Science’s Biggest Fail • Hacker News Board

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#121

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #120

Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current science does suggest eating too much fat is still bad. EX: "The American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee strongly advises these fat guidelines for healthy Americans over age 2: •Eating between 25 and 35 percent of your total daily calories as fats from foods like fish, nuts, and vegetable oils." http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Cholesterol/Prevent... Note both the lower and upper bound. Ea…

According to that page you need to lower saturated fat to 5%-6% of calories. I'm suggesting that current science does not support the connection between saturated fat and heart disease. Nor does current science support their recommendation to cut salt. The AHA recommendations have been a dietary disaster for 30 years because they suggest that low fat food can be eaten without consequence, which has led to a massive u…

> According to that page you need to lower saturated fat to 5%-6% of calories. I'm suggesting that current science does not support the connection between saturated fat and heart disease.

Studies, including recent ones, show that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat reduces cardiovascular disease risk (IIRC, in both sexes, but moreso in men than women.) Mostly, what's changed is that we now also have evidence that replacing saturated fat with trans fat or carbohydrates is, at best, no better than just staying with saturated fat.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#122

Post by dthal » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

Science has more and less reliable disciplines. In particular, in any field in which meaningful experiments are difficult or impossible to perform, causality will be hard to pin down. It just so happens that many of the topics the public is most interested in - health and nutrition, psychology, economics and, yes, climate - fall into that category.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#123

Post by themagician » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

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…

If you ask the question, "Is good or bad for us," you're going to have a bad time. The answer is almost always going to be "bad" as we define it. Even the most basic things that we need are bad for us when consumed in excessive quantities.

A better question would be, "How bad are eggs for me, given my specific genetics?" We can't really answer that question yet. Perhaps in the future.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#124

Post by knice » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

Asking science to refute marketing claims is a huge distraction for science.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#125

Post by threatofrain » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

I think the blame is on the fact that the scientific community does not have much power in the media, and is instead the puppet of the news media. But then again, all facts are puppets of the news station, made to be framed in any way that fits into any kind of narrative.

The overwhelmingly dominant interface non-university people have with science is through news media. How else are you going to get your facts? By going out to different countries by yourself? By researching into all areas of interest? That's insane.

The top four salient science media personalities are probably Bill Nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, and Dr Phil. Though, I wouldn't say that any of these people hold a candle to Bill 'O Reilly or Rush Limbaugh in terms of influence over public attitudes and opinions on science, and that's the problem.

Science, in the eyes of the many, is just another fact in a news media report, and it can go any way the host or reporter wants it to.

Yes, science has been inconsistent. Yes, science media personalities have been belligerent or not diplomatic on camera. Yes, there has been corruption of metrics and statistics. But... it just doesn't hold a candle to Bill O' Reilly. Or Sarah Palin, for that matter.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#126

Post by muaddirac » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:39 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

I found out recently that Scott Adams doesn't believe in evolution, which rather colours my response to this headline. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

He has some odd ideas about science.

The end of his book "The Dilbert Future" calls for "new ways of looking at existing things." And then claims that all of science is just "looking at things" which, he points out, is pretty unreliable, and that we need to improve our ability to perceive the universe in order to move forward in science. Of note is that he doesn't consider technologies which enhance our perception to be actually doing that (microscopes, telescopes, and other types of sensors are just more forms of "seeing" to him, and are lacking).

He then rather poorly explains double slit experiment and suggests that the arrow of time might just be a figment of your imagination, as well as the motion of objects in general, and gravity.

He skirts around the idea that looking at existing ideas in new ways can be important (who would deny that?) but then devolves into useless examples, claiming that instead of gravity "existing", everything in the universe could just be expanding at just the right rate to create the illusion of gravity. He questions causal relationships and posits something no better than leibniz's monads.

I've derailed a bit here, but man, that book irked me.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#127

Post by themagician » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:40 PM UTC

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…

Excellent points.

I think what it really highlights is that, for most food items, there is no right or wrong answer as to how good/bad it is for you. There is some directional information, but even that should be taken with limited confidence.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#128

Post by titanomachy » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

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…

My takeaway from the article wasn't "science is broken", but "we should be more understanding of people who mistrust science". That interpretation reflects my own biases, of course.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#129

Post by JabavuAdams » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

kin wrote: post #60

I subscribed to Men's Health for over 5 years. I read every issue and many times headlines would contradict one another. Many of the headlines were based on studies from what felt like arbitrary Universities or Research Centers. It's pretty much the equivalent of click bait. When you read past the big letters and highlighted sections you see clearly that the studies aren't scientific at all. Their sample size is alwa…

Men's Health is not a scientific publication. The point is that nutrition is a multi-billion dollar industry. That corrupts the science.

Hey I want to make a new product that X segment will like. Can you guys go find some science that backs this up?

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#130

Post by JabavuAdams » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

Nutrition is a weird example to pick on, because it's dominated by marketing, financial interest, media mis-reporting etc.

Nutrition works like this: your boss reads an article in some rag and thinks that there might be an opportunity to target a new market. They tell you to go find some studies or something that could back up your claims. Usually, this would not survive any kind of rigorous scientific investigation -- but it sounds good enough to use for marketing.

Done. There's precious little science in nutrition. Just follow the money.

EDIT> I remember the eighties and the beginning of the whole low-fat craze. It was clearly a marketing push, not anything based on reputable science. Hey our product contains Plutonium, but no fat. So, let's emphasize the positive.