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Science’s Biggest Fail

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Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#101

Post by protonfish »

Science is a process of understanding the world. No process or tool has yet been found to work better. When he insults science, he really means "Scientific consensus." I agree that there are huge problems with this, as consensus has little to do with science, and everything to do with mass media and government agendas. Something as politically charged as food with competing agendas of agriculture subsidies, environmental impacts, and public health and welfare is bound to be so controversial as to resist a clear message.

So Scott and I are in agreement about this: what the media and our leaders have been, are, and will continue to tell of about nutrition is probably utter nonsense. And in their attempts to shove their agenda down the public's throats, they will wave around cherry-picked questionable "science" and accuse their detractors of ignorance. That's how effective PR works.

I would see this as a failure of the press and our elected officials. Mr. Adams sees it as a failure of science. But what is his alternative? I don't know, but I do know that when somebody first tries to convince you that reason and evidence are not to be trusted, what they want to convince you of is probably not in your best interest.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#102

Post by [deleted] »

Diederich wrote: post #89

Taking a step back. The rate at which science has moved forward ever since there has been science has increased far, far more than the average human life span. Say, a few hundred years ago, it took science an average of X years to move forward enough to know that it was wrong about something. X was on the order of many human lifetimes. Today, science is moving so much more quickly. It 'finds out' it's wrong, over and…

[deleted]

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#103

Post by DanBC »

Retric wrote: post #36
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heal…

Parent post mentions "margerine".

We used to think that eating too much saturated fats caused heart disease. We switched people onto different types of fats. Tragically, we switched people onto trans-fats which we know now are terrible.

The current advice (avoid saturated fat) is questioned by some calm scientists.

It's frustrating that shifting scientific advice provides space for fucking wingnuts to spout nonsense.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#104

Post by exelius »

samspot wrote: post #80
themagician wrote: post #48

The problem with the "science" around food and fitness is that there is an underlying assumption that is wrong, and that assumption is this: There are things that are inherently good for us. Nothing belongs anywhere, and nothing exists on purpose. Nothing is "designed" for us. So many diets and fitness fads tap into this idea of what is "natural" and try to implicate that there are certain things we are supposed to d…

This begs the question of why we consider the science of evolution to be so trustworthy, while considering nutritional science untrustworthy. At least we can experiment on nutritional science. Evolution has all the same headline-grabbing power as nutrition. Nutrition is actually what I think of when considering this. I am supposed to take their word for it on this complex topic, but we can't even decide if eggs are g…

We actually know shockingly little about a lot of topics relative to our bodies. One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans. But genetics and human biological systems may only play a part of how nutrition affects us.

As an example, science is just now coming around to is that the bacteria in our intestines has a huge impact on how our body reacts to food - and that those bacteria vary wildly from person to person. Some peoples' intestinal bacteria are better at breaking down different types of fat, sugar or protein than others. Some people are lactose intolerant. Slight variations in the intestinal bacteria levels might even lead to obesity or other metabolic disorders - we just don't know because nobody's found a good way to study it yet.

The net is that the human body is far more complex an organism than I think many people realize. DNA only tells part of the story. The entire way we design studies and test hypotheses is practically prehistoric - there's so much noise in the data that we can't pick out the signal because we don't even know what to look for. We're getting better data - which is helping - but we're still flying in the dark about this subject because there's no ethical way to disassemble a living human and perform the types of horrible experiments we can perform on machines or animals.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#105

Post by api »

DanBC wrote: post #103
Retric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heal…

Parent post mentions "margerine". We used to think that eating too much saturated fats caused heart disease. We switched people onto different types of fats. Tragically, we switched people onto trans-fats which we know now are terrible. The current advice (avoid saturated fat) is questioned by some calm scientists. It's frustrating that shifting scientific advice provides space for fucking wingnuts to spout nonsense.

Shifting advice coupled with dogmatic and unflinching posturing of authority provides ample space for fucking wingnuts to spout nonsense.

It even works against religions -- this sort of thing led to the protestant reformation. "I am infallible, but the last Pope was wrong..." If you really look into the history of it, the protestants led by people like Calvin were often as bad as or worse than the Catholic Church and the understanding of theology was often quite crackpot. They gained power because the Mother Church discredited itself through hypocrisy, corruption, and self-contradiction.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#106

Post by calinet6 »

protonfish wrote: post #101

Science is a process of understanding the world. No process or tool has yet been found to work better. When he insults science, he really means "Scientific consensus." I agree that there are huge problems with this, as consensus has little to do with science, and everything to do with mass media and government agendas. Something as politically charged as food with competing agendas of agriculture subsidies, environme…

The main problem is really that people are not educated on what science is, exactly. You hint at it by separating 'scientific consensus,' but I think it's a deeper problem.

Science is not truth, and it does not produce facts; Science is the process of getting it wrong over and over again and learning from it. Science is at its core a profound respect and love of doubt and uncertainty, and the ability to live and work inside that doubt with the aim of doing something productive with what we do not yet know.

If people understood this one fact about science, they would be able to frame these issues correctly, and see this "being wrong" as what it really is: the expected function of an amazing process of advancement.

This is why I advocate for universal, complete, liberal arts education. Scientific understanding and the humanity to know how to live with it. It's our only hope.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#107

Post by thomasjudge »

Part of the problem as I see it is this (and I only have a short amount of time right now but I have a lot of thoughts on this):

Our paradigm for "science" is typically physics, in particular say newtonian mechanics. Force, mass, acceleration. 100% predictable.

However, while human diet, nutrition, metabolism are ultimately based (in some way) in physics, chemistry, biology, microbiology, diet and nutrition in the individual case are incredibly complex and clearly not fully understood phenomena.

So I think it is not exactly a failure of "science" or even the "media" at work here, but a failure to understand (which neither science nor the media has been particularly helpful on) the scope and LIMITATIONS of our knowledge and theories.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#108

Post by aetherson »

mikeash wrote: post #86
aetherson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this is deeply wrong. "The Media" is a popular punching bag, but the media largely repeats what large institutions tells it. Journalists don't (for the most part) have the skills necessary to dive deep into scientific literature. For every big "scientific" view that has an agenda behind it that either vastly overreaches the available research or lags decades behind the available research, you can general…

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that it's not the media's fault, because the media just blindly repeats whatever they're told. This is exactly why it's the media's fault! If a journalist doesn't have the skills to understand what they're reporting on, then they shouldn't be reporting on it. We wouldn't put up with a report on Afghanistan that says the place is full of Arabs because the reporter was told…

I'm sorry, but you're holding the media to an impossible standard. This isn't about "checking the CIA World Fact Book," it's "Read dozens of dense studies that assume PhD-level study in the relevant fields."

The media does light fact-checking, and it's exactly that fact-checking that allows institutions to set an agenda. If a reporter sees a press release about a new study in, say, the field of cancer, and they try to fact-check it, they're likely to go and talk to the American Cancer Society. Which, as it turns out, has a point of view about cancer that it promotes.

What the hell else is the journalist going to do? They Just Can't read up all the relevant literature -- that's a full time job, and they already have jobs.

Interview some random scientist whose name they pulled out of a hat? That's not likely to help.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#109

Post by DanBC »

exelius wrote: post #104
samspot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This begs the question of why we consider the science of evolution to be so trustworthy, while considering nutritional science untrustworthy. At least we can experiment on nutritional science. Evolution has all the same headline-grabbing power as nutrition. Nutrition is actually what I think of when considering this. I am supposed to take their word for it on this complex topic, but we can't even decide if eggs are g…

We actually know shockingly little about a lot of topics relative to our bodies. One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans. But genetics and human biological systems may only play a part of how nutrition affects us. As an example, science is just now coming around to is that the bacteria in our intestines has a huge impact on how our body reacts to food - and that those ba…

> One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans

The US has an enormous prison population. They get fed for $2.50 per day.

Is it possible to recruit prisoners ethically to take part in diet research?

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#110

Post by hga »

brianwawok wrote: post #52
TillE wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe the fact that a pill is needed to balance out a given diet, shows that you are using a given diet that the human body is not meant to sustain?

If you're an ethical Vegan, e.g. someone who does not believe in exploiting animals for your food, then the diet being "bad" like that could be legitimately remedied by supplements.
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