[gadders]

From his last column, linked to above:

"It was nice to know all that but I did wonder: Was I killing myself? Fortunately I could find out. A few months before my butter discovery, I had gotten a “heart scan” – a tomographic x-ray of my circulatory system. These scans are summarized by an Agatston score, a measure of calcification. Your Agatston score is the best predictor of whether you will have a heart attack in the next few years. After a year of eating a half stick of butter every day, I got a second heart scan. Remarkably, my Agatston score had improved (= less calcification), which is rare. Apparently my risk of a heart attack had gone down."

[maj0rhn]

No. Coronary calcification is but one stage in the process of atherosclerosis. So he could have had severe atherosclerosis without extensive calcification. This is why coronary CT is not a perfect test for prediction heart attacks. Furthermore, coronary CT cannot assess the tendency of the blood to clot, which is a function of both local and systemic factors. A useful guideline is that physiology is never as simple as one test or one variable.

[3am]

In case you're still checking this thread, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your efforts to educate and correct the record. I know a little about this area, and know enough to see you know more than I do. It's a sad, recent phenomenon of software engineers projecting the epistemic structure they deal with day-to-day onto the medical world.

(quick edit) It's profoundly sad to watch http://quantifiedself.com/2010/09/seth-roberts-on-arithmetic... all the way through as a result of this story. It's complicated... maybe it's a failure of medicine, of medical care delivery, education, etc but a room full of educated people laughing off the comments by that person warning of artherosclerosis/stroke and Robert's responses... it's just not a good sign.

[sirdogealot]

This is what I love about HN. The knowledgeable community. Thank you.