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• Inconsistent referencing and underlying conclusion issues
  Patrick Handcock
  Published on: 26 October 2018

• Published on: 26 October 2018

  Inconsistent referencing and underlying conclusion issues

  • Patrick Handcock, Researcher St Andrews Community Hospital, UK

  If it's not too late. The authors may wish to correct their referencing throughout the paper. I noticed that the 3rd paragraph in the Introduction provides references that do not support the statements made. e.g. the Biswas et al paper did NOT assess the impact of PROLONGED sitting. Evidence on bouts of sitting is still very unclear, and none of these interventions have shown is has a meaningful impact.

  It is also unclear how the authors can make their statement about 30 min/day being “likely to be clinically meaningful” – when it probably depends on what the sitting was replaced with (i.e. with standing vs. movement, etc) and the isotemporal substitution paper that is cited to support this assertion is based on a ‘theoretical’ shift of sitting to light activity from a cross sectional study (with risk of reverse causation). This seems to be selling a story that really isn't there.

  A more reasoned conclusion might be that VERY SMALL reductions in TOTAL sitting per day seem possible (a drop in the bucket?) with interventions that require significant resources (notably, not too dissimilar to PA interventions), but whether or not such shifts in sitting per se would make any meaningful difference for health outcomes/biomarkers remains very unclear. Not much good if there is no efficacy for outcomes. The reducing sitting story comes across as more of an hypothesis and 'feel good' story, but the evidence upon which it is based (in terms of effic...

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  If it's not too late. The authors may wish to correct their referencing throughout the paper. I noticed that the 3rd paragraph in the Introduction provides references that do not support the statements made. e.g. the Biswas et al paper did NOT assess the impact of PROLONGED sitting. Evidence on bouts of sitting is still very unclear, and none of these interventions have shown is has a meaningful impact.

  It is also unclear how the authors can make their statement about 30 min/day being “likely to be clinically meaningful” – when it probably depends on what the sitting was replaced with (i.e. with standing vs. movement, etc) and the isotemporal substitution paper that is cited to support this assertion is based on a ‘theoretical’ shift of sitting to light activity from a cross sectional study (with risk of reverse causation). This seems to be selling a story that really isn't there.

  A more reasoned conclusion might be that VERY SMALL reductions in TOTAL sitting per day seem possible (a drop in the bucket?) with interventions that require significant resources (notably, not too dissimilar to PA interventions), but whether or not such shifts in sitting per se would make any meaningful difference for health outcomes/biomarkers remains very unclear. Not much good if there is no efficacy for outcomes. The reducing sitting story comes across as more of an hypothesis and 'feel good' story, but the evidence upon which it is based (in terms of efficacy) for health outcomes remains VERY shaky indeed (or mostly null) at present. More critical probing is needed, particularly if it begins to detract from messages around physical activity per se - which probably make any purported effects of sitting go away pretty quickly (particularly when measured objectively, unlike the Ekelund paper). There is already ample evidence that physical inactivity is bad for health, etc. Much of the research on sitting is simply a good sales exercise (good for getting grants) and is splitting hairs, when the goal is really just to get people to move more. We'd really welcome more critical and reflective discussion on this as a whole.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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