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Science’s Biggest Fail

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Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#31

Post by fidotron »

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.

It's not just corporations. Science funding, generally, is far too tied to producing results that fit with the preconceptions of the group with the money. Combined with peer review being a frighteningly effective mechanism for enforcing the status quo, and it's unsurprising that once an idea is entrenched moving away becomes nearly impossible.

The underlying problem is an insufficient diversity in sources of funding for science. Scientists are people, and most just want as safe a career as science allows, which isn't very safe at all. Rocking the boat is, for them, a bad idea.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#32

Post by hyperion2010 »

One reason for this is that the field of nutrition science is a complete circle jerk. They, like many other fields, only peer review internally, they have their pet hypotheses that they repeatedly validate with crappy statistics (because that's the standard for the field!) and postdocs alsmost never come from other fields. I read a piece detail this awhile back, can't seem to find the link now.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#33

Post by gadders »

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…

The whole reason trans fats were invented or added to food is that food manufacturers needed a hard fat with the properties of animal fat that came from a vegetable source. The reason for that is scientists claiming that animal fat was bad for you.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#34

Post by temuze »

People have always been pretty irrational about health. From the Greek beliefs of bloodletting/leechs to Edyptian amulets to homeopathy, we've associated taking X + some time => healthy.

But that's the thing - our health can improve after receiving bad or neutral treatment because of time, which makes it really easy to confuse correlation with causation. When it comes to health, we easily fall prey to placebo effects.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#35

Post by wutbrodo »

> But can we stop being surprised when people don’t believe science? Humans can’t turn off pattern recognition.

Jesus, I hate this line of thinking. It essentially boils down to "we're all just monkeys". Pattern recognition is the same thing behind a lot of in-practice racism[1], and yet no one would claim that one's actions should reflect racism just because our basest instincts do. We have a frontal lobe for a reason.

Similarly, I can be aware that science may be wrong and still understand that, at this point in time, believing the alternatives has a higher chance of being wrong. Modulo widespread issues in study methodology etc (which may be a concern in some fields, but not really what this article is talking about), the principles underlying the scientific method are actually pretty easy to understand without any domain knowledge (of either the specific field or of study design/stats/etc).

[1] It's a straightforward example of "pattern recognition" to reduce a person to one of their most striking and visible physical characteristics, like skin color, and then act towards them as a member of that group instead of a full, multi-faceted person.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#36

Post by Retric »

api wrote: post #20
TTPrograms wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame is misplaced here, though. There's no real avenue for science to interact with the public currently (except for /r/AskScience, which is a terrific development). A vast majority of the misleading described is perpetuated by news headlines ending in question marks and "doctors" with mail order degrees trying to sell books. If there's any blame to be placed on scientific institutions it's not that they are bad…

What about cases where prestigious scientific institutions have deeply held and advanced utterly wrong ideas for decades? Nutritional science is particularly bad in this regard. The recommendations that were advanced from (roughly) the 70s through the 90s lead to obesity and heart disease. One thing in particular comes to mind: margarine. I understand the nature of scientific theory, and that scientific theory is not…

The view on Fat moved a lot less than you might think.

People used to eat a lot of fat which we still think is a bad idea. More recently we found that eating too little fat was also a bad idea.

As to dietary guidelines, if you pick a target for a 2,000 calorie diet and someone on a 5,000 calorie a day diet tries to hit that same target there is a clear miscommunication going on. And yes, you can eat a relatively healthy 5,000 calorie a day diet if you’re tall and active enough. Or, you can rapidly become morbidly obese on 3k/day if you’re short and inactive.

PS: I would suggest to most people that they talk with a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN). Diet is far from a one size fit's all thing.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#37

Post by aetherson »

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.

You say that like "Science" is a thing. It's not. There is no platonic "science" that exists independently of the human institutions actually doing science. To imagine there is is to make science into a religion.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#38

Post by amass »

Movements or fads like Avocado-based diets or the practice of drinking one glass of alcohol a day are really hard to justify scientifically because the human body has such a multitude of variables. It's almost impossible to test the effects of such a diet ceteris paribus. So I'm not sure if "science" can really be blamed. The general public wants a simple and easy solution, so the "science headlines" are going to try to give such a solution with half-proven theories and loosely-correlated results.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#39

Post by wutbrodo »

api wrote: post #11

"I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?" I'm really happy to see that someone else sees this. I've been harping on this for a long time -- that the reason people believe things like anti-vaxx propaganda is not because they are idiots but because scientific authorities, the media, and the medical…

> Believing such things and perpetuating them is an act of (often subconscious) protest -- akin to things like calling yourself a "Satanist" in protest against fundamentalist religion. You might call these kinds of things "protest beliefs."

This is fascinating to me. I've read ample studies about how people do this, and I can't understand it as anything but the worst form of petulant childishness. Changing which FACTS you believe in because of personal reasons? I suppose this excludes people who don't actually believe them but just say they do, but then I guess those people aren't just stupid, they're just kind of dicks...

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#40

Post by Alupis »

The problem is, most scientists say "We have evidence today to suggest ..." and most average-joe's hear "This is the absolute truth and everything else is wrong".

Science is an evolution. What's "right" today might be proven wrong tomorrow (after more studies and research are done) -- and science is one of the only fields that admits that they got it wrong previously.

Average-joe's just want someone to tell them "what is right" and leave it at that. Unfortunately that's just not how good science works.

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