Reporters are supposed to be skeptical of their sources. So why do mainstream medicine and health reporters have such unconditional faith in the authorities?
This is a very good piece with wide application, and anyone who's inclined to think for him or herself will appreciate it. It does an excellent job of laying out the various conflicts and challenges news reporters in certain fields (in this case, health) face. An obvious next step might be to integrate what "the bro science" (as we're calling it these days) suggests, i.e. what all those guys at the gym who look fit and seem to be healthy have figured out for themselves by experimenting on themselves in ways that academic medicine will never be able to get away with. For example, thirty years ago, as Snackwells cookies and Olestra were being invented and pushed on us, a bodybuilder relative casually told me the government food pyramid was ludicrous and backwards and that every bodybuilder knew it. Stick to leafy greens, proteins, fats, and have some complex carbs, but not too many. He was obviously right. "The science" has taken decades to catch up and look where we are now. Mr. Taubes is surely right about sugar, so I'm eager to see what else he's right about.
Thanks, G. I've read Kahneman's book. I recognize that my understanding of AI is as a user and nothing more, but what I was wondering is the comparator: not that humans won't make mistakes based on cognitive biases of the kind Kahneman discusses, but whether AI brings with it a whole new world of issues that might mislead it.
Also, thanks! This is a very good article, worthy of its author. It brings our attention to the fact that journalists are not scientists, but we need the one group to explain the work of the other. And their motivations are far different.
Maybe RFK's focus on the dyes in Fruit Loops, instead of the sugar, is a way of chipping around the edges. Start with the easier stuff and then get to the center or more urgent issue, in this case, sugar.
Exactly. Public support WRT Froot Loops dye would be easier to achieve than, say, tackling Monsanto and glyphosate first. It's a start towards building momentum.
"Reporters are supposed to be skeptical of their sources. So why do mainstream medicine and health reporters have such unconditional faith in the authorities?"
Because they believe themselves to be authorities as well, members of the same rarified club or, more accurately, the same priesthood, a priesthood infallible and perfectly informed - and questioning the order or any of its members is anathema to them.
or as Gary said, it's easier to not have to defend a position to your bosses and their bosses if you get quotes from the 'right' people. like the old adage 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM', 'no one ever gets fired for quoting Harvard or Stanford'.
Thoughtful and powerful right out of the gate. Congrats on the new Substack. We've been waiting for it and you delivered. [And thank you for acknowledging the tome-like nature of this first post - it made me feel better dedicating all my coffee-time to it.]
I'm guessing RFK Jr. Actually understands that Fruit Loops are unhealthy not only because of the artificial colors but also for the sugar content. Otherwise he'd be pointing out that the artificial dye in salmon is poisoning us. He's sincere, and whether you believe it or not, an ally. Why don't you cut him a break?
Mr. Taubes, so good to be reading your work again. I started out with Good Calories Bad Calories over a decade ago, and changed my way of eating. I eliminated almost all carbs and stuck to fat and protein. Recently I had to fill out a medical history for a dentist, and the assistant called me over and ask if I had done that. Yes, I had, I said, and sent it to you. I was just wondering she said, as her hand passed over all of the conditions they list, and I have none of them. I credit my health to my diet, and though I lost weight in the process while following your advice, I take personal credit for reading the book and then being convinced by my own evidence that it works. I am now 74, by the way.
Regarding journalism as a whole, your work reminds me to some degree of Noam Chomsky, long a critic of the field. He studied the influence that control journalists, and came up with what is called a "propaganda model", I think implying that by its very structure, as you assert, it cannot do its purported job. My own experience is that truly good journalists tend to leave the field, even if only to paint houses, as to have been broken in by editors on their knees before publishers.
Thanks, Mark. I'm glad I could help but your comment and raised an issue about anecdotal evidence and positive evidence like your own experience. Imagine we started out with 100 people who read GCBC and then carb-restricted.
HYPOTHETICALLY(!!), the diet kills half of them prematurely and so 15 years later I get emails from folks telling me how beneficial the diet is because they're the ones who the diet hasn't killed yet. The dead ones aren't writing (although I might have expected a few angry letters, at least, from next of kin or their lawyers). This is why RCTs are always necessary to shed reliable light on the reality.
That said, glad you're doing so well and thanks for the Noam Chomsky comparison. I read his work as preparation the summer before I went to journalism school. I will have to revisit it and read up on the propaganda model.
