that's a nice review, too bad he didn't use the ResearchBlogging tags :( - Christina Pikas

That was my first thought as well and I am going to ask him to do it and thus be eligible for the Pick Of The Month.... - Bora Zivkovic

If the mean weight of the 12 KWW according to the table was around 83kg. This means that they burned around 12*83 kcal (996 kcal) in a week. This is the amount I burn when I go running for about 80 minutes (at least according to my running watch). So is this really surprising that this rather low amount of burned calories didn't translate into more weight loss ? - Daniel Jurczak

I really don't understand why people find it so important to use the ResearchBlogging icon. I never put it on my own blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Is it not obvious when a blog post supports its statements with proper sources? Why should I put an icon from someone else on my blog posts to point out the obvious? - Lars Juhl Jensen

I agree with Daniel, the study might not represent the ppl who actually do something during their 200min/week workout. If they were to run 7mph for 30min a day they would burn 3000+kcal. - marcin

@Lars - it's not (only, just, really) so we trust you more, it's so we can find you more easily! The point is to list these things together so that a journalist or patient or teacher or random lay person can find them - Christina Pikas

Correct - not just that you get more traffic, but that traffic is of high quality: people who are actively looking for high-quality blogging. The aggreggator is highly regarded and valued by the non-blogging community as a portal into high quality blogging. For example, I give my monthly Blog Of The Month award at PLoS ONE only to posts aggregated at ResearchBlogging.org. - Bora Zivkovic

I guess what I have against ResearchBlogging is that I feel it will highlight the least important posts on my blog. I'm allowed to slap the icon on a post where I write a commentary on some already published research, but when I do what I think is real research blogging - namely to blog primary research results before they are published elsewhere - then I'm not allowed to put the icon on the post. - Lars Juhl Jensen

highlighting certain posts will also bring more attention to your other posts, in my experience. I'm glad you mention this, because I've not heard this complaint before. Your primary research posts are probably more relevant for those in your research area whereas your ones on published research might have a wider appeal and could benefit from wider attention maybe? - Christina Pikas

Whereas any traffic to my blog will obviously tend to bring in a few extra hits to other posts (although not many in my experience), I don't think that my commentaries are aimed at a broader readership than my other posts. I generally blog about science for scientists in the same field - my aim is not to do outreach and try to make papers accessible to a broader public. Maybe that simply places me outside the scope of ResearchBlogging? - Lars Juhl Jensen

I don't find myself using the #researchblogging service either... I like the idea, but it is just too much work - Egon Willighagen

Another problem I have is that I am not sure which of my posts live up to the guidelines of ResearchBlogging. Most of my posts related to peer-reviewed papers present also my own additional analyses of the primary data published in the paper I discuss. The posts are thus a mix of peer-reviewed and non-reviewed results. It is not clear to me if I would even be allowed to put the icon on them, so I decided to not bother with it. - Lars Juhl Jensen

sounds like the right choice for you, so no reason to question it. - Christina Pikas

Deepak said it better than I: "it’s equating *serious* with peer review that I have a problem with" (http://mndoci.com/blog...) - Lars Juhl Jensen

Hi folks -- Excellent debate going on here. A couple points. First, you should realize that our current requirement of discussing peer-reviewed work is just a first step. We're working on a way to aggregate posts about conference presentations, and posts on ongoing research shouldn't be far behind. It's true that "serious" <> "peer-reviewed," but discussions referencing peer-reviewed literature are very likely to be serious, so this is an easy first pass at sorting the chaff from the wheat. - Dave Munger

Second, our interface has gotten much easier to use. If the last time you tried the site was more than two months ago, you should definitely give it another shot. - Dave Munger

The important thing is that you have the correct markup in the page, not that you're displaying some icon. Anyone can display that image and not be aggregated by your site. Dave, that's why we've been stressing, even before the site was running, that it's not about the icon, but the markup. - Mr. Gunn

To return to the topic at hand, however, I think the study is obviously flawed and in fact quite irresponsible to be making such a claim. The major fuck-up, and I mean that literally, was allowing the exercising group to eat more. Still, they lost a full inch of abdominal fat, which isn't useless. Again, this is a classic example of what not to do when reporting scientific results. They must have known the media would pick up on this and relate only the headline and not the subtleties. - Mr. Gunn

The topic is now the homepage Buzz on scienceblogs.com - Bora Zivkovic

Mr. Gunn, I agree -- in fact you don't have to display the icon, just use the markup and the post will be aggregated. And, as we've talked about on twitter, it's in COinS (if not on our site, at least on the original blog post) - Dave Munger

At risk of dragging this back on topic - Mr. Gunn, you should leave a comment with your observations on the paper. Unlike this FF thread, comments on our site won't be 'acquired' and will thus form a permanent part of the record. :) - Peter Binfield from iPhone

Seriously, Peter, if someone came along and offered $50M, comments on your site would be acquired, as well, no? I'll leave a comment anyways, along the line of "the whole freaking thing is invalid because they let the heavy exercisers eat more!" - Mr. Gunn

Actually I seriously doubt it. Did you meet our Founders? I don't think they started PLoS to make a buck... What I do know is that Mission Driven Not For Profit organizations rarely sell up. - Peter Binfield

Once science communication has emancipated from the paper era, not even ONE journal may be necessary. So even if PLoS ONE were given $50M to shut down, there are lots of things you could do with that money to fulfill your mission of providing open access to research results. - Daniel Mietchen

@Mr Gunn: I wouldn't call the study flawed, just the ridiculous media interpretations. It is important to not restrict the food intake in a study like this because the point is to see whether according to recommendations, simply exercising will induce weight loss. And the results corroborate other research; if you just tell people to exercise they will compensate or overcompensate energy consumption. However, an important thing that media articles aren't reporting is the still beneficial effects of exercise on metabolic biomarkers; even without weight loss, someone can increase health status with exercise. Another point I want to bring up is that this does not necessarily apply to all exercise. In studies that look at longer distance endurance activities (casual or competitive), they often find that in general subject they are in a negative energy balance, because they can't seem to consume enough total calories, or they have too low of a fat intake (adding more fat to the diet consistently increases total energy intake), or for underreporting of food intake or inaccurate energy expenditure equations, or a combination... need more research still. It is clear though that the amount of exercise may complicate the matter a bit more. - Colby