10 ms·

John Ioannidis Aims His Bazooka at Nutrition Science (2018)

103 points by aaavl2821 8y ago

Upvoter33 8y ago
criticizing nutrition science is ... er ... a low-hanging fruit (sorry)
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  That's nuts.
- atoav 8y ago
  But exactly these kinds of sciences are part of the reason why a growing part of the population doesn’t trust scientific research and experts anymore. Changing something here for the better has an higher impact on society than doing the same thing e.g. in physics.
  - atomical 8y ago
    The public doesn't trust scientific research because the local news airs studies with controversial claims to outrage and confuse the public. It's similar to how the YouTube algorithm selects content that will make a person angry. In both cases the goal is engagement.
eebynight 8y ago
About time. This is the type of crap that gave us "eggs are the equivalent of smoking cigarettes", "red meat causes cancer", "Coconut oil is pure poison" and many more...
- randomsearch 8y ago
  “The World Cancer Research Fund report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer provided advice on red and processed meat in 2007. The organisation said the evidence that red and processed meats are causes of bowel cancer is convincing. It advises that people eat no more than 500g of red meat a week (around 70g a day) and avoid processed meats.” https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/red-meat-and-the-risk-of-bowel-cancer/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/red-meat-and-the-risk-...
  - SilasX 8y ago
    So how much did they weight the utility of eating red meat in order to conclude that severely restricting it would be worth the .074% decrease in death risk? Because that doesn't seem like a significant risk. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/incidence https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
    - totalBeginner 8y ago
      Genuinely curious, where did you see the "0.074% decrease in death risk?" From the page you linked to: "13% of bowel cancer cases in the UK are caused by eating processed meat. Bowel cancer risk is 17-30% higher per 100-120g/day of red meat intake, meta-analyses have shown. Bowel cancer risk is 9-50% higher per 25-50g/day of processed meat intake, meta-analyses have shown; however bowel cancer risk was not associated with processed meat intake in a pooled analysis of UK case-control studies. Colon cancer risk is 12% higher per 1mg/day of haem iron intake, a meta-analysis showed; though bowel cancer risk was not associated with dietary iron intake in a pooled analysis of UK cohort studies. Serrated bowel polyp risk is 23% higher in people with the highest versus lowest levels of red meat intake, a meta-analysis showed." https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Two https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
      - zaphod4prez 8y ago
        Ok let's run this scenario (please check my math here, I'm not positive I'm doing the probability right). Let's assume we're talking about a man, bc men are more likely to be affected. Your lifetime risk of developing bowel cancer is 7% for males [1]. Bowel cancer risk is 17-30% higher if you eat a quarter pound of red meat per day [2]. But let's go ahead and assume someone does eat that much meat and use 30%. If you get bowel cancer, you have a 25% chance of dying [3]. That means... lifetime_risk_no_meat = 0.07 lifetime_risk_yes_meat = 0.07 + (0.07*.3) risk_of_death_given_cancer = 0.25 (lifetime_risk_yes_meat - lifetime_risk_no_meat) /risk_of_death_given_cancer ==> 0.084 So an 0.084% increase in risk of death if we use the most risky scenario available. [1]: Lifetime risk of bowel cancer https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Zero https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-... [2]: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Two https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-... [3]: Persons-> Crude rate -> UK https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/mortality#heading-Zero https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
- peteretep 8y ago
  > This is I like to think the object of this sentence is the Daily Mail[0]. [0] https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
schizoidboy 8y ago
My favorite quote from Ioannidis: “Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,” he says. “I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-da...
- dekhn 8y ago
  what's really crazy is how much money it takes to not make much progress, either. Modern labs are washing cash down the drain.
  - api 8y ago
    Is there a shortcut? I'm sure some improvements can be made but I am skeptical of the idea that science is just doing it wrong.
    - kansface 8y ago
      > Is there a shortcut? A much, much deeper understanding of how humans work.
      - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        Facepalm! How could we have forgotten to pick that up before heading down this road of frustratingly hit-or-miss basic research?!
        selimthegrim 8y ago
        Maybe the real research was the friends...
      - gbear605 8y ago
        And how do we acquire that?
trimble 8y ago
acsh.org == industry front group
- gotocake 8y ago
  It really is, but it can be helpful to do more than just claim something, and rather back it up a bit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_and_Health#Accusations_of_industry_influence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_... In 1979, the information director of the FDA said, "Whelan just makes blanket endorsements of food additives. Her organization is a sham, an industry front."[31] In 1980, ACSH co-founder Frederick J. Stare was chairman of ACSH's Board of Directors and sought funding from US tobacco company Philip Morris USA for ACSH's activities, stating that he believed financially supporting ACSH would be to Phillip Morris' benefit.[26][27] In the early 1990s, ACSH decided to stop reporting its funding.[32] Their 1991 report shows that many corporations contributed funds.[32] In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer advocacy group, published a report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."[33] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ACSH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't.... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."[34]
  - trimble 8y ago
    You're right - thank you for adding this
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- distant_hat 8y ago
  Ioannidis is independent of acsh. You can directly go to his op-ed in JAMA. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2698337 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26983...
chx 8y ago
