People lie about their health related behaviors: Truth in barcodes
Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 12:00
in Psychology & Sociology
People lie about their health related behaviors. It’s a problem that has long bedeviled health research on issues ranging from diet to exercise to smoking. And it’s not just that we have faulty memories. Many of us stretch the truth to make ourselves seem more virtuous in the eyes of the person in the white coat. That makes drawing conclusions about behaviors that affect health from self-reported records tricky.