[Hopeful]

Lisa,

The abstract was of a "meta analysis," which is not a single study, but a comprehensive review of many studies, wherein the results are reviewed together in order to arrive at a result. The authors stated:

"Published literature evaluating relationships between breast cancer risk and dietary fat, and exercise was systematically reviewed up to May of 2010. Descriptive data, estimates of relative risk and 95% confidence interval (CI) were extracted from relative studies, sorted according to inclusion criteria and analyzed using the random effects model of DerSimonian and Laird."

I will confess that I am not a statistics expert, and not at all familiar with the random effects model of DerSimonian and Laird, referenced in the abstract. My point being that this is not the same as a single study, so there will not be a single method or a single experiment, as your post posits. This is a distillation of many papers written on many different studies and experiments, all very different from each other. As such, the methodology has its own inherent shortcomings.

In general, I enjoy reading through the abstracts and posters that are presented at medical conferences, and posting those that I think may have interest or relevance to the audience that reads this message board. I don't necessarily agree with everything that is contained in the abstracts and articles I post, but I try to make sure that we all get the same information that our medical professionals are getting, to be able to ask them questions about our health and the care that we get, and to be our own advocates. I very much appreciate the fact that you took the time to read what I posted and comment on it.

Jackie, thank you for adding your research to the thread. Not all of the abstracts that are presented at these conferences turn into research papers, which is why you were not able to locate one. I do appreciate that you took the time to look for one.

Regards,

Hopeful