[bloaf]

We all know there has been a replication crisis across many different disciplines of science. I think that the set of things we actually know about nutrition and health is a lot smaller than the experts think.

However, the problem is that the public has also come to that conclusion. The public has gone on to decide "that means my incredibly weakly-evidenced idea is just as good as the expert opinions" which does not follow and is often disastrously wrong.

So I'm also sympathetic to the idea that the saturated fat picture is more complex than a blanket ban suggests. But I know better than to treat things like Brad's arguments as anything other than "interesting hypothesis" as opposed to "something we actually know about nutrition."

[graemep]

I think the experts and the media are to blame.

The public are presented with things that are weakly evidenced as scientifically proven. After all, the one study that says something is good or bad for you was published in a peer-reviewed journal and the university PR people blogged about it and the newspapers reported it uncritically.

A lot of experts are very bad at differing between different levels of evidence and probability: "my personal (if expert) opinion", "a consensus in the field" and "backed by reasonable evidence" and "proven" are very different but all often get presented the same way.

[wat10000]

Experts are usually very good at differentiating between levels of evidence. The process of becoming an expert tends to thoroughly educate a person in just how little they actually know.

The problem is that a bunch of talk about weak studies and probabilities and personal thoughts is not what grabs attention. The few overconfident loudmouths end up being the ones everybody hears from. And you don't even need to be an expert, you just need to sound like one.

If you're a nutrition scientist who really knows their stuff and knows how to talk to people so that they understand just what is really known and how well it's known, how in the world do you compete with someone like RFK Jr.?

[graemep]

> Experts are usually very good at differentiating between levels of evidence. The process of becoming an expert tends to thoroughly educate a person in just how little they actually know.

They know, and are clear about it with their peers but many are very bad at communicating it to the public. There are also experts who are overly attached to their pet theories, or biased, and communicate those things to the public as fact.There are experts who are patronising enough patronising enough to think its not even worth trying to explain things properly to the public.

> The problem is that a bunch of talk about weak studies and probabilities and personal thoughts is not what grabs attention. The few overconfident loudmouths end up being the ones everybody hears from. And you don't even need to be an expert, you just need to sound like one.

All true, Which is why I blame the media as well.

> If you're a nutrition scientist who really knows their stuff and knows how to talk to people so that they understand just what is really known and how well it's known, how in the world do you compete with someone like RFK Jr.?

Good question! The only real solution is better science education, and to keep on plugging away.The most harmful thing is the common perception that experts hand down the truth, rather than understanding the nature of scientific evidence.

[franktankbank]

Lived experience is not really weak evidence though. Personally I use tallow minimally but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.

[technothrasher]

> Lived experience is not really weak evidence though.

Lived experience is definitely weak evidence because it is riddled with bias. This is why we have blinded studies.

[gruez]

>but it seems like a really good high flash point oil.

On what basis? Using the list of smoke point table someone else linked[1], tallow does indeed have a high smoke point, but it's unclear how it's better than many other oils in that list (peanut, sunflower, soybean) which are far easier to procure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...

[franktankbank]

Anyone who lives near beef operations can get unprocessed tallow for free.

[gruez]

Most people do not live near "beef operations". Moreover processing tallow is part of procurement. If you value your time at the prevailing minimum wage, it's pretty hard to beat a gallon of vegetable oil for $10.

[Workaccount2]

>Most people do not live near "beef operations".

Yeah, but lived experience shows that a lot of people do.

[pc86]

The entire concept of "lived experience" is, bluntly - absolute bullshit. You take all the worst aspects of both conscious and unconscious biases as well as anecdotal 'evidence', and wrap it up in the fact that the average person is simply not capable of objectively analyzing themselves[0], and you end up with people saying that demonstrably false things are true simply because that's how they [incorrectly] interpreted their "lived experience," or how their "lived experience" supports their decisions. This last part is particularly true with politics and nutrition, where people make decisions not based on objective data but based mostly on how they were raised and what they like.

I can spend decades eating junk food and lose weight as long as I work out long enough and hard enough. My "lived experience" tells me that junk food is fine simply because it hasn't killed me yet.

[0] 80-90% of people describe themselves as an "above-average" driver.

[tbrownaw]

> [0] 80-90% of people describe themselves as an "above-average" driver.

What shape is the distribution of driving ability? It seems entirely plausible that most drivers are decent and a smaller population are bad enough to pull the mean down well below the median.