Who was doing all of the exercise?

The BBC posted a story on a study on how much exercise younger children were getting.  The problem was that many of the kids who participated actually tricked the researchers.  They fooled them by attaching their pedometers to their pet dogs, which greatly inflated their scores.  This was found out when obese children were not losing any weight despite the high numbers of steps recorded on their pedometers.

This is a great example of why it can be so difficult to do research.  Performance related research, outside of a laboratory setting, involves careful checks and balances.  In this case, the researcher’s attempted to account for the use of dogs but despite this it still changes the outcome of the data.

As a reader of various research studies, this situation exemplifies the importance of not only analyzing the results of a study but also the methodology.  Understanding how the research was done provides many insights to what the results are saying before you read the discussion.  Take care with what you are reading and if you are doing research be extra careful with how you are doing it.