Nutrition Science, ah yes. What would your reaction would be if I told you that we claim that the interaction of seven billion human beings to many thousands of previously living organisms will be the same for each of those human beings? That's obviously nonsense. In other words, you can't just say consuming eggs does X to everyone. You need to partition foodstuff AND partition humans, the partitioning likely based on genetics but also probably other factors as well and then you can describe how each partition reacts. Those other factors likely include previous reaction of food intake... It's a gigantic mess. Until we know a lot more, I will take every nutrition advice as if a dead cat wrote them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas#Henrietta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulen...
- User23 8y ago
  It's almost as if different human populations separated by insurmountable geographic barriers in wildly differing ecological circumstances for myriad millennia underwent selection pressure!
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    And have mixed-and-matched enough that claiming any sort of "purity" is idiotic. We're all braided together.
    - jdminhbg 8y ago
      I don't think anyone is claiming "purity" at all. Purity, if anything, would make things simpler.
      - feanaro 8y ago
        The operating principle is homogeneity. Purity is a bit of a misnomer because a "perfectly" homogeneous species with no distinctive heterogeneous groups would have to be called pure, but that's not usually how people use the word. The implication is usually that there are several distinct, homogeneous groups within which there is homogeneity among its members. Having homogeneity at some level, even if it ends up being in the form of several homogeneous groups, allows one to make useful scientific findings and generalizations. On the other hand, if everything was very heterogeneous, down to each individual, it would be very hard to find a general statement applicable to any appreciable number of individuals.
COGlory 8y ago
As someone with a degree in Nutritional Science who has since left the field for actual science (Biochemistry), I couldn't agree more. It was reasons like this that I left. The field was corrupted early on by the sugar lobby and it took an immense amount of effort to simply make it ok to admit saturated fats weren't bad for you again. Some 50 years of research negated by a deal that went down with a very small subset of people. The Academy of Nutritionists and Dietetics is a complete and total waste of human effort. I've never encountered a more useless amalgamation of self-serving pretend professionals in one organization. Everything they do is to protect their organization and reduce entry. To even become a dietitian, after graduating from a didactic pathway you must do a 1-2 year paid internship. And by paid, I mean it costs you $20,000-$40,0000, you work 40+ hours a week, including unsupervised work, which makes the legality dubious, and in exchange you sometimes (but no always) get to take a few credits of useless grad level classes that won't get you any further to a master's degree. And then when you finally get certified, after an $80,000 degree and $40,000 internship, you get to start a job that pays about $55,000/year peak, assuming you aren't some world renowned specialist. The people involved are just the worst. All play professionals who obsess over trivial details like professional attire and pointless faux psychology, like learning and motivational theory. They treat everyone like stupid children and design the absolute worst literature and outreach, catering to the lowest possible denominator with patronizing and condescending advice and horrible rap songs designed to get children to eat vegetables. Meanwhile this has left a vacuum of knowledge for anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and so any reasonably intelligent adult instead gets sucked in by even worse pseudo-science blogs, a phenomenon that was created and enabled by the Academy. The kicker for me was when I took a community nutrition class that the majority of my classmates revealed that they believed in "health at every size" and that a registered dietitians primary function is respectful communication, (read: participating in the delusions of patients) not communicating important information and truths that could impact the patients health. That's not even getting into the absolute sham that is most nutrition research and how much of it is funded by organizations who have a predetermined outcome and just need to find a way to fit the facts to what they want. Nutrition research is absolutely rampant with activist organizations trying to coopt the field to further their related agendas.
Criper1Tookus 8y ago
Big foods lie Eat kito and fast often that's life no sugar no bread of any type Fibre from veg only loss weight feel great
chicob 8y ago
I do believe that many of the findings of nutrition science are half baked, provably contradictory, and ignore a plethora of factors that play a role in the interaction between food and health. But there's another bazooka in the room: the contemporary erosion of trust in authority, in this case scientific authority. Ionannidis' remarks are for the best, I think, but will add to the confusion of not only what knowledge can the public trust but who is more apt to produce that knowledge. Before things get better, this will inevitably widen the door not only for old bad science in new clothes, or in the form of professional, corporation funded research that resorts to p-hacking and such methods, but also to the further discredit of science in general in the general population. Having said this, I do not believe Ioannidis' work (or Ben Goldacre's for that matter) is a tool of such agents. Edit: After reading some comments in this thread, I have to say in all honesty that I suspect that the ACSH's interest in Ioannidis work is disingenuous, without putting into question the validity of his work.
- nordsieck 8y ago
  > But there's another bazooka in the room: the contemporary erosion of trust in authority, in this case scientific authority. Ionannidis' remarks are for the best, I think, but will add to the confusion of not only what knowledge can the public trust but who is more apt to produce that knowledge. The erosion of trust is _because_ of the poor quality of scientific findings produced by Science the institution (particularly in select fields). This is the only sustainable path forward for Science the institution. The only alternative is a period of suppression of criticism, inevitably contemporaneous with increasing levels of corruption, followed by massive denunciations and outrage once the dam breaks. Didn't really work well for the Catholic church. I can't see how it would be any better for Science.
  - chicob 8y ago
    > The erosion of trust is _because_ of the poor quality of scientific findings produced by Science the institution (particularly in select fields). So it would seem, if we considered Nutrition Science alone. But that does not explain the process of increasing distrust in vaccination, global warming and climate change, or even evolution, where the scientific practice has a quite solid record and community consensus. The erosion of authority reaches outside of Science, which to me suggests that there might be a broader explanation beyond the specificities of each field. In my opinion, and like you say, organized religion was one of the first victims of this process in the past and today.

