4 ms·

Bollocks, physics is an actual scientific field and aerospace engineering is actual engineering (compared to say "software engineering" where it's engineering i

Bollocks, physics is an actual scientific field and aerospace engineering is actual engineering (compared to say "software engineering" where it's engineering in name only), similarly there's barely anything scientific in the "nutritional science". If you have a real scientific background and real engineering background you are way more likely to do a proper job. It frustrates me that people think nutritional "science" is a serious scientific field. And that the "nutritional scientist" is somehow better equipped - they have barely done any real science a single day in their life.

ramraj07 3y ago
So what makes you an authority in defining what’s a scientific field? Care to share some actual data?
- airtonix 3y ago
  [dead]
- nradov 3y ago
  You don't need to be an authority to see how the majority of human nutrition science is barely a step above junk. Pick any journal in the field and go through the last few issues. You'll mostly find observational studies with subject reported data (known to be inaccurate). Very few long, term randomized controlled trials with meaningful endpoints.
  - paulpauper 3y ago
    It is worse than junk. most junk science is harmless, but bad diet advice can hurt your health.
- oldgradstudent 3y ago
  If you can rigorously test your hypotheses in an experiment, it is a scientific field. If you can't, or won't, it is not a scientific field.
  - rapind 3y ago
    There’s probably a grey area for social sciences like economics. I also tend to think there’s real nutritional science but it’s being drowned out by all the snake oil.
    - zelse 3y ago
      Snake-oil and moralizing. Dietetics suffers from the same issue that mental health does: there's an underlying stigma that causes people to inflict a moral judgement on the ill; fat people - or so the old line of thinking goes - are immoral. A shocking number of people, including many doctors and scientists, view diabetes as a "fat people disease," and that diabetics are in effect being punished for their gluttony. This isn't always a conscious bias, but it has very negative effects. It reminds me of the studies they've done in Canada and the US about how natives (American Indians) die a lot of the time in the ER because they're immediately written off as alcoholics or drug-addicts, and so their complaints are evaluated through the lens of "this person just wants opiates."
  - Retric 3y ago
    There have been tons of nutritional experiments which are extremely rigorous. Unfortunately, like most fields it’s the junk you read about because rigor is slow/difficult/expensive and therefore less common than BS. Just look at say fusion research and all it’s seriously flawed experiments.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      And tons of nutritional experiments demonstrating the exact opposite result, that are also “rigorous”. Sure, human biology is (hundreds of) orders of magnitude more complicated than say going to the moon. But at this point in 2024 we “know” a lot more about physics than we do about nutrition. And maybe that’s because physicists, when faced with contradictory data, keep digging until they figure out the basics once and for all.
refurb 3y ago
Would you have a physicist would self-taught medicine as your doctor? Of course not. While a scientific or engineering background might demonstrate capability to understand another scientific field, that doesn’t replace the near decade of education people in that field have.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  I would, compared to 8 out of 10 doctors I’ve met. A dedicated physicist who self-taught medicine would allow hoofs to be zebras, not horses, some % of the time.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  False equivalency Doctors need practice in the hospital and do an excruciating amount of rounds surrounded by senior experts. Nutritionists? No. Given a nutritionist who has studied the books and gotten a degree and a physicist who has studied the books and hasn't gotten the degree I would be hard pressed to choose the nutritionist
- agtech_andy 3y ago
  I am someone with a computational physics background who is coupled with someone who is training to be a surgeon. We lived together during much of her medical school, and thus, are constantly around medical professionals. I would absolutely trust a physicist (who has done actual empirical lab work) who has deeply studied a problem in the nutrition space over someone conventionally trained in nutrition. You may be stunned to see how little numerical sense so many in the medical field have. And as someone who grows medicinal plants and follows that literature closely, I read tons of papers in that space. It is full of experimental design flaws and dubious correlations. I have worked on a medical device that went through clinical trials.
agumonkey 3y ago
They have a point. It's easy to come with your high IQ and miss some obscure subtle data that people in the field learned the hard way. Sure the man is capable of understanding it quick and even do more.. but it's too easy to get carried in your own newcomer theory.
esafak 3y ago
https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
edanm 3y ago
What makes you think you're right about any of that? Do you have any evidence to back up your (crazy) theory that an entire field of study isn't real science? Cause from where I'm sitting, nutritional scientists do plenty of real science - studying a very complex problem that poses a lot of challenges to experiments, and still coming up with a lot of great results that teach us tons about nutrition. Most people that criticize the field do so because they read a bunch of articles. Or because they're in the world of hard sciences, and are simply arrogant enough to think they know better than everyone else, even in fields they've never studied.
TheCleric 3y ago
Let’s pretend all of that is true. How does a background in the “hard sciences” with experiments involving materials that can’t make their own decisions prepare you for a field with experiments where you have to account for the fact that you can’t imprison your test subjects for 6 months, and that when they are on their own may not follow the experimental protocols (or even lie about that fact)?

