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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.
    - edanm 3y ago
      That's just not true. We know a lot about the basics of nutrition. Actual nutrition scientists mostly agree on lots of different things. The problem is that the public doesn't want to hear it, so the media keeps running articles that make it simple like "nobody knows anything". Which is just plain false.
      - briHass 3y ago
        Care to list some of the basic tenants of nutrition that are widely agreed upon? About the only things I see as generally accepted are to eat a varied diet (whatever that means), keep total consumed caloric content near the amount expended, eat at least the RDA of micronutrients, and drink enough water to avoid overt dehydration.
        unsupp0rted 3y ago
        And we're not even sure what the RDA should be, half the time.
- firesteelrain 3y ago
  It’s been said that iteratively developing a software based solution is like testing a hypothesis and seeing what works
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  Where did this definition come from? Did you just make it up? It excludes all of mathematics and most of astronomy, for example.
  - harperlee 3y ago
    Well on some contexts maths is apart from science, see e.g. the STEM acronym :)
  - dekhn 3y ago
    People generally consider, although this is not universally agreed, that math isn't science. To me the distinction matters, although it's fairly subtle. This is underscored by frequently cited articles, like: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", in which math is treated as separate, but intimately related, to natural philosophy. I think you can do math without science, but you can't do science without math.

[dead]

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.
  - edanm 3y ago
    That's just not true. We know a lot about the basics of nutrition. Actual nutrition scientists mostly agree on lots of different things. The problem is that the public doesn't want to hear it, so the media keeps running articles that make it simple like "nobody knows anything". Which is just plain false.
    - briHass 3y ago
      Care to list some of the basic tenants of nutrition that are widely agreed upon? About the only things I see as generally accepted are to eat a varied diet (whatever that means), keep total consumed caloric content near the amount expended, eat at least the RDA of micronutrients, and drink enough water to avoid overt dehydration.
      - unsupp0rted 3y ago
        And we're not even sure what the RDA should be, half the time.
firesteelrain 3y ago
It’s been said that iteratively developing a software based solution is like testing a hypothesis and seeing what works
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
Where did this definition come from? Did you just make it up? It excludes all of mathematics and most of astronomy, for example.
- harperlee 3y ago
  Well on some contexts maths is apart from science, see e.g. the STEM acronym :)
- dekhn 3y ago
  People generally consider, although this is not universally agreed, that math isn't science. To me the distinction matters, although it's fairly subtle. This is underscored by frequently cited articles, like: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", in which math is treated as separate, but intimately related, to natural philosophy. I think you can do math without science, but you can't do science without math.