103 points by aaavl2821 8y ago

Upvoter33 8y ago

criticizing nutrition science is ... er ... a low-hanging fruit (sorry)

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
That's nuts.
atoav 8y ago
But exactly these kinds of sciences are part of the reason why a growing part of the population doesn’t trust scientific research and experts anymore. Changing something here for the better has an higher impact on society than doing the same thing e.g. in physics.
- atomical 8y ago
  The public doesn't trust scientific research because the local news airs studies with controversial claims to outrage and confuse the public. It's similar to how the YouTube algorithm selects content that will make a person angry. In both cases the goal is engagement.

eebynight 8y ago

About time. This is the type of crap that gave us "eggs are the equivalent of smoking cigarettes", "red meat causes cancer", "Coconut oil is pure poison" and many more...

randomsearch 8y ago
“The World Cancer Research Fund report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer provided advice on red and processed meat in 2007. The organisation said the evidence that red and processed meats are causes of bowel cancer is convincing. It advises that people eat no more than 500g of red meat a week (around 70g a day) and avoid processed meats.” https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/red-meat-and-the-risk-of-bowel-cancer/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/red-meat-and-the-risk-...
- SilasX 8y ago
  So how much did they weight the utility of eating red meat in order to conclude that severely restricting it would be worth the .074% decrease in death risk? Because that doesn't seem like a significant risk. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/incidence https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
  - totalBeginner 8y ago
    Genuinely curious, where did you see the "0.074% decrease in death risk?" From the page you linked to: "13% of bowel cancer cases in the UK are caused by eating processed meat. Bowel cancer risk is 17-30% higher per 100-120g/day of red meat intake, meta-analyses have shown. Bowel cancer risk is 9-50% higher per 25-50g/day of processed meat intake, meta-analyses have shown; however bowel cancer risk was not associated with processed meat intake in a pooled analysis of UK case-control studies. Colon cancer risk is 12% higher per 1mg/day of haem iron intake, a meta-analysis showed; though bowel cancer risk was not associated with dietary iron intake in a pooled analysis of UK cohort studies. Serrated bowel polyp risk is 23% higher in people with the highest versus lowest levels of red meat intake, a meta-analysis showed." https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Two https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
    - zaphod4prez 8y ago
      Ok let's run this scenario (please check my math here, I'm not positive I'm doing the probability right). Let's assume we're talking about a man, bc men are more likely to be affected. Your lifetime risk of developing bowel cancer is 7% for males [1]. Bowel cancer risk is 17-30% higher if you eat a quarter pound of red meat per day [2]. But let's go ahead and assume someone does eat that much meat and use 30%. If you get bowel cancer, you have a 25% chance of dying [3]. That means... lifetime_risk_no_meat = 0.07 lifetime_risk_yes_meat = 0.07 + (0.07*.3) risk_of_death_given_cancer = 0.25 (lifetime_risk_yes_meat - lifetime_risk_no_meat) /risk_of_death_given_cancer ==> 0.084 So an 0.084% increase in risk of death if we use the most risky scenario available. [1]: Lifetime risk of bowel cancer https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Zero https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-... [2]: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/risk-factors#heading-Two https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-... [3]: Persons-> Crude rate -> UK https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/mortality#heading-Zero https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
peteretep 8y ago
> This is I like to think the object of this sentence is the Daily Mail[0]. [0] https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

