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posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-never-close-my-eyes-again dept.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes on his blog that science's biggest fail of all time is 'everything about diet and fitness':

I used to think fatty food made you fat. Now it seems the opposite is true. Eating lots of peanuts, avocados, and cheese, for example, probably decreases your appetite and keeps you thin. I used to think vitamins had been thoroughly studied for their health trade-offs. They haven’t. The reason you take one multivitamin pill a day is marketing, not science. I used to think the U.S. food pyramid was good science. In the past it was not, and I assume it is not now. I used to think drinking one glass of alcohol a day is good for health, but now I think that idea is probably just a correlation found in studies.

According to Adams, the direct problem of science is that it has been collectively steering an entire generation toward obesity, diabetes, and coronary problems. But the indirect problem might be worse: It is hard to trust science because it has a credibility issue that it earned. "I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?"

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:06PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:06PM (#141235)

    Maybe a fitbit or something like that can help you track it

    It does an excellent job of that. I'm at 2114 steps today, of course its pretty early in the day. Its got two problems:

    1) Track to perfection, but it only takes a couple months until the weekly email may as well go to the spam folder. I ran into the same problem with runkeeper, I was tracking all my urban and backwoods hikes, and eventually I'm busy and stressed and I "only have time to hike, or to runkeeper the hike, but not both" well forget tracking then I'm just going hiking. Metrics that won't be acted on are worthless.

    2) Don't work so well after a washer/dryer cycle. Haven't killed mine yet but its only a matter of time based on what my wife's done to hers and what I've heard. I ran it thru the wash last year and its still running ... for now. The key seems to be an immediate dryer cycle to dry out before electrolytic corrosion sets in. Any other response including the "vat of uncooked rice" trick seems to result, per online gossip, in a dead fitbit.

    I like the idea of "spend money get health" but it doesn't exactly work like that, at least as implemented, and there's lots of competitors with that marketing message. Probably should have just spent the money on new tires for my old bike.

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