Good point, it is anecdotal. In addition to carbohydrates, I also avoid prescription drugs, vitamins, vaccines, and I work out 4-5 times a week. So my (knock on wood) good health is due to many factors, and perhaps genetics among them. My parents lived long healthy lives. Keep up the writing, and I'll be glad to subscribe here and contribute as well.
One sentence in your book 20 years ago changed my diet: In cultures that eat their traditional diet people tend not to get diabetes, obesity or heart disease until they start to import sugar, flour, and vegetable oil.
Thanks for an excellent article. I noticed another example in The Atlantic a couple of days ago supporting seed oils, using quotes from Walter Willett completely discredits the reporter…
It looks like I'm writing an addendum to this post that will include a discussion of the sources used in that Atlantic article. It raises the question of whether reporters can ever adequately cover these controversies if they're unaware of the history.
Great article Gary but curious why you are so skeptical on the seed oil question. To my recollection you even reported on some of the old trials that showed some harms like MCE, SDHS, and LA Veterans. Nina summarized them well at the Swiss Re conference I believe you attended as well. Some in the anti seed oil camp seem to want blame all chronic disease on seed oils which I think is ridiculous but there is some clinical trial evidence they may be causing harm. Regardless keep up the great work!
I suppose I'll have to write about it sooner, rather than later, although it gets complicated because there are multiple seed oil questions: i.e., which disease we're talking about.
One of my obvious problems goes back to the Feynman quote about the first principle of science being you must not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool.
I got into writing about public health when I realized that the researchers who I was interviewing had no doubts that they were right about what they were claiming. They ignored the negative evidence or rejected it as meaningless and only focused on the positive evidence as the reason to believe. Francis Bacon kvetched about that 400 years ago and it's why he more or less inaugurated the scientific method. I see the same characteristics in the proponents of the seed oil hypothesis. They cannot imagine that they might be wrong, even though they should be lying awake at night for long hours wrestling with that possibility. To me it's always a very bad sign when proponents of a hypothesis cannot imagine that they're fooling themselves.
From my vantage point the people in the anti seed oil camp are no more over confident that seed oils are unhealthy than the mainstream nutrition thought leaders are confident that seed oils are healthy and should replace less processed saturated fat rich alternatives. The LA Veterans investigators seemed to recognize the need for longer, rigorous trials when they said "This small excess nonatherosclerotic mortality in the late years of the study raises the very important and difficult question of whether future clinical trials of diets rich in unsaturated fat must be planned for periods well in excess of eight years, rather than for the five-year periods that have been the usual goal." Regrettably I think we will stay stuck in the position where the definitive clinical trials haven't been done. Thanks for the reasoned response and will look forward to what you write on the topic in future.
A lot of the confusion about seed oils stems from the fact that when health outcomes are plotted against seed oil consumption, the curve is hump-shaped; at least over the short term. Ohio State University researchers have demonstrated that adding linoleic acid to the diet of obese subjects improves multiple markers of metabolic health. They admit, however, that "Mechanisms of action of LA on body composition and metabolism are still unclear but deserve further investigation." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4917875/
If, as seems to be the case, excessive arachidonic acid (AA) intake is what causes insulin resistance, the mechanism of action is explained by Norwegian animal science researchers in this narrative: "Because arachidonic acid (AA) competes with EPA and DHA as well as with LA, ALA and oleic acid for incorporation in membrane lipids at the same positions, all these fatty acids are important for controlling the AA concentration in membrane lipids, which in turn determines how much AA can be liberated and become available for prostaglandin biosynthesis following phospholipase activation. Thus, the best strategy for dampening prostanoid overproduction in disease situations would be to reduce the intake of AA, or reduce the intake of AA at the same time as the total intake of competing fatty acids (including oleic acid) is enhanced, rather than enhancing intakes of EPA and DHA only. Enhancement of membrane concentrations of EPA and DHA will not be as efficient as a similar decrease in the AA concentration for avoiding prostanoid overproduction. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2875212/
In the past, the linoleic acid content of seed oils was problematic in terms of health outcomes. Note, however, that the linoleic acid content of seed oils has decreased in recent decades due to the development of high oleic acid versions of canola, safflower, sunflower, peanut, corn, and soybean oils. (web search - high oleic seed oils) In truth, these days, excessive linoleic acid intake stems from eating too much pork and poultry fed up on seeds. (web search - Poultry consumption and human cardiometabolic health) Whatever the source, we know that linoleic acid has become the most abundant dietary fatty acid in human adipose tissue. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9060469/
Interesting, but as soon as you say "This makes" you start overinterpreting the evidence.
If you said "I think this makes..." I'd have no quibble.
