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2017-04-24 -Short Attention Span Theater-
How 'Settled Science' Helped Create A Massive Public Health Crisis
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Posted by DarthVader 2017-04-24 10:32|| || Front Page|| [336093 views ]  Top

#1 Exhibit #4,325,545 of why I don't trust any health or environmental issue the government tells me about.
Posted by DarthVader 2017-04-24 10:33||   2017-04-24 10:33|| Front Page Top

#2 Key point from the source article (not this one):
To reliably identify causes, as opposed to correlations, a higher standard of evidence is required: the controlled trial. In its simplest form: recruit a group of subjects, and assign half of them a diet for, say, 15 years. At the end of the trial, assess the health of those in the intervention group, versus the control group. This method is also problematic: it is virtually impossible to closely supervise the diets of large groups of people. But a properly conducted trial is the only way to conclude with any confidence that X is responsible for Y.

To my knowledge, this has NEVER been done for various diet compositions. It probably never will be done.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-04-24 10:43||   2017-04-24 10:43|| Front Page Top

#3 Words of wisdom from the source quoted in #2:
...scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.

This old saw is also relevant "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-04-24 10:47||   2017-04-24 10:47|| Front Page Top

#4 haha love the quote

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Will Rogers
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2017-04-24 10:54||   2017-04-24 10:54|| Front Page Top

#5  Executive summary:
"The experts ... aren't"
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-04-24 11:09||   2017-04-24 11:09|| Front Page Top

#6 A prominent scientist in a health related area, told me about 20 years ago that 90% of published papers in his field were worthless crap.

The reality is that a lot of bad science gets published. And then people tenaciously cling to their conclusions whatever the new evidence says, because being wrong is usually a career killer.
Posted by phil_b 2017-04-24 17:45||   2017-04-24 17:45|| Front Page Top

#7 The reality is that a lot of bad science gets published.

And the proportion is accelerating, unfortunately, especially in politicized fields.
Posted by trailing wife 2017-04-24 19:20||   2017-04-24 19:20|| Front Page Top

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