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'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
21–30 of 227 posts
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#22I think any study that says eating meat is unhealthy has to have a much higher standard of proof because there is so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists to fund any scientist who is willing to make that case.
> so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists
Forgive me if I fell for deadpan sarcasm... but you're joking, right?
Commercial organizations who make money from the sale of environment (natural resources, such as petrolium, animals, crops) have orders of magnitude more money to spend to fund research than organizations which seek to protect those resources.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#23[flagged]
Someone posted an archive.ph link up-thread.
[Edit] That was a bit unhelpful.
If you hit a paywall, do this:
- Copy the url you're visiting to the clipboard.
- Visit archive.ph
- Paste the URL from your clipboard, and submit the search.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#24I think any study that says eating meat is unhealthy has to have a much higher standard of proof because there is so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists to fund any scientist who is willing to make that case.
I agree but for different reasons... namely, our ancestors have lived off red meat for hundreds of thousands of years. We can still eat red meat our entire lives with minimal, or at the very least, hard to link direct consequences to our health. It can literally sustain a human for their entire lifespan - so asserting it is unhealthy should be an extremely high bar.
Not even just hundreds of thousands, but millions. At least 2.6 million, and possibly as far back as 4.5 million.
But yes, with the data being in favor of humans being meat eaters, absent any potential health consequences from such a diet (not that I personally believe there are), the science should be far more rigorous. Actually, much of it isn't science, because epidemiology is not a science any more than "computer science."
In case, if anyone here this wants some reading material, or to consider that the case against meat is anything but clear:
Behavioral Characteristics and Self-Reported Health Status among 2029 Adults Consuming a “Carnivore Diet”
https://academic.oup.com/cdn/article/5/12/nzab133/6415894
^^ To be clear, I consider this kind of research as dubious as similar studies both refuting carnivory or supporting plant-based diets. What it does do is counter the idea that humans aren't supposed to eat meat on the same level as the evidence used to support that claim.
Why Humans Eat Meat
https://www.history.com/news/why-humans-eat-meat
For 2 Million Years, Humans Ate Meat And Little Else
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
Exceptionally high δ15N values in collagen single amino acids confirm Neandertals as high-trophic level carnivores
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6421459/
Stable isotope dietary analysis of the Tianyuan 1 early modern human
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706269/
Evolutionary basis for the human diet: consequences for human health
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31733113/
Comparative Digestive Physiology
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#25I think any study that says eating meat is unhealthy has to have a much higher standard of proof because there is so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists to fund any scientist who is willing to make that case.
Meat is a $2 trillion industry globally but you're primarily worried about the corrupting influence of activists' donations?
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#26[flagged]
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could make the same argument about a study that says that meat is good.
Except that eating meat is a common activity globally for all of human history... It would be like publishing a paper that says walking upright is harmful and then people start crab walking. Like yes you can explain many back problems with walking upright, but does that actually justify a different form of walking?
> eating meat is a common activity globally for all of human history...
That's a very bold stroke, especially since most of human history is unwritten and not well understood.
This topic is "red" meat. That does not include fish, insects, and other non-red meats. The human diet was historically highly dependent upon whatever was locally available until the last 100 years (or less).
Also, the gut biomes of humans were historically very different than ours are today.
Now we have easy availability of lower quality meat (typical modern factory farmed meat which we consume larger quantities of), very different gut biomes, more sedentary lifestyles, and any number of other "new" things that make us abnormal humans in human history spectrum; so it's fair to believe that we could have some negative health effects from eating red meat.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#28I think any study that says eating meat is unhealthy has to have a much higher standard of proof because there is so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists to fund any scientist who is willing to make that case.
> so much money floating around from environmental and animal rights activists Forgive me if I fell for deadpan sarcasm... but you're joking, right? Commercial organizations who make money from the sale of environment (natural resources, such as petrolium, animals, crops) have orders of magnitude more money to spend to fund research than organizations which seek to protect those resources.
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Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#29As the replication crisis grows, or we're simply becoming more aware of it, I do wonder how much of this is due to poorly aligned incentives causing researchers to error on the side of what will get the most attention versus researchers in general simply being sloppy. Much discussion has been had on what to do if it is the former but if it is the latter, what needs to change in the education process so studies are be…
Individual studies shouldn't be the primary focus. It shouldn't fall to every individual researcher to be fully accurate and honest. This is just not possible because people are imperfect, and have all the wrong incentives in many cases. What we need is a system designed to deal with this better. My suggestion would be greater incentives to the publication of negative results, and incentives to reproduce research. Cr…
Or even requirements for replication amongst groups with separate funding sources.
If everyone needs replication for publishing, the incentive to replicate other’s work increases.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#30As the replication crisis grows, or we're simply becoming more aware of it, I do wonder how much of this is due to poorly aligned incentives causing researchers to error on the side of what will get the most attention versus researchers in general simply being sloppy. Much discussion has been had on what to do if it is the former but if it is the latter, what needs to change in the education process so studies are be…
> I do wonder how much of this is due to poorly aligned incentives causing researchers to error on the side of what will get the most attention versus researchers in general simply being sloppy.
I think we should also consider the possibility that some of it might be ideologically motivated.
For example someone who thinks people shouldn’t eat red meat due to climate change, animal rights, etc. (and who possibly belongs to a social circle where such beliefs are popular) might be motivated to fabricate results that could convince some people to eat less red meat (hypothetically, not saying that is the case here).