And, yes, I realize there are writers who think the "I think" is suitably implied by the fact that they wrote it, but I'm not one of them. I think "I think" always has to be said in these contexts.
Point taken. Associations invariably imply uncertainty. "Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective."
Science is almost always unsettled and that should be acknowledged up front. And it is not a belief! The problem for science writers today is that people who question the conventional wisdom have been drummed out of the formerly respected institutions - take Jay Bhattacharia of Stanford and his co authors of the Great Barrington Declaration of Oxford and Harvard. They challenged the steps recommended by the CDC to control the epidemic. Rather than presenting the two points of view, the bearers of conventional wisdom excluded the GB view and prevented the public from hearing it by removing the authors from the public square. Science writers generally went along, the excellent credentials of the questioners notwithstanding. And adopting the GBD was the right thing to do and had we done so, would have avoided many of the problems we face today.
I believe that anyone can and should do their own research. That is how I found Gary Taubes and abandoned the low fat, high carb diet recommended by the Diabetes Assn. And left “pre diabetes” behind with my extra pounds.
Hi Gary - I almost feel sorry now for SM&H reporters. Typically, I'm reading an article in WSJ and running to my wife 'can you believe this crap! They're quoting the guy who says that Froot Loops are healthier than an egg fried in butter!' I claim that the SM&H writer is the low person on the totem pole, they don't want this beat, so they ascribe to the conventional wisdom; like you said, getting quotes from Harvard (Walter Willett) or Stanford (Chris Gardner), people with clear biases and shady backing, won't cost you your job, or make you defend your position. The latest one that made me scream - 'Move over kale, there's a new health food in the house' (paraphrasing) - beans! Omigosh - poisonous if not prepared properly, greatest source of lectins on the planet, and often prepared with sugars to make them palatable. Love your work - keep up the pressure. I hope to subscribe; I hope I don't have to choose between you and Nina. Both of you do great work and are truly trying to save us from ourselves.
As do I. I suppose one key difference, though, is my wife long ago expressed her disinterest in my "can you believe this crap!" revelations. Now I keep them to myself, or, I suppose, write about it here.
This is a very good piece with wide application, and anyone who's inclined to think for him or herself will appreciate it. It does an excellent job of laying out the various conflicts and challenges news reporters in certain fields (in this case, health) face. An obvious next step might be to integrate what "the bro science" (as we're calling it these days) suggests, i.e. what all those guys at the gym who look fit and seem to be healthy have figured out for themselves by experimenting on themselves in ways that academic medicine will never be able to get away with. For example, thirty years ago, as Snackwells cookies and Olestra were being invented and pushed on us, a bodybuilder relative casually told me the government food pyramid was ludicrous and backwards and that every bodybuilder knew it. Stick to leafy greens, proteins, fats, and have some complex carbs, but not too many. He was obviously right. "The science" has taken decades to catch up and look where we are now. Mr. Taubes is surely right about sugar, so I'm eager to see what else he's right about.
Thanks, G. I've read Kahneman's book. I recognize that my understanding of AI is as a user and nothing more, but what I was wondering is the comparator: not that humans won't make mistakes based on cognitive biases of the kind Kahneman discusses, but whether AI brings with it a whole new world of issues that might mislead it.
Also, thanks! This is a very good article, worthy of its author. It brings our attention to the fact that journalists are not scientists, but we need the one group to explain the work of the other. And their motivations are far different.
Nice! Can the typo in the Ben Hecht quote be fixed to say "second hand" instead of "second half"?
Maybe RFK's focus on the dyes in Fruit Loops, instead of the sugar, is a way of chipping around the edges. Start with the easier stuff and then get to the center or more urgent issue, in this case, sugar.
Exactly. Public support WRT Froot Loops dye would be easier to achieve than, say, tackling Monsanto and glyphosate first. It's a start towards building momentum.
"Reporters are supposed to be skeptical of their sources. So why do mainstream medicine and health reporters have such unconditional faith in the authorities?"
Because they believe themselves to be authorities as well, members of the same rarified club or, more accurately, the same priesthood, a priesthood infallible and perfectly informed - and questioning the order or any of its members is anathema to them.
or as Gary said, it's easier to not have to defend a position to your bosses and their bosses if you get quotes from the 'right' people. like the old adage 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM', 'no one ever gets fired for quoting Harvard or Stanford'.
Typo in the title: second half of a clock should be second hand of a clock.
Got it. Thanks. (And suitably mortified.)
