As someone considering paleo, I'd be interested to hear what studies you thought well supported the claim that saturated fats aren't the problem and why you thought those studies were more reliable than the ones that indicte the contrary.

This guy is an interesting read, he's a medical doctor and there's a lot of technical stuff that you may need to lookup to see if hs's actually BSing or not - http://www.archevore.com/

There's a lot in there about why the Common Wisdom is built on bad science - the big one is the 7 Countries paper that cherry picked the countries to get the results they wanted, and ignored the 14 countries that didn't show the required results. This is where Saturated Fat = Bad came from.

The book Good Carbs, Bad Carbs opened my eyes to why Atkins works - lots of science references in there.

With personal experimentation this year, I'm beginning to work out what I can eat and not have problems in the short term. This experience is lining up with the paleo diet. It's much harder to tell if the long term problems will follow the same way, but if I feel physically better now, that can't be bad. I am thinner, healthier, more muscular and have better endurance than at any other point in my life, and I'm 44.

YMMV

My experience: I went from 22% bodyfat to 12% in 4-5 months of archevore. I didn't do the diet to lose weight; that was just a nice side benefit (and the most noticeable/measurable effect). My exercise was consistently low over this period.

One interesting point that the Archevore points out is that the reason Very Low Carb works is because the lack of insulin spikes causes the cravings to go away, and you tend to eat fewer calories. If these calories have a lot of saturated fat, this tends to make you fuller sooner, and without cravings, you stop eating sooner during a meal.

I have experienced exactly this phenomenon.

The book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (Taubes) provides solid evidence (i.e. well-referenced studies) against various forms of the lipid hypothesis. While Taubes' own theory of obesity hasn't really stood up over time, the book contains a lot of good research.

"While Taubes' own theory of obesity hasn't really stood up over time"

can you elaborate on that?