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A really good book to read on this is "the Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver. Basically, the scientific method requires modeling the system correctly which o

by maire 8y ago

A really good book to read on this is "the Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver. Basically, the scientific method requires modeling the system correctly which only works for certain kinds of systems. Systems where the complexity exceeds the available data causes people to see patterns where they don't exist and to be overly confident in their interpretation of the data. The entire area of nutrition and weight management is a joke. Medicine is problematic and Psychology is questionable. Another problem is that the popular media publishes inconclusive studies because they are click bait. People read them because they are interested in living longer and losing weight and being happy. Fear also turns studies into clickbait. The latest was the blizzard of articles on if bugs are dying off or not. Then there is the fact that negative studies tend to be ignored and when the study failed or it introduces data that does not conform to general knowledge. All this makes people question studies where the data is conclusive.

bsder 8y ago
> The entire area of nutrition and weight management is a joke. Medicine is problematic and Psychology is questionable. Note that the issue is that there is a human in that system. The problem is that we (rightfully!) don't easily allow experiments on humans that might be harmful. And, as an aside, nutrition and weight management does have people doing real science (things like studies of hunter gatherer societies with deuterated water), it's just that the results aren't very flashy (ie. a human burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of activity level--so the only way to lose weight is to eat less--moving more is healthy but doesn't contribute substantially to weight loss).
- maire 8y ago
  Scientists are trying to study nutrition, it is just that the data is inconclusive. Yet the popular media reports each conflicting study as fact. Here is an interesting Stanford Medicine study of individual variation on the impact on low carb vs low fat. The punchline is that they still don't know after a fairly rigorous study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SBZ4HYOxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SBZ4HYOxf0

by maire 8y ago

bsder 8y ago

> The entire area of nutrition and weight management is a joke. Medicine is problematic and Psychology is questionable. Note that the issue is that there is a human in that system. The problem is that we (rightfully!) don't easily allow experiments on humans that might be harmful. And, as an aside, nutrition and weight management does have people doing real science (things like studies of hunter gatherer societies with deuterated water), it's just that the results aren't very flashy (ie. a human burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of activity level--so the only way to lose weight is to eat less--moving more is healthy but doesn't contribute substantially to weight loss).

maire 8y ago
Scientists are trying to study nutrition, it is just that the data is inconclusive. Yet the popular media reports each conflicting study as fact. Here is an interesting Stanford Medicine study of individual variation on the impact on low carb vs low fat. The punchline is that they still don't know after a fairly rigorous study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SBZ4HYOxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SBZ4HYOxf0