Concerns regarding “Association between intelligence quotient and obesity in England” and unjustifiable harm to people in bigger bodies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We write to express our concern about a paper you recently published in your newly established journal.The paper examines the association of a non-modifiable measure, IQ, and its relationship to adult body mass index (BMI).We are academics, health professionals, health psychologists and lay experts in weight stigma and discrimination, public health, patient advocacy and risk communication.We believe the contents of this paper are likely to cause unjustifiable harm to people in bigger bodies, some of whom may not be in a position to raise their concerns with the authors or yourselves.We further assert that there are numerous ethical and methodological issues that should be brought to your attention, which limit the applicability of the results.This paper goes against the stated aims and the scope of your journal.First, your journal states that you "advocate the principles of sound science publishing" and that "if the science is reliable and sound, you will publish."Yet this paper suffers a number of methodological flaws and, in particular, breaches two ethical principles, namely, beneficence and justice that significantly detract from the soundness of the science.As we demonstrate below, on this occasion your journal has not upheld good scientific principles.Second, you state that your journal "examines clinical and scientific aspects of lifestyle medicine and its incorporation into clinical practice."This suggests that you are interested in research that identifies potentially modifiable risk factors that might be addressed in clinical practice in a way that is beneficial to people.IQ is neither a "lifestyle" choice nor a modifiable variable (as noted by the authors themselves).IQ is a highly heritable trait, 1 which can be influenced by environmental factors, 2 most of which are unmodifiable from an individual perspective.We outline our remaining concerns below, along with the scientific evidence that supports them.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.145 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.010 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".