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Referring to "scientists" that way is unfair. Nutrition scientists and doctors are working with the human body and its surrounding environment, an exceedingly

Referring to "scientists" that way is unfair. Nutrition scientists and doctors are working with the human body and its surrounding environment, an exceedingly complex model. They publish their findings in journals with cautions and caveats and data. A mainstream journalist with traffic quotas or column inches to fill on a slow news day then skims these journals for the next "X makes you fat" or "Y gives you cancer" headline without bothering to read the fine print.

pessimizer 10y ago
That's an extremely low bar you set for scientists to exceed. I agree that mainstream nutrition science has a better track record than the Daily Mail.
- shiven 10y ago
  Where should the bar be set for scientists to exceed? In the current funding climate and the well known publish(fast and crazy)-or-perish 'incentives', I find it hard to find fault with the bar set for scientists. (Disclosure: I'm one. Although not in nutrition science.)
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Their recommendations should be reliable in order to achieve some effect, and have some physical basis. Nutrition science has been terrible at this. They have generally been better at this than the reporters who read their breathless press releases, though. I'm a middle-aged man, and virtually everything they told my parents, and me when I grew up in the 70s and 80s was wrong, and some of it actively harmful.
ghshephard 10y ago
I'm not referring to the journalists, I'm referring to the peer reviewed papers, and the scientific consensus regarding proper diet, that turned out to be not only false, but false in a way that likely could have been demonstrated with just a few, fairly straightforward research studies. It starts, of course, with Dr. Ancel keys, but he wasn't the only person who signed off on the consensus that a high-carbohydrate diet was the right model for the American people. I use the scare quotes, because what took place after that, was probably the furthest thing from science you could imagine - presuming we agree that the objective of science isn't to pile on the latest theory, but instead to strengthen those theories, by trying to disprove them.
- deleted 10y ago
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pessimizer 10y ago

That's an extremely low bar you set for scientists to exceed. I agree that mainstream nutrition science has a better track record than the Daily Mail.

shiven 10y ago
Where should the bar be set for scientists to exceed? In the current funding climate and the well known publish(fast and crazy)-or-perish 'incentives', I find it hard to find fault with the bar set for scientists. (Disclosure: I'm one. Although not in nutrition science.)
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Their recommendations should be reliable in order to achieve some effect, and have some physical basis. Nutrition science has been terrible at this. They have generally been better at this than the reporters who read their breathless press releases, though. I'm a middle-aged man, and virtually everything they told my parents, and me when I grew up in the 70s and 80s was wrong, and some of it actively harmful.

ghshephard 10y ago

I'm not referring to the journalists, I'm referring to the peer reviewed papers, and the scientific consensus regarding proper diet, that turned out to be not only false, but false in a way that likely could have been demonstrated with just a few, fairly straightforward research studies. It starts, of course, with Dr. Ancel keys, but he wasn't the only person who signed off on the consensus that a high-carbohydrate diet was the right model for the American people. I use the scare quotes, because what took place after that, was probably the furthest thing from science you could imagine - presuming we agree that the objective of science isn't to pile on the latest theory, but instead to strengthen those theories, by trying to disprove them.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]