Since we know that there are such big difference in muscle growth among population how can we trust results of study checking different training parameters on different groups of people?

Well, these studies often compare the mean difference of the two randomized groups.. There might be non-responders in both groups, hopefully the same amount due to randomization.
The ideal would be to test the different methods on the same people, but that’s impossible, so we have to do it with two different groups and just hope that the randomization placed an equal amount of genetic potential in each group.

Karky - 02 June 2010 11:34 AM

Well, these studies often compare the mean difference of the two randomized groups.. There might be non-responders in both groups, hopefully the same amount due to randomization.
The ideal would be to test the different methods on the same people, but that’s impossible, so we have to do it with two different groups and just hope that the randomization placed an equal amount of genetic potential in each group.

I see what do you mean. I hope also that they drops the biggest and smallest results
But we never can be sure especially if groups are small

Yeah. If groups are small the chance of the randomization “succeeding” is less.
Research should really include an appendix with tables about the progress of every person in the study. That way you could see if there are any extremes (though researchers often exclude these “outers” from their analyses)

Just wanted to say that I will be going out of the country for a few weeks. So I won’t be posting as often, at least for the next few days.

Everyone be good ok.

As Karky said, good researchers and studies published in good journals, write about outliers. Studies published in good journals have to go though a peer review where they get critiqued and suggest changes.

They also do a process called matching if they think the they think there are too many differences,like differences in body weight. Or a within subject design.

My point was that looking at the results of one or two people can easily mislead you.  The group also did a diet comparison and found no difference in diet habits for all the responders.

I can’t get access to the full text of the diet study. Can you? What was the variation in protein intake among the subjects? Was the intake pretty much the same or did it differ a lot between the subjects?