period, there is no statistically significant difference in weight gain in rats exposed to the various treatments of sucrose and HFCS solution, relative to each other or relative to rats eating chow only.
2. Eight weeks is probably too short to adequately measure effects of sucrose and HFCS on weight gain in rats, under these conditions.

Six-month study
1. Rats that have access to sugar water will gain more weight, over a six-month period, than rats without access to sugar water.
2. That's it. Nothing about HFCS vs sucrose vs other calorie sources. Nada. Zip. Zilch. This was a useless study.

EDIT:
I found they also conducted a seven-month study with similar treatment groups to the eight-week study. In it, they found that 24hr access to HFCS led to slightly more weight gain than 12hr access to HFCS, or 12hr access to sucrose (there was no 24hr access to sucrose group!).

Problems:
*No 24hr sucrose access group to compare to.
*Opposite results from the first study.
*Once again, the results go up in smoke when you apply a multiple-comparisons correction.

Conclusion: Yeah. Nothing there. This is a useful conclusion. It's just not the one they wanted, apparently. I honestly don't know why they didn't just draw the "no difference" conclusion which is strongly justified by their results. I have no problem, however, understanding that certain science-ignorant sectors of the public would latch onto these contradictory, uncontrolled false positives regardless. Sadly enough.