When I read the article in The Atlantic, I hoped someone would rebut it. There was no comment section under The Atlantic article, but if there had been, I wanted to ask: "Since we evolved for millions of years eating animals, please explain why saturated fat is bad for us?"
I'm happy that "vegetable oils" are now being called "seed oils". Most people who don't take the time to analyze food sources and nutrition think it is derived from vegetables, and vegetables are good for you, so... Great research, Gary: thank you!
I get your point, but should all vegetable/plant oils be lumped together as seed oils to be promoted or condemned together as of the same lot?There seems to be a difference, and thus maybe we should retain some distinction, between olive and coconut oils and soy, corn, and cottonseed oils.
You are right that there IS a difference - a big one. Both olives and coconuts are fruits. I use a lot of macadamia oil, which is a nut - and not processed with damaging heat.
Soy/soya oil, is made from soybeans, which are legumes. There is a lot of debate whether soy oil is 'healthier' than seed oil, but one still has to worry about GMO, pesticides, glyphosate and heat extraction. Stick with olive, nut and coconut oils, Dean - all very healthy!
That generalization would not be correct. It is wrong, in my opinion, to call seed oils "vegetable oils" because it implies that the oil is as healthy as broccoli or spinach. Seeds are not unhealthy at all in moderate quantities, but seed oils are a concentrated product of massive amounts of cheap, oily seed - mostly GMO - and grown with huge amounts of pesticide and glyphosate. To add insult to injury, the extraction process involves intense heat which alters the molecular structure, and solvents.
Grain is seed, and sometimes it is GMO. Unless organic, it is grown with pesticide and glyphosate, both of which remain in the product. I cannot say if it is healthy or not, but I have not eaten any grain for over 5 years, and I am now in a far better state of health than I was 10 years ago. My 'layman' opinion is that some people do well on it, and others cannot be well with it. Omitting it from the modern diet is excruciatingly hard, but I recommend it for anyone who has a chronic health problem or aiming for the best health possible.
An AHA/ASA article, "Forecasting the Burden of Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in the United States Through 2050—Prevalence of Risk Factors and Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association," (2024) by Karen E. Joynt Maddox, et al, has a chart showing the decline in projected cholesterol, and a projected increase in diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. They project that by 2050, hypertension will affect 60% from 50% today. Then in another chart, it shows total cardiovascular disease raising from about 11% to 15% of the population. In the concluding section they recognize that the reduction of cholesterol and the increases in obesity might be due to the overall reduction in fat consumption and the increase in sugar consumption. Thought you might be interested.
GaryE: what I don’t understand is how this very reasonable forecast stands, but directly contradicts the current medical dogma of the diet heart hypothesis. Isn’t there a massive level of cognitive dissonance going on??? If not, why not?
Around 1970, the US medical powers that be, decided that the unproven lipid hypothesis as cause of cardiovascular disease should be standard treatment over and against the sugar hypothesis. So, the focus has been to lower dietary saturated fats and cholesterol, as well as, using cholesterol lowering drugs. This has been the practice for more than 50 years now. The lipid hypothesis remains a hypothesis--un proven. There is no cognitive dissonance, just a bad judgment. I personally rejected the lipid hypothesis when I turned 65, with high cholesterol and and arthritis in both hips and lower back--thought to be a candidate for hip replacement. Now at 81, with a diet high in saturated fat I am "healthy as a horse" and play competitive pickleball with people 10 to 15 years younger--and still have my natural hips. But then, I'm told that I'm simply an anomaly. Maybe, maybe not.
Not an anomaly. I started eating high fat (low carb) several years ago under Dr Westman at Duke. My cholesterol is much improved, especially the HDL. After decades of doctors telling me “it is virtually impossible to improve your HDL’
translation:we don’t have a pill for that. my joints are much better, tho I have arthritis. I walk several miles most days and love my Pilates classes. I will turn 79 next week. I think there is corruption at the bottom of it, rather than bad judgment. 50 years.
Concerning arthritis, I started eating fermented vegetables to help reduce inflammation and bone broth to help heal the arthritis. When I was 65 I was walking with a cane because of arthritis in both hips and lower back. It took about 5 years to walk without pain, but now at age 81 I'm playing competitive pickleball about 4 hours per week. I also found that supplementing copper through the skin helps with collagen production.
