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timtyler comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong
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http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/its-news-on-academia-not-climate.html
People are crazy, the world is mad. Of course there's gross misbehavior by climate scientists, just like the rest of academia is malfunctioning. But the amount of scrutiny leveled on climate science is vastly greater than the amount of scrutiny leveled on, say, the dietary scientists who randomly made up the idea that saturated fat was bad for you; and the scrutiny really hasn't turned up anything that bad, just typical behavior by "working" scientists. So I doubt that this is one of the cases where the academic field is just grossly entirely wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Saturated_fat_intake_and_disease_-_Claimed_associations
...doesn't look as though scientists were "randomly making things" up to me.
But what there saying fails to account for a lot of data. They're ignoring it.
A popular article (w/Seth Roberts) covering the issue: http://freetheanimal.com/2009/09/saturated-fat-intake-vs-heart-disease-stroke.html
2010 Harvard School of Public Health (intervention/meta-analysis): Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease
Saturated fat, carbohydrate, and cardiovascular disease
Another meta-analysis: The questionable role of saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids in cardiovascular disease
Population Studies: Cardiovascular disease in the masai
Cholesterol, coconuts, and diet on Polynesian atolls: a natural experiment: the Pukapuka and Tokelau island studies
Cardiovascular event risk in relation to dietary fat intake in middle-aged individuals: data from The Malmö Diet and Cancer Study
I am not particularly interested in a discussion of the virtues of saturated fat. It certainly seems like a bad example of scientists randomly making things up, though.
FWIW, here is a reasonably well-balanced analyisis of the 2010 study you mentioned:
"Study fails to link saturated fat, heart disease"
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61341020100204
If you look at guidance on saturated fat it often recommends replacing it with better fats - e.g.:
"You should replace foods high in saturated fats with foods high in monounsaturated and/or polyunsaturated fats."
Epidemiological studies no-doubt include many who substituted saturated fats with twinkies.
Where does the "guidance" come from? You can't cite "guidance" as evidence against the proposition that dietary scientists were making stuff up.
I was explaining a problem with studies like the one cited - in exploring the hypotheses that saturated fats are inferior to various other fats. Basically, they don't bear on those hypotheses.
In this particular case, the authors pretty clearly stated that: "More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat."