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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2015, @05:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2015, @05:33PM (#141909)
    Most of them are specialists and so they won't give you any useful dietary advice. They'll give you useful advice for stuff they're expert on.

    Up until recently the rest of their advice would likely have been the same shit that everyone else got wrong.

    The nutritionists, etc were supposed to be digesting all the research done by the researchers and coming up with advice that's not shit.

    By the same logic in this thread we shouldn't be trusting doctors for medical advice since they aren't scientists, and we should somehow instead take the time to be experts in the field. And sadly it actually is true in too many cases. Many doctors often don't have the time and energy left to keep up with the best and latest research.

    To me it shows there is a problem with the system. The research is out there, but nobody is doing a good job of curating it and making it known to those who need to know.
  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 06 2015, @07:01PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday February 06 2015, @07:01PM (#141945) Journal

    By the same logic in this thread we shouldn't be trusting doctors for medical advice since they aren't scientists

    No. Rather by the same logic we shouldn't blame science when the doctor fails to do his job properly. You've apparently forgotten what this thread was about.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.