Bravo Gary! I've eaten the opposite of the Dietary Guidelines for decades and my CAC is zero, BMI <25 and HbA1c 5.4% - pretty sure I'd be another fat Type 2 if I'd eaten their way. It's nice to know someone knows why!
I'm sure Tayag will take this criticism under consideration. 🙄 No, she's there to parrot the shallow conclusions of the "experts."
Anti seed oil crowd is definitely growing, and it's a good thing. It is a modern experiment that is correlated with health disaster. But I love how Gary and Nina stick to the root: all the bad guidelines and subsequent poor health outcomes stem from the myth that saturated fat is bad for you. RFK doesn't believe that, which is a great thing.
But I'm not holding my breath that the entrenched government apparatus will allow any of the conventional wisdom to change. The guidelines and status quo will stay the same. They're in too deep.
Enormously helpful article, Gary, as usual, and a helpful reminder of all the entertaining reading your books have given me. Despite the clarity of your writing, sometimes the sheer volume of this stuff makes things so complicated, I can restore my skeptical-but-not-cynical decision to eat tallow instead of seed oils only by remembering that our species drove megafauna to extinction by seeking meat to keep us alive. This is a version of the Handler "vast nutritional experiment" argument you cite, I think. Does this megafauna argument make sense, or is it more like closing one's eyes to escape monsters in the dark?
Re megafauna argument, yes, it does as does the simple observation that we evolved eating meat. But the counterargument would be not that much and a different kind of meat. There's a quasi-legitimate counterargument to everything in these controversies. When I was in college I took a systems engineering class my senior year. The professor used to end virtually every class (as I recall) by saying "you pays your money, you takes your chances." I think those are words to live by.
'I remember when I graduated from medical school, the dean told our class, “What we have just taught you was the most up-to-date information about medicine. Unfortunately, 50% of what we taught you was wrong. Your job is to figure out which 50% was wrong.”
'I remember feeling stunned at the Dean’s admission. Now, 26 years later, I think the dean was too conservative. Now I feel that approximately 75% of what I was taught was wrong'.
As for meat-eating, I think the situation with us humans is very complicated and messy. Zebras and antelopes are descended from millions of generations of ungulates, all of which ate grass and similar stuff. (Echh). Lions and wolves are descended from millions of generations of essentially obligate carnivores.
But our ancestors a few million years ago were forest apes eating a similar diet to that of modern chimps. Mostly leaves, some fruit, and the occasional unfortunate monkey or lemur. (It's all calories, and meat-sharing helps define dominance hierarchies).
Then, in no more than a million years or so, those almost-Vegan apes came down to the floor, stood upright, fashioned tools and weapons, and began killing and eating whole ungulates! The large ape stomach and intestines shrank, the brain grew, and the erstwhile climbers became champion marathon runners. Today human stomach acid is more acid (lower pH) than those of lions, tigers and wolves - and similar to those of hyenas and vultures. We evolved, not just into carnivores, but into carrion-eaters.
So nothing about human nutrition is simple, if only because we began as one thing and evolved into almost the extreme opposite. The human digestive system is a work in progress.
It is complicated to start with - but then comes all the obfuscation, special pleading, and actual downright lying.
As Upton Sinclair famously said over a century ago, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".
One of the most important things ever said about our society.
Gary I love your work and thank you for it. I’m retiring from 41 years practicing interventional cardiology in Mississippi (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel here if you get my meaning). My parting words to my patients is usually “eat high protein, low carb, and NO sugar!” So my question to you is this: why don’t you ever quote Robert Lustig? You are both on the same team. He has been trying to educate doctors like me and the general public about the same issues for years. He has made important (for me) connections between LDL particles size, insulin, carbohydrate consumption, and atherosclerosis. And I think it is odd that you don’t promote a widely published expert who has basically reached the same conclusions that you have.
Robert Lustig was one of the first authors I read during my health journey. I didn't quite understand what he was getting at the time. However, now that more light has been shined on the role of fructose, I have a better understanding of what he was gettin at.
