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Here's a review of Taubes' book by George Bray: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bray-review-of-gcbc.pdf http://www.proteinpower.co

by glymor 17y ago

Here's a review of Taubes' book by George Bray: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bray-review-of-gcbc.pdf http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/0... in case you do want someone dissing it for you. Also I don't think we should "make up [our] own mind" the biology on this is way beyond the layman. Hacker News has a pervasive conceit that somehow as programmers we can see the obvious truth that people with decades of experience are apparently (or deliberately) unable to. In fact it's the reverse most subjects are substantially more complicated than they appear. You can't encompass the biology of obesity in a pop-sci best seller.

gruseom 17y ago
Also I don't think we should "make up [our] own mind" Although it's true that don't-think-for-yourself-and-don't-question-authority is standard practice, it's not often one hears someone explicitly argue in favor of it. I have three objections to what you're saying. The first is that it's ahistorical. You don't have to look back very far to see the insanity that human deference to experts can produce. ("Breast feeding is bad for babies", anyone?) Scientific consensus isn't nearly as stable or as true as you're implying; nor, for that matter, nearly as scientific. Which brings me to my second objection: it doesn't consider the economic and political interests that drive these things. There is a great deal of money being made from people being fat and sick. This has a huge influence on the research and regulatory systems surrounding this stuff. It follows that naive trust of consensus recommendations is foolish. Finally, everyone does make up their own mind whether they intend to or not. It's like Sartre said: not to choose is to choose not to choose. Everyone has a pool of their own judgment to allocate; if you like to invest yours completely in the expert consensus du jour, that's your perogative. I like to diversify mine, including putting a little into my "own mind", thanks. As far as I'm concerned, any discourse that penalizes people for asking simple questions is not to be trusted.
jerf 17y ago
I have a simple metric for determining the validity of a scientific consensus: "Does it make true predictions?" It does not take much research to discover that it is an objective truth that the nutrition dogma does not make true predictions. It says if you eat less (of the same thing) and exercise more, you will lose weight. The peer review verdict on this is rock solid: False. It treats fat cells as passive bags: False. After that the logic flows pretty simply. (Including the flat-out evil of people still talking as if calorie-reduction diet and exercise is some sort of scientifically proved therapy when in fact the exact utter opposite is true.) People claiming that the dietary orthodoxy is false have plenty of fully credentialed experts on their side, and your implicit claim or belief that it's not supported by evidence or peer review is flat-out false. I commend to you the first few frames of the video linked in the topic, for instance. I can't beat PhD with years of actual field experience; can you? Because that PhD with years of field experience is not on the side of the orthodoxy.
gruseom 17y ago
By the way, I went and read the George Bray review that you posted. It seemed a little odd. For one thing, Bray places great emphasis on a first-law-of-thermodynamics argument which as far as I can tell is just a big red herring. (Obviously nobody is questioning the first law of thermodynamics; equally obviously, thermodynamics doesn't ipso facto explain obesity; so what's the point? It's not clear.) So I dug around a bit and found Taubes' rebuttal, which strikes me as more or less devastating: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/taubes-response-to-bray-ob-reviews.pdf http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/0...

by glymor 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago

Also I don't think we should "make up [our] own mind" Although it's true that don't-think-for-yourself-and-don't-question-authority is standard practice, it's not often one hears someone explicitly argue in favor of it. I have three objections to what you're saying. The first is that it's ahistorical. You don't have to look back very far to see the insanity that human deference to experts can produce. ("Breast feeding is bad for babies", anyone?) Scientific consensus isn't nearly as stable or as true as you're implying; nor, for that matter, nearly as scientific. Which brings me to my second objection: it doesn't consider the economic and political interests that drive these things. There is a great deal of money being made from people being fat and sick. This has a huge influence on the research and regulatory systems surrounding this stuff. It follows that naive trust of consensus recommendations is foolish. Finally, everyone does make up their own mind whether they intend to or not. It's like Sartre said: not to choose is to choose not to choose. Everyone has a pool of their own judgment to allocate; if you like to invest yours completely in the expert consensus du jour, that's your perogative. I like to diversify mine, including putting a little into my "own mind", thanks. As far as I'm concerned, any discourse that penalizes people for asking simple questions is not to be trusted.

jerf 17y ago

I have a simple metric for determining the validity of a scientific consensus: "Does it make true predictions?" It does not take much research to discover that it is an objective truth that the nutrition dogma does not make true predictions. It says if you eat less (of the same thing) and exercise more, you will lose weight. The peer review verdict on this is rock solid: False. It treats fat cells as passive bags: False. After that the logic flows pretty simply. (Including the flat-out evil of people still talking as if calorie-reduction diet and exercise is some sort of scientifically proved therapy when in fact the exact utter opposite is true.) People claiming that the dietary orthodoxy is false have plenty of fully credentialed experts on their side, and your implicit claim or belief that it's not supported by evidence or peer review is flat-out false. I commend to you the first few frames of the video linked in the topic, for instance. I can't beat PhD with years of actual field experience; can you? Because that PhD with years of field experience is not on the side of the orthodoxy.

gruseom 17y ago

By the way, I went and read the George Bray review that you posted. It seemed a little odd. For one thing, Bray places great emphasis on a first-law-of-thermodynamics argument which as far as I can tell is just a big red herring. (Obviously nobody is questioning the first law of thermodynamics; equally obviously, thermodynamics doesn't ipso facto explain obesity; so what's the point? It's not clear.) So I dug around a bit and found Taubes' rebuttal, which strikes me as more or less devastating: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/taubes-response-to-bray-ob-reviews.pdf http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2008/0...