Liz,
Thanks for digging into this. I haven't gotten to the remarks by Dayton in the book yet, but your quote from it makes sense to me.
The appeal to authority, however, does not. Presumably, Dr.s Davis and Perlmutter's books both went through a vetting process, and yet, they destroyed their credibility as spokespeople (to anyone who does a google search) for the cause they're passionate about. Lierre Keith (The Vegetarian Myth) suffered the same fate due to poor scholarship. OTOH, Denise Minger, with no academic credentials, destroyed the life's work of a respected academic,
on her own blog, without peer review (presumably, but I might be wrong). She further trounced him (with help from Dr. Chris Masterjohn) everywhere Campbell popped his head up on the internet — on blogs. Zoe Harcombe is also self-educated, but hers is the first site I go to when I see a study spouting the nutritional dogma that's hurt 3 generations.
Quote:
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Even if the original paper were trying to demonstrate that the Masai had a unique physiological makeup that they could eat meat and milk to the near exclusion of other foods, could the data not be examined in support of an alternate hypothesis? Is that somehow dishonest?
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Honestly, I think not. How can you control for a genetic predisposition in the wild? Even if city-migrant Masai developed the "diseases of civilization," you can't infer causality with just an observational study. Sure, it fits with the carb-heart-disease hypothesis, but it's not scientific data.
I'll keep plowing through ABFS, but aside from Taubes, Masterjohn, Kresser, Eades, Harcomb, Briffa, and even Paul Jaminet, I've become very wary of the the evidence used to promote the "carbs are the culprit" disease hypothesis.