Irresponsible reporting on "poop doping" from the Washington Post

Went on a bit of a Twitter tirade last night. See more below[View the story "Irresponsible reporting on "poop doping" from The Washington Post #microbiomania" on Storify]The Washington Post story, by Marissa Payne, requires a log in but the article is now in other papers that are free onlineincluding the Denver Post here.It is just really bad reporting because the claims of one scientist are presented as facts without any scrutiny and these claims need lots of scrutiny.Recently this story was covered in Bicycling Magazine and Igave them an "overselling the microbiome" award for their reporting on it. I guess I am pretty surprised that the Washington Post doubled down on some of the claims.Here is some commentary on just some of what is wrong with the Post article."Peterson, herself a pro endurance mountain biker, has discovered that the most elite athletes in the sport have a certain microbiome living in their intestines that allow them to perform better"No evidence has been presented anywhere that these microbes "allow them to perform better". At best, there may be evidence that elite athletes in this case have different microbes.  That as far as I know has not been presented for the case here. Seems possible. But this of course does not mean that those microbes they have allow for better performance. There could be dozens of reasons why such athletes have differences in their micro biomes (e.g., diet, exercise, interactions all effect the micro...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Microbiology Authors: Source Type: blogs