From an excellent interview with Gary Taubes:
Martin: You write that the “enterprise” of diet, obesity and disease research “purports to be a science and yet functions like a religion.” In what ways?
Taubes: Simple. The researchers and authority figures in this business seem utterly uninterested in finding out whether what they believe is true or not. It’s as though their God, whichever one that might be, told them that obesity is caused by eating too much — by gluttony and/or sloth — and so they believe that unconditionally, and no amount of contradictory evidence, no failure to explain the actual observations can convince them to question it. They have unconditional faith that they know what the truth is, and there’s no place for this kind of faith in the pursuit of science. Science requires skepticism to function. Religion requires faith.
I agree with Taubes about the facts: Obesity “authority figures” do “seem uninterested in finding out” etc. Yes, it resembles religion, not science. Taubes’s summing-up, however, is one-sided. To say “science requires skepticism” is to miss the point that science also requires paying attention — finding, noticing, thinking about facts you can’t explain. Religion doesn’t. The Atkins Diet caused millions of people to lose plenty of weight in a way that mainstream weight-control theories could not explain. No one powerful in obesity research managed to notice this was a puzzle worth trying to explain.
Science isn’t just about testing ideas (Taubes’s “skepticism”); it also requires generating them. I’m hoping if I blog about this often enough I will find a humorous way to say it.
Thanks to Dave Lull.
I think scientists were noticing, and they had better ideas than Ancel Keys and Senator McGovern [who was trying to do Pritikin (an Ornish predecessor) but couldn’t stick with it.] My opinion: Science, at least in some fields of inquiry, also requires an appetite for self-immolation.
Would you publish your research if you were quite sure that doing so would mean your income, reputation and career were destroyed? Physiologists watched it happen to their peers. These days, depending on field, scientists may have their labs wrecked, their test animals “liberated” and come home to find protesters taunting their kids.
Even during the McGovern hearing, it was already clear that the costs of speaking truth to power would be astronomical. And the cascade only gathered power from there, especially when it became clear that it was a license to print money [from huge-markup, low-labor, cheaply-shipped carb products.]
I am eternally grateful to Gary Taubes for opening my eyes on nutritional matters; if I were religious, I’d pray that he read Seth’s work. But he doesn’t seem to know much psychology and would do well to read research on belief perseverance, which is roughly the tendency to keep on believing something even in the face of disconfirming evidence. Good science has safeguards against this, but nutrition appears not to be a scientific field, because it’s so expensive and difficult to do the science that actually tells you something, in this case you need controlled randomized studies with large samples that you observe over many years.
To understand nutritional belief perseverance, we also need to understand people’s blindness to their social roles. To be an expert supposedly protecting people’s health, guiding them towards longer lives with reduced suffering and misery, does have an almost priestly component — I am protecting you against death and misery. The role encourages belief perseverance because of the shame and sense of public humiliation that you risk if you have to admit you were wrong. It’s also tied to intolerance of contradiction and cognitive dissonance. If I have lots of correlational studies showing that people who eat whole grains, fruits and veggies have better health and longevity, and have concluded that eating those cause better health outcomes, how do I cope with the contradiction that when actually put to the test in the randomized, controlled Women’s Health Initiative, my beliefs turn out to be wrong? Changing my beliefs is humiliating and shaming, so I just dismiss the study or ignore it.
Below are quotes and a couple of URLs on belief perseverance if anyone is interested:
https://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/belief_perseverance.htm
“Once we have decided that we believe something, we will tend to keep on believing it, even in the face of disconfirming evidence.
Particularly if other people know of our belief, it can be embarrassing to climb down from our previous assertions. It is also difficult to remove a belief which has been woven into a wider web of belief, without disturbing those other beliefs.”
And here:
https://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:GjBritgPZUMJ:www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2005-2009/06A.pdf+%22Belief+perseverance%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&lr=lang_en
“Three different types of belief perseverance have been extensively studied. Oneinvolves self-impressions, beliefs about oneself. Examples include beliefs about yourathletic skills, musical talents, ability to get along with others, or even body image.Perhaps you know someone who is extremely thin but who persists in believing that sheis too fat. Such a mistaken and perseverant belief can lead to a serious consequences.
Another involves social impressions, beliefs about specific other people. Examples include beliefs about your best friend, mother, or least favorite teacher. The third typeinvolves naive theories, beliefs about how the world works. Most perseverance research on naive theories has focused on social theories, beliefs about people and how they think,feel, behave, and interact. Examples include stereotypes about teenagers, Asian-Americans, Muslims; beliefs about lawyers, artists, firefighters; even beliefs about thecauses of war, poverty, or violence.”
That’s very interesting, Tom. I’m curious what specifically you are referring to. ” Physiologists watched it happen to their peers. . .
Even during the McGovern hearing, it was already clear that the costs of speaking truth to power would be astronomical.”. Could you give examples or links?
Hi, Seth, here’s one place to start re: Ancel Keys and what happened if you challenged him:
https://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/lipid-hypothesis/the-low-fat-diet-cascade/
Keys’ fame brought him power and money, and he was quite ruthless about destroying opposition.
– Tom
Thanks, Tom, I see what you mean.
Tim, yes, I agree. The importance and difficulty of the subject caused opinions to be more rigid. Charisma and scientific effectiveness don’t mix.