Thoughtful and powerful right out of the gate. Congrats on the new Substack. We've been waiting for it and you delivered. [And thank you for acknowledging the tome-like nature of this first post - it made me feel better dedicating all my coffee-time to it.]
I'm guessing RFK Jr. Actually understands that Fruit Loops are unhealthy not only because of the artificial colors but also for the sugar content. Otherwise he'd be pointing out that the artificial dye in salmon is poisoning us. He's sincere, and whether you believe it or not, an ally. Why don't you cut him a break?
Mr. Taubes, so good to be reading your work again. I started out with Good Calories Bad Calories over a decade ago, and changed my way of eating. I eliminated almost all carbs and stuck to fat and protein. Recently I had to fill out a medical history for a dentist, and the assistant called me over and ask if I had done that. Yes, I had, I said, and sent it to you. I was just wondering she said, as her hand passed over all of the conditions they list, and I have none of them. I credit my health to my diet, and though I lost weight in the process while following your advice, I take personal credit for reading the book and then being convinced by my own evidence that it works. I am now 74, by the way.
Regarding journalism as a whole, your work reminds me to some degree of Noam Chomsky, long a critic of the field. He studied the influence that control journalists, and came up with what is called a "propaganda model", I think implying that by its very structure, as you assert, it cannot do its purported job. My own experience is that truly good journalists tend to leave the field, even if only to paint houses, as to have been broken in by editors on their knees before publishers.
Thanks, Mark. I'm glad I could help but your comment and raised an issue about anecdotal evidence and positive evidence like your own experience. Imagine we started out with 100 people who read GCBC and then carb-restricted.
HYPOTHETICALLY(!!), the diet kills half of them prematurely and so 15 years later I get emails from folks telling me how beneficial the diet is because they're the ones who the diet hasn't killed yet. The dead ones aren't writing (although I might have expected a few angry letters, at least, from next of kin or their lawyers). This is why RCTs are always necessary to shed reliable light on the reality.
That said, glad you're doing so well and thanks for the Noam Chomsky comparison. I read his work as preparation the summer before I went to journalism school. I will have to revisit it and read up on the propaganda model.
Good point, it is anecdotal. In addition to carbohydrates, I also avoid prescription drugs, vitamins, vaccines, and I work out 4-5 times a week. So my (knock on wood) good health is due to many factors, and perhaps genetics among them. My parents lived long healthy lives. Keep up the writing, and I'll be glad to subscribe here and contribute as well.
One sentence in your book 20 years ago changed my diet: In cultures that eat their traditional diet people tend not to get diabetes, obesity or heart disease until they start to import sugar, flour, and vegetable oil.
Thanks for an excellent article. I noticed another example in The Atlantic a couple of days ago supporting seed oils, using quotes from Walter Willett completely discredits the reporter…
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/beef-tallow-kennedy-cooking-fat-seed-oil/680848/
It looks like I'm writing an addendum to this post that will include a discussion of the sources used in that Atlantic article. It raises the question of whether reporters can ever adequately cover these controversies if they're unaware of the history.
Great article Gary but curious why you are so skeptical on the seed oil question. To my recollection you even reported on some of the old trials that showed some harms like MCE, SDHS, and LA Veterans. Nina summarized them well at the Swiss Re conference I believe you attended as well. Some in the anti seed oil camp seem to want blame all chronic disease on seed oils which I think is ridiculous but there is some clinical trial evidence they may be causing harm. Regardless keep up the great work!
I suppose I'll have to write about it sooner, rather than later, although it gets complicated because there are multiple seed oil questions: i.e., which disease we're talking about.
One of my obvious problems goes back to the Feynman quote about the first principle of science being you must not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool.
I got into writing about public health when I realized that the researchers who I was interviewing had no doubts that they were right about what they were claiming. They ignored the negative evidence or rejected it as meaningless and only focused on the positive evidence as the reason to believe. Francis Bacon kvetched about that 400 years ago and it's why he more or less inaugurated the scientific method. I see the same characteristics in the proponents of the seed oil hypothesis. They cannot imagine that they might be wrong, even though they should be lying awake at night for long hours wrestling with that possibility. To me it's always a very bad sign when proponents of a hypothesis cannot imagine that they're fooling themselves.
From my vantage point the people in the anti seed oil camp are no more over confident that seed oils are unhealthy than the mainstream nutrition thought leaders are confident that seed oils are healthy and should replace less processed saturated fat rich alternatives. The LA Veterans investigators seemed to recognize the need for longer, rigorous trials when they said "This small excess nonatherosclerotic mortality in the late years of the study raises the very important and difficult question of whether future clinical trials of diets rich in unsaturated fat must be planned for periods well in excess of eight years, rather than for the five-year periods that have been the usual goal." Regrettably I think we will stay stuck in the position where the definitive clinical trials haven't been done. Thanks for the reasoned response and will look forward to what you write on the topic in future.
