Ah, there's the problem. The scientific method is great, but it doesn't apply itself. It's scientists that are the problem. Scientists are only human.

Let's do an experiment. Or better, let's do a Gedankenexperiment so we sound more like experts:

Look around your (virtual) workplace. See that well-spoken idiot who you know is wrong about everything, but who somehow gets the attention and the money to run whatever projects they want? That's the expert.

You are not the expert, even though you know more stuff, because nobody asks you. And when you insisted they were wrong, they got rid of you.

The same thing happens everywhere, in academia, science, government, medicine... everywhere. We are only human.

But not to worry! It's all right. Thanks to the scientific method science actually advances, even if it's one funeral at a time. Just be careful who you trust.

Your anti-science vibe is terrifying.

Be very careful about how you word stuff like this, even if at the end of the day it's just healthy skepticism. It's the same vibe that gives power to conspiracy theories.

Their comment didn't sound anti-science to me at all. They're critical of academia and how that functions. SMBC had a comic on this recently that illustrates the difference, the issues, and possible improvements: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions

I'm very pro science. But science is very hard to do properly, and even when done it's very hard to find it.

Pop science articles you read online, written by journalists? At best just clickbait. (I read them too. Only human...)

Unfortunately there is no substitute to thinking for yourself. The best way to start is with the question "does it work?". If the question doesn't make sense no need to carry on, we're off science altogether.

Tell that to tobacco and sugar alarmists. They didn't trust the science and look how that turned out.

The mistake is when one assumes that the things they read on media outlets and on TV are anywhere close to a 'scientific consensus' in an area such as nutrition.

Since I'm getting downvoted to oblivion I feel compelled to respond: I never said to assume that.

Correct, I didn't intend it as a critique of you specifically, but rather something that I see a lot of others do, so I apologize for the overly-direct wording (edited it to make this more clear).

Scientific studies aren't gospel. They can be affected by the sensibilities of grant agencies, funding from industry, flawed experiment design, and p-hacking, among others.

Peter Norvig's essay on experiment design comes to mind:

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Of course. So what?

The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.

The "facebook-esque anecdote" was intended to point out the failings of acting as if scientific institutions are practicing science in a pure, non-biased way and blindly trusting the humans in these institutions to not be subject to corrupting influences. My stepmother's god-like idolatry of the scientific method was conflated with the very flawed humans who were supposed to be using the scientific method.

Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct.

Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people.

They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.

> the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices

The problem is now you're too aggressive in the other direction. You seem to have to dissent, regardless of the study design or funding.

> Scientific studies aren't gospel.

I've found this depends on the person.

>> Scientific studies aren't gospel.

>I've found this depends on the person.

Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :)

Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel

>The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can.

Until you figure out that most 'scientists' are morons, and are biased/ignorant/academic. An anecdote from an observant, meticulous, objective layman is far more dependable than the gobbledygook that characterizes most published research.

Aggressive conformists demand religious adherence to established institutions, because the institutions are a source of comfort to them. The parent poster comes off like an inquisitor silencing heretics, because that's exactly what he thinks he's doing. Sure, this heretic might have a point, but the Church must be protected AT ALL COSTS.

Incorrect, and you're starting to fly off the rails here.

It's fine to critique studies and findings. It's not okay to say that you or your facebook friends know better and can substitute your own thoughts on a subject. That is how we get Covid deniers or vaccine conspiracy theories or the million other misinformation issues we have right now.

Regarding nutrition: this view is great until you define "science" as whatever advice your doctor gives you.

The problem is that there have been plenty of studies long before these more enlightened times we live in, which demonstrated that saturated animal fats, eggs, salt, and red meat are good for you, whereas high-grain and starch diets, seed oils, sugar, and hydrogenated fats are bad for you.

And what happened? These studies went against the FDA guidelines and the nutritional training of an entire generations of MDs, and thus were ignored and ridiculed. This resulted in a massive increase in type-2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

We like to think that the medical experts we rely upon follow the science. They don't. To this day, the majority of MDs in the US follow the 60 year old guidelines that killed so many people prematurely. Despite the resounding preponderance of the evidence.

And it doesn't end there. The same is true for related areas like the whole cholesterol debacle that ignores HDL/LDL ratios, and especially ignores blood calcium levels. Even when they know better, i.e., when the research shows that high cholesterol in a healthy ratio with low to non-existent blood calcium levels is perfectly healthy and does not need treatment, they will still prescribe statins, or tell such patients to cut out red meat and eggs. This is not following the science, even while acknowledging that the patient is already healthy.

The same story with carnivore diets and diabetes. Even when the tests show that the patient has a vastly improved blood glucose count on a carnivore diet, i.e., they are getting healthier, and the doctor sees it and admits it, and he is aware of research which found the same correlation, he will still insist that they need to go back to eating a predominantly grain-based diet, because his training, and the peer pressure from his colleagues are overriding the science.

Because of this, it is up to you to find doctors who actually follow the science. They are out there. You just have to look for them.

First figure out if there is any kind of scientific consensus, and how solid it is.