world around us.
The march of scientific
and technological progress over the past
300 years should be evidence enough
that, in spite of its flaws, the scientific
process is ultimately effective.
With that in mind, here are some
things to look out for when reading re-
search that will help you judge the like-
lihood that the findings of an individual
paper are accurate.
Biological Plausibility
One problem in our field is that we of-
ten rush to applied research before do-
ing mechanistic research. In a field like
medicine, the molecular effects of a drug
are generally thoroughly researched be-
fore testing the efficacy of that drug in
animals or humans. In exercise science,
we often investigate “does this work” be-
fore investigating “mechanistically, why
should we expect that this would work?”
However, when there are mechanis-
tic studies, you can compare theory and
outcome to see if results of a study “make
sense.” For example, we know that be-
ta-alanine increases muscle carnosine
levels, and we know that carnosine is an
important biological buffer. Thus, before
running any experiments, we’d expect
that beta-alanine would boost perfor-
mance in situations when metabolic ac-
idosis would limit performance, but not
in situations when metabolic acidosis
isn’t likely to limit performance. When
we compare theory to outcomes, that’s
IF THE RESULTS OF A STUDY
ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE OF
PREVIOUS STUDIES, YOU CAN
HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE IN
THE RESULTS. HOWEVER, IF
A STUDY REPORTS RESULTS
THAT ARE MARKEDLY
DIFFERENT FROM SIMILAR
RESEARCH, IT DESERVES
MORE SKEPTICISM.
exactly what we see: For short-duration
and long-duration performance (which
likely aren’t limited by metabolic acido-
sis), beta-alanine doesn’t seem to have
much of an effect, while it does seem
to improve moderate-duration perfor-
mance (9). If a new study finds that be-
ta-alanine improves 800m run times,
we know that’s a plausible and expected
outcome, since 800m running is at least
partially limited by metabolic acidosis.
However, if a new study finds that acute
beta-alanine supplementation increases
1RM deadlift strength, we’d have every
right to be skeptical, as there’s no clear
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