Science: mired in wrong thinking
 

It's not about nutrition, but I think it illustrates the same challenges.

How bad science misled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients



My bold. Because that is what we are dealing with in nutrition science, too.

It is very clear to me now that science is just another institution to be corrupted by big business to increase their profits. Not that this is news to anyone here, but it explains how so many people have no tools at all for evaluating information by themselves; and the stuff they get from "the news" is another layer of agenda on top of the original agenda.

I have begun explaining to people why I don't believe bad science, and I explain what bad science is. It is astonishing to people who are used to believing headlines; and sometimes, it gets them to see why that is such a bad idea.

Vegans are my personal irritant; and they have planted the seed in a lot of heads this their way is the healthiest way; when it is probably the worst!

But take heart: debunking such has always been difficult, and it is getting easier.

I'm sad to have become a science skeptic, because science has always seemed like the last bastion of progress. Hypothesis + experiment = truth.

Now it's way complicated, with economic reality imposing itself on what and how things get investigated. And results? Plopped into the lap of writers who spin the language however the headlines or bestselling titles favor.

Linked to? Yeah, right. Associated with? Don't go there. Cancer breakthrough? Not so fast, buddy.

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. Closer than most. :D

I'm not a science skeptic at all. I just am on the lookout for junk science.

Since science is an activity defined and practiced by humans it is subject to all the flaws and weaknesses to which humans are subject including but not limited to arrogance, narrow mindedness, greed, preserving one's reputation, attaining power. Then junk science becomes entangled with junk journalism and the result is a catastrophe like so called nutrition science or what Richard Feinman calls an oxymoron.

Jean

Well stated. Today, many conflicting agendas (hidden or not) confound what could be good science. It's up to the individual to make that interpretation, as the ever-helpful media is in the agenda game more than ever nowadays.