schizoidboy 8y ago

My favorite quote from Ioannidis: “Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,” he says. “I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-da...

dekhn 8y ago
what's really crazy is how much money it takes to not make much progress, either. Modern labs are washing cash down the drain.
- api 8y ago
  Is there a shortcut? I'm sure some improvements can be made but I am skeptical of the idea that science is just doing it wrong.
  - kansface 8y ago
    > Is there a shortcut? A much, much deeper understanding of how humans work.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      Facepalm! How could we have forgotten to pick that up before heading down this road of frustratingly hit-or-miss basic research?!
      - selimthegrim 8y ago
        Maybe the real research was the friends...
    - gbear605 8y ago
      And how do we acquire that?

trimble 8y ago

acsh.org == industry front group

gotocake 8y ago
It really is, but it can be helpful to do more than just claim something, and rather back it up a bit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_and_Health#Accusations_of_industry_influence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_... In 1979, the information director of the FDA said, "Whelan just makes blanket endorsements of food additives. Her organization is a sham, an industry front."[31] In 1980, ACSH co-founder Frederick J. Stare was chairman of ACSH's Board of Directors and sought funding from US tobacco company Philip Morris USA for ACSH's activities, stating that he believed financially supporting ACSH would be to Phillip Morris' benefit.[26][27] In the early 1990s, ACSH decided to stop reporting its funding.[32] Their 1991 report shows that many corporations contributed funds.[32] In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer advocacy group, published a report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."[33] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ACSH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't.... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."[34]
- trimble 8y ago
  You're right - thank you for adding this
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
distant_hat 8y ago
Ioannidis is independent of acsh. You can directly go to his op-ed in JAMA. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2698337 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26983...

chx 8y ago

Nutrition Science, ah yes. What would your reaction would be if I told you that we claim that the interaction of seven billion human beings to many thousands of previously living organisms will be the same for each of those human beings? That's obviously nonsense. In other words, you can't just say consuming eggs does X to everyone. You need to partition foodstuff AND partition humans, the partitioning likely based on genetics but also probably other factors as well and then you can describe how each partition reacts. Those other factors likely include previous reaction of food intake... It's a gigantic mess. Until we know a lot more, I will take every nutrition advice as if a dead cat wrote them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas#Henrietta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulen...

User23 8y ago
It's almost as if different human populations separated by insurmountable geographic barriers in wildly differing ecological circumstances for myriad millennia underwent selection pressure!
- dsr_ 8y ago
  And have mixed-and-matched enough that claiming any sort of "purity" is idiotic. We're all braided together.
  - jdminhbg 8y ago
    I don't think anyone is claiming "purity" at all. Purity, if anything, would make things simpler.
    - feanaro 8y ago
      The operating principle is homogeneity. Purity is a bit of a misnomer because a "perfectly" homogeneous species with no distinctive heterogeneous groups would have to be called pure, but that's not usually how people use the word. The implication is usually that there are several distinct, homogeneous groups within which there is homogeneity among its members. Having homogeneity at some level, even if it ends up being in the form of several homogeneous groups, allows one to make useful scientific findings and generalizations. On the other hand, if everything was very heterogeneous, down to each individual, it would be very hard to find a general statement applicable to any appreciable number of individuals.