Back in 2011, Norwegian animal scientists hypothesized that reductions in heavy metal release into the environment may be largely responsible for the dramatic decrease in heart attack deaths. They wrote, "If this hypothesis is correct, it means that lead, which is the most abundant of these toxic metals when considering both its average abundance in the Earth's continental crust and as an environmental pollutant, could have been more important than any other toxic metal as a contributory cause of LDL oxidation, atheromatosis and coronary heart disease. This hypothesis would appear to be in reasonably good agreement with what is known about the historical curves both for coronary heart disease mortality and for the use of lead as an additive in gasoline in Western Europe, compared to North America. The use of lead as an additive in gasoline started earlier and ended earlier in the United States than it did in the countries of Western Europe. And the epidemic of coronary heart disease has followed a similar time course with both its start and its culmination occurring earlier in the United States than in Western Europe. (web search - Anna Haug Animal Products)
So grateful for Mr. Taubes' independent, science-based health reporting. Heeding his dietary wisdom is likely why, at age 64, I have a CAC of 0,”frustratingly perfect" labs (say the docs), and no need for pharmaceuticals.
My biggest takeaway from this article: Seek out and heed the INDEPENDENT researchers and journalists, because the corporate stronghold on information will be the death of us all.
I just wish your writing had more bulldog, ie bite. I appreciate the need for civility. However, I have ADHD of the inattentive kind, and It would be helpful in keeping my attention if you got to your points more directly. They are all excellent points! And clearly organized and well presented. It’s ok if Taytag feels uncomfortable — or even shamed — by your expose. Isn’t that the point?
I'm on the fence about the bite. Having been on the receiving end, I prefer more civil discussions. I suppose she will feel uncomfortable one way or the other--or at least I hope so--but I can't say that if I were in her position, I'd have done any better or differently. I hope so, but...
Thank you for your reply. I appreciated the civility! Your recent note about Nina’s admirable takedown of the new guidelines had some language I’d encourage more of: “inexcusably bad science”. Was that the phrase? Admitting dejection at the thought of wading through so much junk. I liked your tone. Either way you don’t let them off the hook for a minute.
I love your civil style, Gary. Please don't change. I also read Malcolm Kendrick, and have recommended his "The Clot Thickens" to people. My brother wouldn't read past the first page because of Dr. Kendrick's sarcastic style. Those of us who know him can ignore that, but if you're trying to interest someone in these "new" ideas, you have to realize that they will be turned off by anything that seems even a little disrespectful.
I understand a desire to see the short summary; I have a hard time tracking as well, and often need to re-read paragraphs and slow down multiple times. That being said, I think his presentation style is important. It may take longer to track, but there's ultimately a much better path laid out in my opinion compared to many other articles. Gary also does an incredible job of getting points out that I have a hard time conveying, such as why we should question the status quo. His remarks about a plethora of logic being derived from those assumptions (I'm paraphrasing) is spot on.
Perhaps the worst of it is the loss of credibility and reputation. It's OK for those who, like me, have no scientific or medical credentials and are just ordinary concerned citizens. If we get things wrong, little harm is done. But Mr Taubes has achieved a position of eminence in his field, and an enviable reputation. It's in all our interests that he guard them carefully.
Besides which, it's just good scientific practice to be cautious about what you claim.
I don’t understand why Tayag keeps citing guidelines as evidence that we should not use tallow, when people who distrust seed oils are often well aware of the guidelines and distrust them to begin with. Between that and the ad Homs against RFK, I’m not sure who her audience is. Either you buy the guidelines or not. If you don’t then you likely have a favorable view of RFK. And if you do, you likely agree he’s just being contrarian for personal gain. A lot of her arguments are also “correlation equals causation”. Fine. Even if we uncritically accept the data about lowered heart disease rates, it’s also indisputable that Americans are less healthy than ever before as a whole. Their life expectancy is even shorter. So can’t “correlation equals causation” go the other way?
Excellent discussion. I often talk to patients about the role of protecting the status quo. Professional reputations are on the line here. After you supported a tenant in medicine as a law (actually a hypothesis.) It is difficult for a person or organization to admit they were wrong in any way. It's only a natural response to circle the wagons and dig in!
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. Over time we may slay the dragon.
I'm basically apolitical, but RFK, Jr might be the agent to upset the apple cart and start the process to rebuild a scientifically based approach.
He may be. What worries me, though, is that he might also upset apple carts that deserve more respect. There's a safety-efficacy issue with every intervention. The more wide-ranging the interventions--in this case, the apple cart upsetting--the more likely that harm will be done. I don't know how to avoid it, though. So... fingers crossed.
As Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) remarked, "Politics is the art of the possible".
It is impossible to have political influence if you are excluded from the relevant community. That's why we are forever seeing would-be reformers dropping many of their promises at the door as the price of entry to political circles. They get attacked as having sold out, but the hard fact is that they can't do much good if they don't get a seat at the table.
Bravo Gary to continue the effort of trying to make complex points in reporting about science. A bit depressing however that somebody like Kennedy could be the one making a correct point (I am not sure for the the right reasons) whilst people you might expect would pay some attention to logic and a minimum of control of the correctness of what they affirm are falling back to the adoration of authoritative arguments one thought science would consider with caution ... since Galileo... where the hell has reason gone ? A salut from little Switzerland and Zurich last year
Hi Jean-Pierre, Thanks for the kind words. I worry more that it's the erosion of standards in the relevant sciences that are the problem. As I wrote in the epilog of GCBC, it's like these people are pretending to be scientists but have no idea what it takes to establish reliable knowledge, or they just don't care. Then the journalists write up what they do because, well, it's news and they're the "experts". Crazy.
I’ve seen Kennedy comment positively about Nina Teicholz’s work on Twitter. I have the impression he has personally read her book - but of course I may be wrong about that. Anyway, it would not surprise me at all if he knows more about the subject than Taytag (the author of The Atlantic article).
Kennedy may be a bit of a loon at times, but he is clearly a well-read and highly intelligent loon. 😀
When I read the article in The Atlantic, I hoped someone would rebut it. There was no comment section under The Atlantic article, but if there had been, I wanted to ask: "Since we evolved for millions of years eating animals, please explain why saturated fat is bad for us?"
I'm happy that "vegetable oils" are now being called "seed oils". Most people who don't take the time to analyze food sources and nutrition think it is derived from vegetables, and vegetables are good for you, so... Great research, Gary: thank you!
I get your point, but should all vegetable/plant oils be lumped together as seed oils to be promoted or condemned together as of the same lot?There seems to be a difference, and thus maybe we should retain some distinction, between olive and coconut oils and soy, corn, and cottonseed oils.
You are right that there IS a difference - a big one. Both olives and coconuts are fruits. I use a lot of macadamia oil, which is a nut - and not processed with damaging heat.
Soy/soya oil, is made from soybeans, which are legumes. There is a lot of debate whether soy oil is 'healthier' than seed oil, but one still has to worry about GMO, pesticides, glyphosate and heat extraction. Stick with olive, nut and coconut oils, Dean - all very healthy!
Yeah, macadamia oil is pretty decent as far as vegetable oils go. Soybean oil though should not be in the food supply.
As far as I know, all grains are seeds. Not many people know that! 8-)
So we can generalise from "vegetable oils are dangerous" and "grains are unhealthy" to "avoid all seeds, which are not natural food for humans".
That generalization would not be correct. It is wrong, in my opinion, to call seed oils "vegetable oils" because it implies that the oil is as healthy as broccoli or spinach. Seeds are not unhealthy at all in moderate quantities, but seed oils are a concentrated product of massive amounts of cheap, oily seed - mostly GMO - and grown with huge amounts of pesticide and glyphosate. To add insult to injury, the extraction process involves intense heat which alters the molecular structure, and solvents.
Grain is seed, and sometimes it is GMO. Unless organic, it is grown with pesticide and glyphosate, both of which remain in the product. I cannot say if it is healthy or not, but I have not eaten any grain for over 5 years, and I am now in a far better state of health than I was 10 years ago. My 'layman' opinion is that some people do well on it, and others cannot be well with it. Omitting it from the modern diet is excruciatingly hard, but I recommend it for anyone who has a chronic health problem or aiming for the best health possible.
An AHA/ASA article, "Forecasting the Burden of Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in the United States Through 2050—Prevalence of Risk Factors and Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association," (2024) by Karen E. Joynt Maddox, et al, has a chart showing the decline in projected cholesterol, and a projected increase in diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. They project that by 2050, hypertension will affect 60% from 50% today. Then in another chart, it shows total cardiovascular disease raising from about 11% to 15% of the population. In the concluding section they recognize that the reduction of cholesterol and the increases in obesity might be due to the overall reduction in fat consumption and the increase in sugar consumption. Thought you might be interested.
