Nutrition Science is a Fraud

I worked in medicine for quite a while, eventually setting up a clinical rheumatology lab, then in a while hired a fellow for that lab and transferred to research immunology, where I stayed twelve years. Our grants were from NIH. I can testify there was no skulduggery in our lab. I don't know re people in labs down the hall, but I highly doubt fooling around with data by people I knew so well. Besides, I'd have heard about it if people were messing.

On nutrition, I've followed it off and on since at least the seventies, and have watched the nutrition roller coaster rides. I somewhat get the possibilities for messing around in all that, but I also leave room that researchers were serious at the time.... but not all of them.

There was some small skulduggery by me - Ronald Reagan closed the UCLA campus. I went in to change some stuff that needed changing or we'd lose the work. Mine was the only car in the lot, our building being somewhat off the main campus. I sort of enjoyed that.

Nutrition is just more likely to get manipulated by industry than, say, paleontology. I am aware of two cases where the scientific consensus as stated by some WHO and FAO expert panel was covertly tampered by industry.

It's absurd to think that science has to be perfectly correct all the time, or it is a fraud. Science in essence is a trial and error process, learning from one's mistakes.

Just because you cannot understand something, doesn't mean it is illogical. It could mean you're in denial.

You're entitled to be paranoid.

I agree.

How do you say 'hypocrite' in French, Olivier?

You are such a stunning hypocrite, Olivier!

Isn't he, Ossobuco?

No.

It could mean that, but it doesn't. Merely, your arguments were illogical.

Thank you very much.

You wouldn't be the first denialist who thinks his detractors are illogical. The point of denial is after all precisely to forbid or deprive oneself the ability to reason logically about a particular topic, as a way to go beyond reason and beyond reasonnable doubt.

That would be you, Olivier, and farmerman, McG, Baldimo, oralloy.

Heh, what, according to you, am I denying? I'm not saying you're illogical. Your argumenti ad absurdum are illogical. Talk about being paranoid. You begin with an argument that isn't even an argumentum ad absurdum because, although it's an absurd thought that Coca Cola could subvert astronomy, if ever Coca Cola could subvert astronomy, logically, Coca Cola would be successful and astronomy would be subverted.

You then proceed to bring up astrology as an analogy to nutrition science. Since astrology is BS you're equation implies that nutrition science is BS undermining your own argument. This failed attempt at an argumentum ad absudrum is a failure of logic. Similary, you equate alchemy with chemistry. Alchemy was a protoscientific precursor to chemistry. It was not chemistry. The fraudulent nutrition science in the article I cited was science until it was revealed to be fraudulent. It wasn't protoscience. Your combining of alchemy and chemistry makes for an unapt argumentum ad absurdum making it illogical.

You then go reductio ad Hitlerum which itself is an ignoratio elenchi fallacy. The Nazi's scientific racism was a pseudoscience. The fraudulent nutrition science I've cited was not pseudoscientific. It was taken to be actual science until it was discovered to be fraudulent. Your analogy renders nutrition science a pseudoscience along the lines of scientific racism, undermining your own position in regard to the validity of nutrition science. Needless to say, this argument of yours is illogical as well.

Try putting a little more thought in your replies.

You're right, I haven't given this much actual thought, seeing as I do that it's a trivial matter.

You are just nitpicking my analogies to avoid understanding them, and in an intellectually dishonest manner. So let me change track and address the core of your error.

A science (such as nutrition science, or astronomy, or chemistry) is but a field of enquiry, a set of questions that people called "scientists" intend to explore through the use of reason and observation (aka "science"). Astronomy explores the question: "How can we explain and predict the movement of objects in the sky?" Nutrition explores the question: "What should we eat to be healthy?"

Now, if a science is a field of enquiry, it follows that a science cannot logically be a fraud, because a set of questions cannot be a fraud. What can possibly happen is that:

1) certain questions are not scientific in the sense that no amount of reason and observation can resolve them. E.g. are the Beattles better artists than the Roling Stones? And thus, anyone claiming that this is a scientific question may be a fraud, or just mistaken.

2) certain responses to the question, or certain ways to collect answers that were considered fine at some point may be abandonned later, as better theories or techniques become available. That's what happened when "alchemy" (basically the Arabic word for "chemistry") evolved into modern "chemistry": certain old procedures and theories were discarded. In this case, the discarded theories are not a fraud either, they are just superseeded by some other, better theory.

3) certain scientists are dishonest and go about responding the questions in a fraudulent manner. This is apparently what bugged you about nutrition.In this case, these specific scientists are dishonest, not of course their field of enquiry, and not other scientists in their field either.

So at most you could conclude that certain nutritionists from Harvard were frauds, in that they were co-opted by industry and not impartial in their research. But you have no ground to consider the entire field of nutrition as a fraud (that would be logically absurd, since a mere field of enquiry cannot be fraudulent). And it is downright immoral of you to call honest nutritionists across the globe frauds just because you happen know of ONE nutritionist who was a fraud.

I trust that clarifies my position, better than a few metaphors could.

Thanks for clarifying your position.

Science isn't purely a field of inquiry, though. It also involves conclusions into those inquiries and those conclusions are often used to build other conclusions. It stands to reason that anywhere along that line, if there are fraudulent conclusions, then other conclusions based on those are also fraudulent. It has nothing to do with the honesty of individual inquirers. It has to do with the validity of the entire scientific process, not just the initial stage of inquiry. When you read my thread title you took it as an ad hominem attack on these inquirers. Don't be so emotional.

Who wouldn't read your thread title that way? Try reading it again.

And when it is discovered that some researcher has published fraudulent reports, what prevents other researchers from checking and rechecking his work to identify the mistakes or forgery therein?

The scientific method goes by trial and error. It BUILDS upon past mistakes. It is geared to constantly criticize earlier findings and theories. It differs from religion this way. In science there's no blind faith in any dogma from the past. There's constant checking and rechecking.

It reads "Nutrition Science is a Fraud," not "Nutrition Scientists are Frauds."

Sure, but in regard to nutrition science, industry interests have been, and continue to be, enmeshed in the entire enterprise. Because of this, I don't have the trust in science nutrition that I do in paleontology.

That's how I also look at it.