COGlory 8y ago

As someone with a degree in Nutritional Science who has since left the field for actual science (Biochemistry), I couldn't agree more. It was reasons like this that I left. The field was corrupted early on by the sugar lobby and it took an immense amount of effort to simply make it ok to admit saturated fats weren't bad for you again. Some 50 years of research negated by a deal that went down with a very small subset of people. The Academy of Nutritionists and Dietetics is a complete and total waste of human effort. I've never encountered a more useless amalgamation of self-serving pretend professionals in one organization. Everything they do is to protect their organization and reduce entry. To even become a dietitian, after graduating from a didactic pathway you must do a 1-2 year paid internship. And by paid, I mean it costs you $20,000-$40,0000, you work 40+ hours a week, including unsupervised work, which makes the legality dubious, and in exchange you sometimes (but no always) get to take a few credits of useless grad level classes that won't get you any further to a master's degree. And then when you finally get certified, after an $80,000 degree and $40,000 internship, you get to start a job that pays about $55,000/year peak, assuming you aren't some world renowned specialist. The people involved are just the worst. All play professionals who obsess over trivial details like professional attire and pointless faux psychology, like learning and motivational theory. They treat everyone like stupid children and design the absolute worst literature and outreach, catering to the lowest possible denominator with patronizing and condescending advice and horrible rap songs designed to get children to eat vegetables. Meanwhile this has left a vacuum of knowledge for anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and so any reasonably intelligent adult instead gets sucked in by even worse pseudo-science blogs, a phenomenon that was created and enabled by the Academy. The kicker for me was when I took a community nutrition class that the majority of my classmates revealed that they believed in "health at every size" and that a registered dietitians primary function is respectful communication, (read: participating in the delusions of patients) not communicating important information and truths that could impact the patients health. That's not even getting into the absolute sham that is most nutrition research and how much of it is funded by organizations who have a predetermined outcome and just need to find a way to fit the facts to what they want. Nutrition research is absolutely rampant with activist organizations trying to coopt the field to further their related agendas.

Criper1Tookus 8y ago

Big foods lie Eat kito and fast often that's life no sugar no bread of any type Fibre from veg only loss weight feel great

chicob 8y ago

I do believe that many of the findings of nutrition science are half baked, provably contradictory, and ignore a plethora of factors that play a role in the interaction between food and health. But there's another bazooka in the room: the contemporary erosion of trust in authority, in this case scientific authority. Ionannidis' remarks are for the best, I think, but will add to the confusion of not only what knowledge can the public trust but who is more apt to produce that knowledge. Before things get better, this will inevitably widen the door not only for old bad science in new clothes, or in the form of professional, corporation funded research that resorts to p-hacking and such methods, but also to the further discredit of science in general in the general population. Having said this, I do not believe Ioannidis' work (or Ben Goldacre's for that matter) is a tool of such agents. Edit: After reading some comments in this thread, I have to say in all honesty that I suspect that the ACSH's interest in Ioannidis work is disingenuous, without putting into question the validity of his work.

nordsieck 8y ago
> But there's another bazooka in the room: the contemporary erosion of trust in authority, in this case scientific authority. Ionannidis' remarks are for the best, I think, but will add to the confusion of not only what knowledge can the public trust but who is more apt to produce that knowledge. The erosion of trust is _because_ of the poor quality of scientific findings produced by Science the institution (particularly in select fields). This is the only sustainable path forward for Science the institution. The only alternative is a period of suppression of criticism, inevitably contemporaneous with increasing levels of corruption, followed by massive denunciations and outrage once the dam breaks. Didn't really work well for the Catholic church. I can't see how it would be any better for Science.
- chicob 8y ago
  > The erosion of trust is _because_ of the poor quality of scientific findings produced by Science the institution (particularly in select fields). So it would seem, if we considered Nutrition Science alone. But that does not explain the process of increasing distrust in vaccination, global warming and climate change, or even evolution, where the scientific practice has a quite solid record and community consensus. The erosion of authority reaches outside of Science, which to me suggests that there might be a broader explanation beyond the specificities of each field. In my opinion, and like you say, organized religion was one of the first victims of this process in the past and today.