I'm not suggesting we ignore evidence; I'm just saying we should be honest about what the evidence really shows and also honest about our inability to collect c

I'm not suggesting we ignore evidence; I'm just saying we should be honest about what the evidence really shows and also honest about our inability to collect conclusive evidence at times. I agree that mouse studies can show that megadoses of these sugar substitutes aren't lethal and probably won't cause cancer. But humans aren't mice and we don't live in lab cages, so animal studies don't answer the question I'm really interested in (~"will accepting artificial sweeteners into my diet improve my health?"). What would be the right experiment to answer that question? Has that experiment actually been performed, and would it be practical? Changes in human behavior might be hard to observe and quantify, and there are always practical limits to sample sizes. Sometimes it's​ very, very hard to design a study that actually answers the question you're interested in, but neither the scientists nor anyone else really has an incentive to be humble about that. (Most scientists want to make their work seem impactful.)