To add: this is also why many other discussions suck: politics, economics, religion, etc.
Everyone's a fucking expert, can disregard science because [someone on tv] disagrees with peer-reviewed studies, and there's no obvious correct answer.
At least on HN it's moderately fact-based, even in disagreement. If you dare to read discussions--dare I call them that--on somewhere like Facebook or Reddit...well, godspeed.
Nutrition discussions suck because nobody is demonstrably wrong. It doesn't matter if you can back your opinion up with a study, because the other can can back up his contradicting opinion with another study. There are no canonical facts, because the studies are just so hard to control. We know nothing, in the end.
Giving the benefit of the doubt here, presumably at the end of that book is also a long list of peer-reviewed studies that the author based the book on.
Both the parent comment and the book are essentially distillations of the current scientific knowledge on the effects of fat in a person's diet.
It's a "shitty book"? Oh well, all the parts where she discusses the methodology flaws in studies are completely bogus then, because you think the book is shitty. Good argument.
Still, you clearly know more than the Economist, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the BMJ who all gave it good reviews. We're totally lucky to have you here to enlighten us.
Everyone's a fucking expert, can disregard science because [someone on tv] disagrees with peer-reviewed studies, and there's no obvious correct answer.
At least on HN it's moderately fact-based, even in disagreement. If you dare to read discussions--dare I call them that--on somewhere like Facebook or Reddit...well, godspeed.