When science becomes driven by political agendas it ceases to be science.
'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
31–40 of 227 posts
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#32I 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.
The standard of proof should be conducting actual science, not epidemiology or surveys. Epidemiology is good for some things, but as someone with an ongoing interest in health and especially metabolism, I don't believe epidemiology is very good at all for assessing what's optimal for human health unless the datapoints are overwhelming (ex. smokers have tar in their lungs that is rarely found in non smokers). Such evi…
> What meat eating has that other diets don't have is not just the phenotype of our digestive systems (being like that of other meat eaters), or archaeological evidence of our ancestors using sharp tools and arrows, but stable isotope testing of fossil evidence linking our recent ancestors to a substantial amount of meat eating for around 4 million years.
How would that invalidate research showing, for example, a link between certain cancers and the consumption of red meat? That some behaviour produces a competitive advantage at one time does not mean it comes without risk, nor that newer behaviours aren't better in some or even all ways, nor that it would remain advantageous for all time.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#33As 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…
"Poorly aligned incentives" in the nutritional sciences is, as far as I can tell, mostly various food lobbies getting their product to look good.
The reason there is "confusion" about whether many animal products are good or bad is because the corporations making billions of dollars off the product fund biased research.
Consider looking at the research digests from a non-profit (that sells no products, has no ads, etc) focusing on improving your health: https://nutritionfacts.org/
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#34As 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…
> It shouldn't fall to every individual researcher to be fully... honest.
Really? I don't know, "Don't be a fraud" might be a good Rule No. 1
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#35Of the lead author of this critical letter, the article says:
"In her initial correspondence with The Lancet, Stanton declared that she was a part-time employee of Devenish Nutrition, an agricultural-technology and animal-feed company in which she also holds shares."
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Also the quantity and dietary proportion of meat consumed has changed significantly. People may have eaten meat long ago, but it wasn't the staple nor a daily part of the meal for most people.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what needs to change in the education process so studies are better designed Remove politics, free kidnapped and gagged science.
Politics and education are certainly factors, but I would argue that they are minor. The bigger issue is the natural incentive structures that academia has created. If you want to have a career, you get both attention and funding in return for headline-grabbing results. This creates two huge second-order effects: first, everyone's incentivized to look for big impressive new effects. Second, focusing on confirmatory w…
If we assign grant points to people that flood the precious journal space with fake articles claiming over-hyped promises, maybe we should give grant points also to the people able to spot the lies on those kind of articles.
After all they are serving to the advance of science also (and saving thousands of expensive hours of research to other). If you want to promote it, just create incentives.
Otherwise, If the cheater wins in a 95% of the times and the verifier does not have anything to gain (and will damage their own research by the time invested on this) after a while only cheaters remain [1]. At middle term, all research tend towards a sort of expensive shamanism in well illuminated white rooms.
[1] (And of course the non cheaters will be actively blocked from this point).
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#38Earlier 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?
Or it could be like publishing a paper that says smoking tobacco is harmful and then people cut down their smoking and… become healthier.
Like yes you can explain many airway problems with smoking, but does that actually justify not smoking?
I hope that helps show that injecting such obvious bias into your examples introduces obvious weaknesses, too.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#39As 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…
Despite his dubious past, the billionaire John Arnold has focused time and money to amend scientific research. I've read maybe 2 years ago about that endeavor and followed him on Twitter ; I found it quite interesting and original. For example, he offers researchers to save their initial data (before any screening) so that other researchers can check which cases were thrown out of the study. He also funded reproduction tests. I haven't followed since, so I hope he kept on doing good work.
Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
#40As 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 belon…
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