Scientific studies and the "best exercise"

As a former math/science type, I certainly don't discount the value of empirical, scientific research. At the same time, I think it's useful to recognize the limits of such research, at least in the short run, before the usual process of science, which is to say, attempted replication/falsification of the initial study occurs enough that the results are considered not to be a fluke, and to reflect careful elimination of other possible explanations.

This is often true in the realm of exercise and health-related studies, where press releases trumpet the latest surprising finding, and which the mass media accepts uncritically for all that the study could be worth, as opposed to the least that it can be said to confirm.

For example, last week, the British paper The Telegraph reported that, per a new study, "weight training is better for your waistline than running." Note the specificity of the claim: it's not that weight training is better at producing weight loss, but at slimming the waist. Now, let's take a look at the study's press release and abstract:

Weights and cardio

Although I consider myself first and foremost a runner as far as physical activity goes, I don't neglect resistance training. To be sure, I don't obsess about it the way I do about running, and I don't read the weightlifting equivalent of Running Times Magazine or the book equivalent of the Daniels Running Formula. But I do go through a routine of shoulder and bench presses, and upright and one-armed rows, 2-3 times a week with a set of dumbbells at home. And squats and deadlifts when I remember.

The question of how to integrate weightlifting into a running routine is one that I've wondered about, though without much fretting. Apparently, though, it's a common question - does weightlifting inhibit running and vice versa? For the non-elite trainer, it doesn't seem to matter what order you do them, and they don't seem to interfere with each other (except, I suppose, to the extent that being exhausted by one makes it harder to train fully on the other):

“We saw no indications of interference,” said Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who oversaw the study.

Perhaps most telling, the order of the exercises in these studies was immaterial. In the 2014 study, the men rode and then lifted; in Dr. Phillips’s study, they lifted and then rode. Muscles, it seems, “can’t tell the difference,” Dr. Phillips said.

Okay, then, that's good to know.