What I find most frustrating about online comments on Taubes work is the amount of people who assume that this is just another crank peddling nonsense.
Instead, Taubes has spent the better part of a decade reviewing the state of research and putting forth a compelling, detailed argument in favor of his position, that the high-carbohydrate diets associated with civilization are also the cause of the cluster of diseases known as diseases of civilization.
His latest book lays out the argument in a more reader-friendly way than his earlier tome (Good Calories, Bad Calories), but it's hardly junk science, and Taubes is hardly a junk scientist. He has been a very good science journalist for decades, and has won the the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers three times. He does his homework.
Again, I recommend that those whose gut reaction is to be skeptical of Taubes' thesis read at least his latest book, which addresses, very carefully, virtually all of the common reactions people have in these kinds of online fora. There are certainly areas still open to debate, as Taubes himself says repeatedly in his writing, but they are not about the knee-jerk topics most people think they will be about.
If you're curious, feel free to take a look at the wikipedia post summarizing the results of low-carb diet trials at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low.... You'll find, at the very least, some cognitive dissonance. And that's really what Taubes' writings (in book and blog form) are about.
What I find most frustrating about online comments on Taubes work is the amount of people who assume that this is just another crank peddling nonsense.
I don't think he can complain about that. He takes his case straight to the public, and he uses rhetoric that is likely to be effectively with the public. That's what cranks peddling nonsense do, so by convergent evolution he sounds exactly like them, which makes it much less likely that people will take his ideas seriously enough to find out if he really is a crank.
To be fair, I was the one complaining about it, not him. That said, I don't think it's fair to compare his research, rigorous report of that research, and various academic lectures to be the equivalent of what the snake-oil-salesmen do.
He presents a very strong hypothesis for a very important subject, and his public statements are mostly focused on demonstrating that what most people believe on the subject isn't exactly right. In my mind, the cognitive dissonance that he creates with his blog isn't intended to be the argument. Instead, it's designed to get people past their initial preconception so they might be willing to read the more rigorous version(s) of his argument.
In general, I don't think it's fair to say that an article in the New Yorker, followed by 5 years of literature review, followed by a (dense, by all accounts) report represents the kind of quackery you are cavalierly comparing his work to.
I think it's fair to say he talks like a quack. Maybe not in the New Yorker article -- I assume he had to be a bit more respectable there. Every time I've seen him linked on Hacker News, however, he's been extremely derogatory of other nutritional researchers. In this particular post, he compares some researchers unfavorably to schoolchildren, calls others lazy, and adopts a generally belittling tone. By speaking directly to the public and taking a dismissive attitude toward what he calls the "authorities," he gives the impression that he has given up on convincing other nutritional researchers of the validity of his views. He then makes a case that his views are quite obviously right if you look at the data a certain way. They're so obviously true that lay people such as myself should be persuaded, yet the nutritional "authorities" refuse to acknowledge them. That's his most glaring warning signal. Personally, I think it's reasonable to assume that nutritional researchers are mostly intelligent and honest people. When experts are blinded, they're blinded by knowledge or by powerful ideas. Whether Taube is right or not, if he is able to convince me but not able to convince other nutritional researchers, it's because of something they know that I don't know.
Maybe this is a paradigm shift in nutrition, and maybe lay folks like us are better equipped to understand this breakthrough than people who have been studying nutrition professionally for years, but that's unlikely. It isn't just unlikely because such paradigm shifts are rare: his ideas just aren't that inaccessible or revolutionary. So for me it's a red flag that he's so derogatory toward nutrition researchers who disagree with him, instead of treating them as an important audience for his ideas.
Or maybe -- and I think this is the most likely explanation if he's really a reasonable fellow -- he's not so much an outsider as he pretends. Maybe his ideas are part of a spectrum of respectable opinion in the nutritional community and accorded some consideration by other researchers. Maybe his defiance of the "authorities" is just a rock star act. If so, can you blame me for believing it?
I would assume he has given up on convincing other researchers of the validity of his views. And if you were actually familiar with how that system works (as opposed to how you think it should ideally work, or some approximation thereof), you would not appeal to the authority of those who practice "nutrition science", because it is anything but.
The way science works, in general, is not the so-called "scientific method" - most funding is controlled by people in the field who have a vested interest (ego, monetary or otherwise) in maintaining the status-quo and beliefs. While it's easy enough to practice "the scientific method" on new frontiers, it is a quixotic endeavour to challenge a prevailing concept.
In many cases, it should be -- when the prevailing concept has actually been rigorously studied and proved. This is NOT the case with nutrition (nor many specific corners of medicine and health).
I don't know what faith you subscribe to, so this example might fall on deaf ears, but PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins don't need to convince the pope of anything -- they need to appeal to the masses. Much of nutrition recommendations are based on faith (and politics) rather than evidence, and in that sense, Taubes is not wrong in the attempt to appeal to the masses. And while he might not be an established research scientist like Dawkins, he has a better grasp of science and burden of proof than those he criticizes, and at least "Good Calories, Bad Calories" is meticulously researched with hundreds of references -- which is much more than you can say about your average (and even "cream of the crop") nutritional science research.
