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Science’s Biggest Fail

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Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#21

Post by jellicle »

FreezerburnV wrote: post #5
astrodust wrote: post #3

This really seems like confusing science with science headlines in the newspaper.

And yet, for a while now, the general "scientific consensus" has been "fat is bad for you", while recently it seems to be changing to "wait, fat isn't as terrible for you as we though, and could actually be quite healthy". I'm pretty sure the "fat is bad for you" stuff wasn't just science headlines in a newspaper for the past however many years. This is the main thing that he is talking about, where something makes i…

Do any of your links have anything to do with science, or just libertarian marketing? (Lie to people, take their money, and retire.)

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#22

Post by Synaesthesia »

The major problem is the influence of big corporations in funding studies and promoting certain points of view for their own benefit. This is a huge problem in the food industry and also the drugs and medicine business.

If you look at the history of the popularity of vitamins, orange juice, the promotion of carbohydrates and sugars over fats and proteins etc.

Not a problem with Science per se.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#23

Post by gadders »

dragonwriter wrote: post #6
FreezerburnV wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, for a while now, the general "scientific consensus" has been "fat is bad for you", while recently it seems to be changing to "wait, fat isn't as terrible for you as we though, and could actually be quite healthy". I'm pretty sure the "fat is bad for you" stuff wasn't just science headlines in a newspaper for the past however many years. This is the main thing that he is talking about, where something makes i…

> And yet, for a while now, the general "scientific consensus" has been "fat is bad for you", No, it hasn't. The general scientific consensus may have been that most Americans are consuming fat in general, and certain varieties of fat in particular, at levels which are unhealthy , and therefore that most Americans would be better off reducing fat intake in general, and certain common varieties of fat intake in partic…

>>The general scientific consensus may have been that most Americans are consuming fat in general, and certain varieties of fat in particular, at levels which are unhealthy, and therefore that most Americans would be better off reducing fat intake in general, and certain common varieties of fat intake in particular.

Unfortunately, Ancel Keys etc were recommending vegetable based fats over animal ones, and ironically it's the animal based fats that tend to be healthier. They were also recommending that a lot of the fat in the diet be replaced by carbohydrate sources, which caused its own issues.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#24

Post by jerf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #12
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this has been shown to be unproven, right? That was all over this forum a month ago - thousands of studies and no smoking gun. Fat isn't bad; obesity is bad.

> And this has been shown to be unproven, right? On the specific issue of saturated fat and heart disease (saturated fat isn't the only problem fat -- trans fats are also an issue), its been shown to be more complicated than earlier thought; there's pretty strong evidence that certain high-saturated-fat foodstuffs are associated with higher risk of heart disease, but some large scale studies that seem to indicate tha…

But you've given away Scott's point. We've been listening to how bad saturated fat is for my entire lifetime pounded into the public with the maximum volume science has available to it at the highest governmental and science authority levels, and now, oops, mea culpa, it's more complicated than we thought, and right now it's not exactly out of the question that "saturated fat" will be entirely removed from the "bad thing" or even "consumed too much by Americans" column in another 10 to 20 years.

No matter how upset you get about people being a bit glib about what the consensus said (and frankly I'm not sure I couldn't establish "science said saturated fat is bad, full stop" with just a bit more effort than I'm willing to put in right now), you can't get out of the fact that the pounding was apparently unjustified, and there's a nontrivial chance it was flat-out wrong. Science and scientists shouldn't expect to escape from those decades of being wrong at maximum volume and the corresponding vicious evils inflicted on the world (because after all the US consensus has been exported all over the world), and it would be utterly and completely irrational for me not to update my beliefs based on this evidence.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#25

Post by TillE »

FreezerburnV wrote: post #4
hga wrote: post #2

Two nits: I used to think vitamins had been thoroughly studied for their health trade-offs. They haven’t. The reason you take one multivitamin pill a day is marketing, not science. One reason to take the latter is to make sure you don't get a deficiency disease. I used to think I needed to drink a crazy-large amount of water each day, because smart people said so, but that wasn’t science either. I don't know about "c…

One reason to take the latter is to make sure you don't get a deficiency disease. And yet, what has started to come out (from what I understand and have read) is that taking a straight up multivitamin or something isn't that helpful. The general reason people seem to be finding being that the body doesn't absorb the stuff in the pill you just took very well, meaning you really aren't getting much benefit, if any, fro…

I'm not sure what specifically you could be referring to. In fact, for vegans it can be easier to sometimes take supplements that have iron and vitamin C in one package, rather than carefully preparing a meal so that you're eating both plant-derived iron and vitamin C at roughly the same time.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#26

Post by evv »

api wrote: post #17
mcphage wrote: post #16

Doing science is a lot like making sausages. There's a lot of conjecture, hypothesizing, testing, making observations, generating theories, testing those theories, throwing out the ones that don't hold up to repeatable studies. I don't think nutrition is unique in that matter. Where it differs from other sciences are: 1. The general public is very interested in the results, and so there's a lot of motivation for peop…

Insufficient repetition is a huge problem in medical science. There is no incentive to replicate existing studies, as it doesn't advance your career. A related problem is that there is no incentive to publish negative results.

Exactly. Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong. Especially with medical science.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#27

Post by api »

evv wrote: post #26
api wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insufficient repetition is a huge problem in medical science. There is no incentive to replicate existing studies, as it doesn't advance your career. A related problem is that there is no incentive to publish negative results.

Exactly. Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong. Especially with medical science.

Personally I think medical science and the health care industry are so broken that they should just be rebooted from scratch.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#28

Post by gadders »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #22

The major problem is the influence of big corporations in funding studies and promoting certain points of view for their own benefit. This is a huge problem in the food industry and also the drugs and medicine business. If you look at the history of the popularity of vitamins, orange juice, the promotion of carbohydrates and sugars over fats and proteins etc. Not a problem with Science per se.

The promotion of carbohydrates over fat by Ancel Keys wasn't due to promotion by business interests. It was more due to him taking some partial evidence and making more of it than was warranted for personal aggrandisment.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#29

Post by themodelplumber »

mcphage wrote: post #16

Doing science is a lot like making sausages. There's a lot of conjecture, hypothesizing, testing, making observations, generating theories, testing those theories, throwing out the ones that don't hold up to repeatable studies. I don't think nutrition is unique in that matter. Where it differs from other sciences are: 1. The general public is very interested in the results, and so there's a lot of motivation for peop…

> And yet the needle moves forward, slowly.

This is the expected input; candidate scientists are told to only expect to move their field forward by a tiny amount.

The expected output, however, is off the charts. Every time I see one of those "Here's what NASA has contributed to the consumer lifestyle" news pieces, I cringe. There is way too much unhealthy pressure on scientists to say, "well, look what we did!"

The general path of science is much more like a progressive series of "hmmm. HMMM!"s than these astounding chains of discrete discoveries that people are being conditioned to expect. But I guess when money has to pay for science, and tax money to boot, a certain type of person needs the dog and pony show. Bah.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#30

Post by asynchronous13 »

FreezerburnV wrote: post #5
astrodust wrote: post #3

This really seems like confusing science with science headlines in the newspaper.

And yet, for a while now, the general "scientific consensus" has been "fat is bad for you", while recently it seems to be changing to "wait, fat isn't as terrible for you as we though, and could actually be quite healthy". I'm pretty sure the "fat is bad for you" stuff wasn't just science headlines in a newspaper for the past however many years. This is the main thing that he is talking about, where something makes i…

I have a parent who was a dietician. I can tell you that for at least 35 years the scientific consensus has been that some fats are good for you. Every time a new fad diet rolled through the news headlines I would get a lecture about how stupid the new fad was and how to properly eat a healthy diet.

If you believe the headlines, however, you'd never know that the science hasn't changed.

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