A lot of the confusion about seed oils stems from the fact that when health outcomes are plotted against seed oil consumption, the curve is hump-shaped; at least over the short term. Ohio State University researchers have demonstrated that adding linoleic acid to the diet of obese subjects improves multiple markers of metabolic health. They admit, however, that "Mechanisms of action of LA on body composition and metabolism are still unclear but deserve further investigation." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4917875/
If, as seems to be the case, excessive arachidonic acid (AA) intake is what causes insulin resistance, the mechanism of action is explained by Norwegian animal science researchers in this narrative: "Because arachidonic acid (AA) competes with EPA and DHA as well as with LA, ALA and oleic acid for incorporation in membrane lipids at the same positions, all these fatty acids are important for controlling the AA concentration in membrane lipids, which in turn determines how much AA can be liberated and become available for prostaglandin biosynthesis following phospholipase activation. Thus, the best strategy for dampening prostanoid overproduction in disease situations would be to reduce the intake of AA, or reduce the intake of AA at the same time as the total intake of competing fatty acids (including oleic acid) is enhanced, rather than enhancing intakes of EPA and DHA only. Enhancement of membrane concentrations of EPA and DHA will not be as efficient as a similar decrease in the AA concentration for avoiding prostanoid overproduction. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2875212/
In the past, the linoleic acid content of seed oils was problematic in terms of health outcomes. Note, however, that the linoleic acid content of seed oils has decreased in recent decades due to the development of high oleic acid versions of canola, safflower, sunflower, peanut, corn, and soybean oils. (web search - high oleic seed oils) In truth, these days, excessive linoleic acid intake stems from eating too much pork and poultry fed up on seeds. (web search - Poultry consumption and human cardiometabolic health) Whatever the source, we know that linoleic acid has become the most abundant dietary fatty acid in human adipose tissue. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9060469/
This seems to make people more vulnerable to COVD-19 complications. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7846167/
Interesting, but as soon as you say "This makes" you start overinterpreting the evidence.
If you said "I think this makes..." I'd have no quibble.
And, yes, I realize there are writers who think the "I think" is suitably implied by the fact that they wrote it, but I'm not one of them. I think "I think" always has to be said in these contexts.
Point taken. Associations invariably imply uncertainty. "Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective."
When is the National Dietary Guidelines Social Engineering experiment scheduled to end?
Wouldn't it be nice if we knew.
Science is almost always unsettled and that should be acknowledged up front. And it is not a belief! The problem for science writers today is that people who question the conventional wisdom have been drummed out of the formerly respected institutions - take Jay Bhattacharia of Stanford and his co authors of the Great Barrington Declaration of Oxford and Harvard. They challenged the steps recommended by the CDC to control the epidemic. Rather than presenting the two points of view, the bearers of conventional wisdom excluded the GB view and prevented the public from hearing it by removing the authors from the public square. Science writers generally went along, the excellent credentials of the questioners notwithstanding. And adopting the GBD was the right thing to do and had we done so, would have avoided many of the problems we face today.
I believe that anyone can and should do their own research. That is how I found Gary Taubes and abandoned the low fat, high carb diet recommended by the Diabetes Assn. And left “pre diabetes” behind with my extra pounds.
Hi Gary - I almost feel sorry now for SM&H reporters. Typically, I'm reading an article in WSJ and running to my wife 'can you believe this crap! They're quoting the guy who says that Froot Loops are healthier than an egg fried in butter!' I claim that the SM&H writer is the low person on the totem pole, they don't want this beat, so they ascribe to the conventional wisdom; like you said, getting quotes from Harvard (Walter Willett) or Stanford (Chris Gardner), people with clear biases and shady backing, won't cost you your job, or make you defend your position. The latest one that made me scream - 'Move over kale, there's a new health food in the house' (paraphrasing) - beans! Omigosh - poisonous if not prepared properly, greatest source of lectins on the planet, and often prepared with sugars to make them palatable. Love your work - keep up the pressure. I hope to subscribe; I hope I don't have to choose between you and Nina. Both of you do great work and are truly trying to save us from ourselves.
As do I. I suppose one key difference, though, is my wife long ago expressed her disinterest in my "can you believe this crap!" revelations. Now I keep them to myself, or, I suppose, write about it here.