5 ms·

The tone is snarky and condescending, which already means it can't be taken seriously. Your initial comment struggles with the same issue to a lesser extent.

• KempyKolibri 2y ago
  If you dismiss valid points addressing the substance of the claim under discussion because of the tone it’s conveyed in, and that’s the epistemic framework you use to understand whether scientific claims are valid or not, then best of luck to you. Personally, I think that’s hilarious. Enjoy your bacon and butter.
  • mistermann 2y ago
    Your framing of "the" reasoning is rather impressive itself.
  • norswap 2y ago
    I shouldn't enter into consideration, but it's a shockingly good heuristic to evaluate the credibility of people. I repeatedly found that people who are thoughtful and not snarky — and often, nuanced — when discussing a topic I have no deep expertise on were much more correct on topics that I did have expertise on and could properly evaluate. We're all on a time budget at the end of the day. And I do share the sentiment: the scientific literature in nutrition is known not to be very good. You don't have to be an expert, it suffices to notice that there are a lot of people coming to contradictory conclusions, and that the consensus seems to have changed drastically over the past decades, not being particularly driven by any groundbreaking changes in available scientific methods.
    • KempyKolibri 2y ago
      Ok, I don’t share that heuristic personally. That said, if that’s yours, then I encourage you to compare Teicholz’s output with, say, Walter Willett’s (who would take the position that SFA is a risk factor for CVD). Teicholz is considerably snarkier than Willett so, even by that metric, you should lean in favour of Willett’s position that SFA is unhealthy, I guess?
      • norswap 2y ago
        A heuristic is a heuristic, and we can do some of our own research too. I was just defending the OP. As for my personal position, I remember looking into things a while back and just coming away with the conclusion that nobody really seemed to know. If there's a truth here, it's either considerably more complex than "SFA good" / "SFA bad" (all these interacting pathways, man), or it just makes little enough difference not to matter at all in a way that we can meaningfully measure above the noise. It seemed clear SFA are clearly not that deadly. Whether you'd be more healthy or live slightly longer if you chose to consume less of them, I have absolutely no clue.
        • KempyKolibri 2y ago
          The evidence overwhelmingly shows that replacing SFA with PUFA leads to a 20-30% reduction in cardiovascular disease incidence. Considering this is one of the top killers in the western world, this is massive. I’m not sure how you’re determining that it’s otherwise?
    • lemmsjid 2y ago
      I partially agree with you but have some counter thoughts. Tone is something that can be adopted intentionally or unintentionally. If you hear a pilot on a radio dryly say something in a calm and detached tone, it could be in the context of an emergency. Pilots are enculturated to adopt that tone (for various reasons). Meanwhile particular cultures have different levels of acceptability when it comes to tone: some cultures perceive other cultures as more angry, or detached, because of the norms of communication within those cultures. In short, I think the tone of “calm, scientific detachment” is often weaponized to lend undeserved credibility to an argument, because people tend to believe people more when they adopt that tone. Furthermore, tone does have a purpose if used alongside a well done argument. For example, in the article the OP linked to, there is a rather exhaustive refutation of the book in question. The tone of the author previews that their entire opinion on the book is negative, given all the arguments they put forth in their review. If the author of the review had adopted a calm and thoughtful tone, perhaps it would indeed have been more effective because the reader would decide. On the other hand, most people won’t read the entire review, so the tone of the author makes it clear what their opinion is. That said I am not wholly disagreeing with you: would be interesting to do a study using some varying markers to identify tone, and identify, I don’t know, argumentative complexity, and see if snarkiness is associated with a lack of complexity. Assuming you can find markers with predictive power.
      • norswap 2y ago
        I think what actually convinces me more than tone is nuance. If you can fairly assess arguments on both sides, recognize when either side makes a good point, and mention when you're confused about your conclusion, or when some point of evidence doesn't mesh with the theory. Things that are all one-sided are usually wrong (though I suppose there are cases where the truth is indeed one-sided, it's just pretty rare, and less likely to be things that people that you otherwise consider serious would argue about). Even that attitude can be weaponized I suppose, if nuance convinced more people, than more people would learn to fake nuance to push their favorite outcome. Though I'd like to think that the process would change them a little bit for the better too.
  • ifyoubuildit 2y ago
    It distracts from the points, whether they're valid or not. It suggests that the person is driven by something other than getting to the truth. They're more interested in demonstrating superiority and punishing the enemy.
    • KempyKolibri 2y ago
      That just seems like an attempt at mind reading to me. Maybe that’s just their writing style? Maybe they’re just fed up with having to deal with the same anti scientific nonsense all the time? Seems a waste of effort trying to attribute motive to such things. Just read what they have to say, verify what they say against their references and then make an inference based on that. Don’t see why tone has to come into it at all.
      • branz 2y ago
        Although I understand the frustration that comes with feeling like misinformation is being spread, it is also much easier to have a meaningful discussion without such a tone/writing style. Everybody is human, and reading something like that can be quite inflammatory and distract from the conversation. Anyways, that's just my personal opinion, and despite writing this, strong emotions getting involved in public forums with topics like these is kind of inevitable.
      • claytongulick 2y ago
        Tone matters. I'm much more likely to listen to a person who has a calm, neutral or positive tone than someone who is screaming the same words at me. Words are only a part of human communication, and arguably not the most important part. "Can I help you?" Has a vastly different meaning depending on the tone and body language of the speaker.
        • KempyKolibri 2y ago
          That’s a different point. I claimed that Teicholz was a joke because she makes misleading and often false claims about nutrition science evidence. The response was that the critique I linked to was more of a joke, not because of its content but because of its tone. So sure, tone matters in certain contexts. If it matters more to someone than the content of what is being said to someone in the context of assessing scientific research, then I think that person has a wild way of interpreting evidence.
  • himinlomax 2y ago
    Tone is often a perfectly good signal of someone's biases. A neutral tone may hide them, but a non neutral one certainly shows them.