ramraj07 3y ago

So what makes you an authority in defining what’s a scientific field? Care to share some actual data?

airtonix 3y ago
[dead]
nradov 3y ago
You don't need to be an authority to see how the majority of human nutrition science is barely a step above junk. Pick any journal in the field and go through the last few issues. You'll mostly find observational studies with subject reported data (known to be inaccurate). Very few long, term randomized controlled trials with meaningful endpoints.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  It is worse than junk. most junk science is harmless, but bad diet advice can hurt your health.
oldgradstudent 3y ago
If you can rigorously test your hypotheses in an experiment, it is a scientific field. If you can't, or won't, it is not a scientific field.
- rapind 3y ago
  There’s probably a grey area for social sciences like economics. I also tend to think there’s real nutritional science but it’s being drowned out by all the snake oil.
  - zelse 3y ago
    Snake-oil and moralizing. Dietetics suffers from the same issue that mental health does: there's an underlying stigma that causes people to inflict a moral judgement on the ill; fat people - or so the old line of thinking goes - are immoral. A shocking number of people, including many doctors and scientists, view diabetes as a "fat people disease," and that diabetics are in effect being punished for their gluttony. This isn't always a conscious bias, but it has very negative effects. It reminds me of the studies they've done in Canada and the US about how natives (American Indians) die a lot of the time in the ER because they're immediately written off as alcoholics or drug-addicts, and so their complaints are evaluated through the lens of "this person just wants opiates."
- Retric 3y ago
  There have been tons of nutritional experiments which are extremely rigorous. Unfortunately, like most fields it’s the junk you read about because rigor is slow/difficult/expensive and therefore less common than BS. Just look at say fusion research and all it’s seriously flawed experiments.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    And tons of nutritional experiments demonstrating the exact opposite result, that are also “rigorous”. Sure, human biology is (hundreds of) orders of magnitude more complicated than say going to the moon. But at this point in 2024 we “know” a lot more about physics than we do about nutrition. And maybe that’s because physicists, when faced with contradictory data, keep digging until they figure out the basics once and for all.

refurb 3y ago

Would you have a physicist would self-taught medicine as your doctor? Of course not. While a scientific or engineering background might demonstrate capability to understand another scientific field, that doesn’t replace the near decade of education people in that field have.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
I would, compared to 8 out of 10 doctors I’ve met. A dedicated physicist who self-taught medicine would allow hoofs to be zebras, not horses, some % of the time.
Almondsetat 3y ago
False equivalency Doctors need practice in the hospital and do an excruciating amount of rounds surrounded by senior experts. Nutritionists? No. Given a nutritionist who has studied the books and gotten a degree and a physicist who has studied the books and hasn't gotten the degree I would be hard pressed to choose the nutritionist
agtech_andy 3y ago
I am someone with a computational physics background who is coupled with someone who is training to be a surgeon. We lived together during much of her medical school, and thus, are constantly around medical professionals. I would absolutely trust a physicist (who has done actual empirical lab work) who has deeply studied a problem in the nutrition space over someone conventionally trained in nutrition. You may be stunned to see how little numerical sense so many in the medical field have. And as someone who grows medicinal plants and follows that literature closely, I read tons of papers in that space. It is full of experimental design flaws and dubious correlations. I have worked on a medical device that went through clinical trials.

agumonkey 3y ago

They have a point. It's easy to come with your high IQ and miss some obscure subtle data that people in the field learned the hard way. Sure the man is capable of understanding it quick and even do more.. but it's too easy to get carried in your own newcomer theory.

esafak 3y ago

https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/

edanm 3y ago

What makes you think you're right about any of that? Do you have any evidence to back up your (crazy) theory that an entire field of study isn't real science? Cause from where I'm sitting, nutritional scientists do plenty of real science - studying a very complex problem that poses a lot of challenges to experiments, and still coming up with a lot of great results that teach us tons about nutrition. Most people that criticize the field do so because they read a bunch of articles. Or because they're in the world of hard sciences, and are simply arrogant enough to think they know better than everyone else, even in fields they've never studied.

TheCleric 3y ago

Let’s pretend all of that is true. How does a background in the “hard sciences” with experiments involving materials that can’t make their own decisions prepare you for a field with experiments where you have to account for the fact that you can’t imprison your test subjects for 6 months, and that when they are on their own may not follow the experimental protocols (or even lie about that fact)?