> At UCSF, he's generally considered a bit of a quack
You have also stated that every epidemiology researcher is a quack, save ~5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7002375
In the first few minutes of "Sugar, the Bitter Truth" he shows that the average daily caloric intake has increased on average something like ~200 calories in recent decades, shows it's mostly sugar calories, then spends the rest of the video explaining info that supports his hypothesis that it's the fructose, ignoring that people are simply eating more and not using that extra energy, so they get fatter.
Every scientific claim I hear I run through this http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html and "Sugar, the Bitter Truth" raised a lot of alarm bells for me.
Re:The Sugar Addiction Taboo
by tachyonbeam on Thursday January 02, 2014 @11:43PM
(#7004193)
I tried looking before to see if there were any studies done on mice, say, feeding them diets with the same caloric value, but different proportions of fat, protein, sugar. Wanted to know if there's any evidence that eating more sugar makes you get fatter. Wasn't able to find anything.
Re:The Sugar Addiction Taboo
by bollockitis on Thursday January 02, 2014 @04:20PM
(#7002383)
> I, working with grad students at UCSF and elsewhere, have picked apart the materials and methods of his studies and found numerous statistical errors which make us doubt the validity of his conclusions.
Have you published your work anywhere? I'd like to read it.
Sorry, nope. The content of discussions in journal clubs are generally considered confidential.
What is your assessment of the reputability of those journals where Lustig has published?
And the reference to those statistical or other errors or is this just ad hominem?
Not mine, but here: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/02/28/no-its-not-the-...
the more fundamental problem with the study was that (if you read carefulyl) they found the same effect with glucose as they did fructose. You have to carefully read the chart/figure labels to figure that part out though :-(
Robert Lustig is a research doctor. he works at UCSF (it's where my PhD in Biophysics is from), and sees patients there- highly obese, atypical patients. He promotes a particular position about metabolism and health. However - and this is the key thing - he has NOT published data which is convincing to reasonable scientists to support his position. At UCSF, he's generally considered a bit of a quack (personal comments from a number of professional scientists who work there).
Here is a list of Lustig's publications. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=author:...
I, working with grad students at UCSF and elsewhere, have picked apart the materials and methods of his studies and found numerous statistical errors which make us doubt the validity of his conclusions. I won't claim that we have evidence he is being fraudful- it's more likely just an example of poor scientific behavior.
I'll give Lustig credit for one thing. Sugar- the Bitter Truth is one of the finest examples of manipulative sophistry I've ever seen. After seeing that I realized that most scientists are doing an absurdly poor job manipulating the public.