[Radim]

> don't trust Nobel laureates or even winners

Nobel laureate and winner are the same thing.

> Linus Pauling was talking absolute garbage, harmful and evil, after winning the Nobel.

Can you be more specific, what garbage? And which Nobel prize do you mean – Pauling got two, one for chemistry and one for peace.

[deepsun]

Thank you, my bad.

I was referring to Linus's harmful and evil promotion of Vitamin C as the cure for everything and cancer. I don't think Linus was attaching that garbage to any particular Nobel prize. But people did say to their doctors: "Are you a Nobel winner, doctor?". Don't think they cared about particular prize either.

[red75prime]

> Linus's harmful and evil promotion of Vitamin C

Which is "harmful and evil" thanks to your afterknowledge. He had based his books on the research that failed to replicate. But given low toxicity of vitamin C it's not that "evil" to recommend treatment even if probabilistic estimation of positive effects is not that high.

Sloppy, but not exceptionally bad. At least it was instrumental in teaching me to not expect marvels coming from dietary research.

[bongodongobob]

Eugenics and vitamin C as a cure all.

[lern_too_spel]

If Pauling's eugenics policies were bad, then the laws against incest that are currently on the books in many states (which are also eugenics policies that use the same mechanism) are also bad. There are different forms of eugenics policies, and Pauling's proposal to restrict the mating choices of people carrying certain recessive genes so their children don't suffer is ethically different from Hitler exterminating people with certain genes and also ethically different from other governments sterilizing people with certain genes. He later supported voluntary abortion with genetic testing, which is now standard practice in the US today, though no longer in a few states with ethically questionable laws restricting abortion. This again is ethically different from forced abortion.

https://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/coll/pauling/blood/nar...

[voltaireodactyl]

FWIW my understanding is that the policies against incest you mention actually have much less to do with controlling genetic reproduction and are more directed at combating familial rape/grooming/etc.

Not a fun thing to discuss, but apparently a significant issue, which I guess should be unsurprising given some of the laws allowing underage marriage if the family signs off.

Mentioning only to draw attention to the fact that theoretical policy is often undeniable in a vacuum, but runs aground when faced with real world conditions.

[bongodongobob]

From what I remember, he wanted to mark people with tattoos or something.

[lern_too_spel]

This is mentioned in my link: "According to Pauling, carriers should have an obvious mark, (i.e. a tattoo on the forehead) denoting their disease, which would allow carriers to identify others with the same affliction and avoid marrying them."

The goal wasn't to mark people for ostracism but to make it easier for people carrying these genes to find mates that won't result in suffering for their offspring.