Alternative Places to Get Ideas (Also, "In Defense of Food")

There is a decent talk "Big Fat Fiasco" (about an hour long) that explains what happened with nutrition science.

Some of the interesting parts are near the end of part 2/start of part 3:

Specifically senator McGovern dismissing complaints from scientists that there was not enough evidence that fat caused hear disease by saying:

Senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist has of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in.

A little latter the video mentions that at the time 90% of all funding for research on heart disease was provided by the US Government and American Heart Association. Thus once both said that fat causes heart disease it was nearly impossible for scientists who got conflicting reports to get funding.

Edited conclusion to make it clearer:

There are two problems here:

1) The attitude that this area is too important to wait for "every last shred of evidence" and thus we must go with science based upon weak evidence.

Where else have I heard this, which appears to be prevalent in climate science and pandemic medicine today.

2) Nearly all funding provided by a few large organizations that are thus subject to politics and group think.

This appears to be true in most sciences today.

As such, unfortunately, it appears the case nutrition science isn't just an isolated incident.

We have to be careful when thinking about "science" as a single entity; the science that physicists do, the science that biologists, and the science that nutritionists do are each very different.

The other side of that coin is that we should stop treating criticisms and/or attacks on individual scientific theories as attacks on "science".

I mostly agree but am bothered by the fact that from an outside view this sounds like No True Scotsman.

Oppenheimer's maxim is relevant here:

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful, they are found because it was possible to find them.

A general theory of nutrition would be highly useful, but there's no reason to believe modern scientific methodology can produce such a thing.

It's not necessarily the science's fault that nutrition is an easy place for pseudoscience to take root. One might look at immunology, or psychology, and see nearly identical situations. People seem to think that the science of nutrition is uncertain or self-contradictory, mixing the science with the headlines.

Although note that academic research here isn't the same as the industry in general. The journals are probably less influenced by the industry than trials of pharmaceuticals.

I haven't read the book either but am wondering how on earth he comes up with 'mostly plants' given that the three harmful products just mentioned:

margarine, wheat, sugar

are all plant products.

Especially looking at margarine, which is a plant product whose substitution for animal products (butter and lard) turned out to have been a bad idea.

I am interested in what you have to say about the "mostly plants" details. That part syncs up with pretty much everything I've otherwise heard.

(Hint: Avoid "behind".)

runs off to test...

Not websites, but friends and colleges.

I have basically two friends that I can talk to about things like this (I have other friends who are smart but who aren't terribly interested in extensive, serious discussions). One of them is a fundamentalist Christian, so there's a lot of disagreement, but the points of disagreement essentially boil down to completely different axioms that don't leave much room for knowledge diffusion. In everything that ISN'T directly impacted by his religious beliefs, he pretty much either agrees with me, or disagreements between us stem from one/both of us being unaware of the facts, and as soon as we've done some research, we arrive at the same conclusions.

My other friend mostly ends up agreeing with me (or I with her) about things when it what actions should actually be taken. But oddly enough her thought process is completely different. She is completely frustrated with abstract hypothetical thought experiments, she doesn't feel any need to have a moral system based on central axioms or even any dedicated examinations of what is right and why. So far as I can tell her morals are loosely based on "People have certain rights that are just inherent to the world," and those rights are mostly unrelated and arbitrary. I do think that when you're starting from a position of "maximize everyone's preferences" you end up quickly arriving at "it's beneficial to act as if people have certain inalienable rights", and those rights are, for the most part, the same ones she believes in.

But notable exceptions occur, and it's frustrating to me that so many elements of her morality are axiomatic and non-negotiable. For example, "right to privacy" is a big deal to her. I mostly agree with that. But a major point of disagreement is whether it's reasonable for the government to have a database of fingerprints that are taken at birth. I don't consider fingerprints "private." You leave them everywhere. I have no close, intimate relationship with my fingerprints.

So for me, the question is "what is the probability that the government turns into a totalitarian state such that I'd actually be afraid of them having access to the general population's fingerprints." I know that we disagree strongly on what that probability, but even if we didn't she opposes it on principle.

Not sure there is any lesson in those two anecdotes. Just thought it was interesting and somewhat relevant.