Your argument is essentially an appeal to authority -- and to the wrong authority at that.
Well, thoughtful people at least. There's enough people who take actual cranks at face value that it's not, overall, a social maladaptation to do those things.
I assume he is a crank because his blog seems deceptive (at least the one article I read).
In the article that hit the front page yesterday, he discussed a possible scenario (a 30 year old becoming obese by age 50), and devoted 3000 words to the extra "sip of milk/beer" (above maintenance) that this person consumed.
He devoted 0 words to other 7 strips of bacon/day that this person consumed over a hypothetical non-obese 50 year old. I made some graphs which illustrate his fallacy:
Taubes is referring to the 20 grams above maintenance of current weight (difference between red and green lines in your graph), not the grams above what ideal weight would require. The 7 strips of bacon are needed to maintain the excess weight, not to put on more (according to conventional wisdom). His point is that weight control can't be explained by counting calories so precisely for decades - there must be something else going on. He's not being deceptive.
The only reason it's precisely 20 cals above maintenance for 20 years is because he asserted it to be this.
The mainstream theory predicts similar weight gain with 20 cals above maintenance for 10 years, or a random walk with mu=20 cals and sigma=250. It also doesn't predict that a 50 year old should be precisely 40 lbs overweight - the people who only hit a mean of 15 cals above maintenance were only 30 lbs overweight and are simply excluded from his hypothetical by the premise.
The precision you seem to be describing doesn't exist in the real world and no theory needs to explain it. It's purely an artifact of his assumptions.
Wait, I thought your point was that the 20 cals (10, whatever, a small number) was a straw man and it's 7 strips of bacon that causes overweight.
My point is you're misinterpreting Taubes, because he is saying 1) the mainstream believes such as small number of calories matters, and 2) that is absurd.
Do you agree with #1 now?
When I said precision, I don't mean 20 cals leads to 40 pounds. I mean the precision of someone eating an average calorie count with a margin of error so small. Consider the other side of that - for me to have maintained my own weight for the last 20 years, I would have to have been extremely precise in my eating, which I'm sure I wasn't.
My point is you're misinterpreting Taubes, because he is saying 1) the mainstream believes such as small number of calories matters, and 2) that is absurd.
The mainstream says that 7 strips of bacon will make you 37.5 lbs overweight and tacking on an extra half strip will add 2.5lbs more. In order to make this seem absurd, Taubes never mentions the first 7 strips of bacon.
Whether or not I agree with (1) depends on how low we set the threshold for what matters. If we care about the difference between "six pack" and "thin but no six pack", we care about the first half strip of bacon. (Fun fact: bodybuilders and boxers do stress about 20 cals/day.) For the purposes of Taubes example (thin 50 year old vs obese 50 year old), mainstream nutrition and calorie counting says 20 extra calories doesn't matter.
When I said precision, I don't mean 20 cals leads to 40 pounds. I mean the precision of someone eating an average calorie count with a margin of error so small. Consider the other side of that - for me to have maintained my own weight for the last 20 years, I would have to have been extremely precise in my eating, which I'm sure I wasn't.
It's exceedingly unlikely that you maintained your weight with a margin of error of 2lbs - my daily variation can be as large as 6-7lbs. I'm also fairly "stable" in my weight - it never leaves [215,230] (unfortunately I'm a hard gainer).
Further, if you want to stay roughly stable in weight, the target is not your maintenance needs. If you instead target the maintenance needs of a person of ideal weight (rather than a person of your weight), you don't need much precision at all to avoid becoming overweight. If you are off by 100 cals, you might be 5lbs too heavy, but you won't get anywhere near 40lbs - your maintenance needs will increase and consume the excess.
Instead, Taubes has spent the better part of a decade reviewing the state of research and putting forth a compelling, detailed argument in favor of his position, that the high-carbohydrate diets associated with civilization are also the cause of the cluster of diseases known as diseases of civilization.
His latest book lays out the argument in a more reader-friendly way than his earlier tome (Good Calories, Bad Calories), but it's hardly junk science, and Taubes is hardly a junk scientist. He has been a very good science journalist for decades, and has won the the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers three times. He does his homework.
Again, I recommend that those whose gut reaction is to be skeptical of Taubes' thesis read at least his latest book, which addresses, very carefully, virtually all of the common reactions people have in these kinds of online fora. There are certainly areas still open to debate, as Taubes himself says repeatedly in his writing, but they are not about the knee-jerk topics most people think they will be about.
If you're curious, feel free to take a look at the wikipedia post summarizing the results of low-carb diet trials at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low.... You'll find, at the very least, some cognitive dissonance. And that's really what Taubes' writings (in book and blog form) are about.