I am, thanks. I hadn't seen that.
GaryE: what I don’t understand is how this very reasonable forecast stands, but directly contradicts the current medical dogma of the diet heart hypothesis. Isn’t there a massive level of cognitive dissonance going on??? If not, why not?
Around 1970, the US medical powers that be, decided that the unproven lipid hypothesis as cause of cardiovascular disease should be standard treatment over and against the sugar hypothesis. So, the focus has been to lower dietary saturated fats and cholesterol, as well as, using cholesterol lowering drugs. This has been the practice for more than 50 years now. The lipid hypothesis remains a hypothesis--un proven. There is no cognitive dissonance, just a bad judgment. I personally rejected the lipid hypothesis when I turned 65, with high cholesterol and and arthritis in both hips and lower back--thought to be a candidate for hip replacement. Now at 81, with a diet high in saturated fat I am "healthy as a horse" and play competitive pickleball with people 10 to 15 years younger--and still have my natural hips. But then, I'm told that I'm simply an anomaly. Maybe, maybe not.
Not an anomaly. I started eating high fat (low carb) several years ago under Dr Westman at Duke. My cholesterol is much improved, especially the HDL. After decades of doctors telling me “it is virtually impossible to improve your HDL’
translation:we don’t have a pill for that. my joints are much better, tho I have arthritis. I walk several miles most days and love my Pilates classes. I will turn 79 next week. I think there is corruption at the bottom of it, rather than bad judgment. 50 years.
Concerning arthritis, I started eating fermented vegetables to help reduce inflammation and bone broth to help heal the arthritis. When I was 65 I was walking with a cane because of arthritis in both hips and lower back. It took about 5 years to walk without pain, but now at age 81 I'm playing competitive pickleball about 4 hours per week. I also found that supplementing copper through the skin helps with collagen production.
Bravo Gary! I've eaten the opposite of the Dietary Guidelines for decades and my CAC is zero, BMI <25 and HbA1c 5.4% - pretty sure I'd be another fat Type 2 if I'd eaten their way. It's nice to know someone knows why!
Thanks for another excellent post, Gary. A voice of reason in the field of nutrition.
Turkey fried in tallow....OMG, I need to get some of that!!!
My mouth is actually watering! Lovely and crisp...
I'm sure Tayag will take this criticism under consideration. 🙄 No, she's there to parrot the shallow conclusions of the "experts."
Anti seed oil crowd is definitely growing, and it's a good thing. It is a modern experiment that is correlated with health disaster. But I love how Gary and Nina stick to the root: all the bad guidelines and subsequent poor health outcomes stem from the myth that saturated fat is bad for you. RFK doesn't believe that, which is a great thing.
But I'm not holding my breath that the entrenched government apparatus will allow any of the conventional wisdom to change. The guidelines and status quo will stay the same. They're in too deep.
Holding one's breath here is definitely no longer an option. But stranger things have happened.
Enormously helpful article, Gary, as usual, and a helpful reminder of all the entertaining reading your books have given me. Despite the clarity of your writing, sometimes the sheer volume of this stuff makes things so complicated, I can restore my skeptical-but-not-cynical decision to eat tallow instead of seed oils only by remembering that our species drove megafauna to extinction by seeking meat to keep us alive. This is a version of the Handler "vast nutritional experiment" argument you cite, I think. Does this megafauna argument make sense, or is it more like closing one's eyes to escape monsters in the dark?
Re megafauna argument, yes, it does as does the simple observation that we evolved eating meat. But the counterargument would be not that much and a different kind of meat. There's a quasi-legitimate counterargument to everything in these controversies. When I was in college I took a systems engineering class my senior year. The professor used to end virtually every class (as I recall) by saying "you pays your money, you takes your chances." I think those are words to live by.
'I remember when I graduated from medical school, the dean told our class, “What we have just taught you was the most up-to-date information about medicine. Unfortunately, 50% of what we taught you was wrong. Your job is to figure out which 50% was wrong.”
'I remember feeling stunned at the Dean’s admission. Now, 26 years later, I think the dean was too conservative. Now I feel that approximately 75% of what I was taught was wrong'.
- Dr David Brownstein https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/dr-david-brownstein/100-of-what-i-learned-in-medical-school-was-wrong/
As for meat-eating, I think the situation with us humans is very complicated and messy. Zebras and antelopes are descended from millions of generations of ungulates, all of which ate grass and similar stuff. (Echh). Lions and wolves are descended from millions of generations of essentially obligate carnivores.
But our ancestors a few million years ago were forest apes eating a similar diet to that of modern chimps. Mostly leaves, some fruit, and the occasional unfortunate monkey or lemur. (It's all calories, and meat-sharing helps define dominance hierarchies).
Then, in no more than a million years or so, those almost-Vegan apes came down to the floor, stood upright, fashioned tools and weapons, and began killing and eating whole ungulates! The large ape stomach and intestines shrank, the brain grew, and the erstwhile climbers became champion marathon runners. Today human stomach acid is more acid (lower pH) than those of lions, tigers and wolves - and similar to those of hyenas and vultures. We evolved, not just into carnivores, but into carrion-eaters.
So nothing about human nutrition is simple, if only because we began as one thing and evolved into almost the extreme opposite. The human digestive system is a work in progress.
It is complicated to start with - but then comes all the obfuscation, special pleading, and actual downright lying.
As Upton Sinclair famously said over a century ago, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".
One of the most important things ever said about our society.
Gary I love your work and thank you for it. I’m retiring from 41 years practicing interventional cardiology in Mississippi (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel here if you get my meaning). My parting words to my patients is usually “eat high protein, low carb, and NO sugar!” So my question to you is this: why don’t you ever quote Robert Lustig? You are both on the same team. He has been trying to educate doctors like me and the general public about the same issues for years. He has made important (for me) connections between LDL particles size, insulin, carbohydrate consumption, and atherosclerosis. And I think it is odd that you don’t promote a widely published expert who has basically reached the same conclusions that you have.
Just wondering
Robert Lustig was one of the first authors I read during my health journey. I didn't quite understand what he was getting at the time. However, now that more light has been shined on the role of fructose, I have a better understanding of what he was gettin at.
Thanks for the reminder.
Back in 2011, Norwegian animal scientists hypothesized that reductions in heavy metal release into the environment may be largely responsible for the dramatic decrease in heart attack deaths. They wrote, "If this hypothesis is correct, it means that lead, which is the most abundant of these toxic metals when considering both its average abundance in the Earth's continental crust and as an environmental pollutant, could have been more important than any other toxic metal as a contributory cause of LDL oxidation, atheromatosis and coronary heart disease. This hypothesis would appear to be in reasonably good agreement with what is known about the historical curves both for coronary heart disease mortality and for the use of lead as an additive in gasoline in Western Europe, compared to North America. The use of lead as an additive in gasoline started earlier and ended earlier in the United States than it did in the countries of Western Europe. And the epidemic of coronary heart disease has followed a similar time course with both its start and its culmination occurring earlier in the United States than in Western Europe. (web search - Anna Haug Animal Products)
So grateful for Mr. Taubes' independent, science-based health reporting. Heeding his dietary wisdom is likely why, at age 64, I have a CAC of 0,”frustratingly perfect" labs (say the docs), and no need for pharmaceuticals.
My biggest takeaway from this article: Seek out and heed the INDEPENDENT researchers and journalists, because the corporate stronghold on information will be the death of us all.
Keep in mind, though, that even the independent researchers and journalists often get it wrong. Independence does not guarantee critical thinking.
I just wish your writing had more bulldog, ie bite. I appreciate the need for civility. However, I have ADHD of the inattentive kind, and It would be helpful in keeping my attention if you got to your points more directly. They are all excellent points! And clearly organized and well presented. It’s ok if Taytag feels uncomfortable — or even shamed — by your expose. Isn’t that the point?
I'm on the fence about the bite. Having been on the receiving end, I prefer more civil discussions. I suppose she will feel uncomfortable one way or the other--or at least I hope so--but I can't say that if I were in her position, I'd have done any better or differently. I hope so, but...
Thank you for your reply. I appreciated the civility! Your recent note about Nina’s admirable takedown of the new guidelines had some language I’d encourage more of: “inexcusably bad science”. Was that the phrase? Admitting dejection at the thought of wading through so much junk. I liked your tone. Either way you don’t let them off the hook for a minute.
I love your civil style, Gary. Please don't change. I also read Malcolm Kendrick, and have recommended his "The Clot Thickens" to people. My brother wouldn't read past the first page because of Dr. Kendrick's sarcastic style. Those of us who know him can ignore that, but if you're trying to interest someone in these "new" ideas, you have to realize that they will be turned off by anything that seems even a little disrespectful.
I understand a desire to see the short summary; I have a hard time tracking as well, and often need to re-read paragraphs and slow down multiple times. That being said, I think his presentation style is important. It may take longer to track, but there's ultimately a much better path laid out in my opinion compared to many other articles. Gary also does an incredible job of getting points out that I have a hard time conveying, such as why we should question the status quo. His remarks about a plethora of logic being derived from those assumptions (I'm paraphrasing) is spot on.
Well said
Einstein is said to have urged, "Make things as simple as possible - but no simpler".
By nature I tend to have a bit too much bite, my prophetic nature--and you know what they do to prophets.
Perhaps the worst of it is the loss of credibility and reputation. It's OK for those who, like me, have no scientific or medical credentials and are just ordinary concerned citizens. If we get things wrong, little harm is done. But Mr Taubes has achieved a position of eminence in his field, and an enviable reputation. It's in all our interests that he guard them carefully.
Besides which, it's just good scientific practice to be cautious about what you claim.
I don’t understand why Tayag keeps citing guidelines as evidence that we should not use tallow, when people who distrust seed oils are often well aware of the guidelines and distrust them to begin with. Between that and the ad Homs against RFK, I’m not sure who her audience is. Either you buy the guidelines or not. If you don’t then you likely have a favorable view of RFK. And if you do, you likely agree he’s just being contrarian for personal gain. A lot of her arguments are also “correlation equals causation”. Fine. Even if we uncritically accept the data about lowered heart disease rates, it’s also indisputable that Americans are less healthy than ever before as a whole. Their life expectancy is even shorter. So can’t “correlation equals causation” go the other way?
Maybe Taytag is just parroting the establishment line... for personal gain.
TLDR: she was wrong.
Excellent discussion. I often talk to patients about the role of protecting the status quo. Professional reputations are on the line here. After you supported a tenant in medicine as a law (actually a hypothesis.) It is difficult for a person or organization to admit they were wrong in any way. It's only a natural response to circle the wagons and dig in!
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. Over time we may slay the dragon.
I'm basically apolitical, but RFK, Jr might be the agent to upset the apple cart and start the process to rebuild a scientifically based approach.
He may be. What worries me, though, is that he might also upset apple carts that deserve more respect. There's a safety-efficacy issue with every intervention. The more wide-ranging the interventions--in this case, the apple cart upsetting--the more likely that harm will be done. I don't know how to avoid it, though. So... fingers crossed.
As Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) remarked, "Politics is the art of the possible".
It is impossible to have political influence if you are excluded from the relevant community. That's why we are forever seeing would-be reformers dropping many of their promises at the door as the price of entry to political circles. They get attacked as having sold out, but the hard fact is that they can't do much good if they don't get a seat at the table.
Bravo Gary to continue the effort of trying to make complex points in reporting about science. A bit depressing however that somebody like Kennedy could be the one making a correct point (I am not sure for the the right reasons) whilst people you might expect would pay some attention to logic and a minimum of control of the correctness of what they affirm are falling back to the adoration of authoritative arguments one thought science would consider with caution ... since Galileo... where the hell has reason gone ? A salut from little Switzerland and Zurich last year
Hi Jean-Pierre, Thanks for the kind words. I worry more that it's the erosion of standards in the relevant sciences that are the problem. As I wrote in the epilog of GCBC, it's like these people are pretending to be scientists but have no idea what it takes to establish reliable knowledge, or they just don't care. Then the journalists write up what they do because, well, it's news and they're the "experts". Crazy.
I’ve seen Kennedy comment positively about Nina Teicholz’s work on Twitter. I have the impression he has personally read her book - but of course I may be wrong about that. Anyway, it would not surprise me at all if he knows more about the subject than Taytag (the author of The Atlantic article).
Kennedy may be a bit of a loon at times, but he is clearly a well-read and highly intelligent loon. 😀