pjeby comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

126 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2011 03:17AM

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Comment author: pjeby 08 March 2011 08:57:35PM 0 points [-]

The same guy who wrote the laughable "Eat Right For Your Blood Type".

I don't think that this evidence means what you think it means.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 March 2011 09:41:08PM 1 point [-]

For those who have an interest in the possible benefits of a blood type diet the wikipedia page is, as is often the case, a good place to get the basics. Particularly by following up on the references cited.

I personally am not going to investigate further, the mainstream position seems to be solid:

Nevertheless, the consensus among dieticians, physicians, and scientists is that the theory is unsupported by scientific evidence.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

I'm going with that.

Comment author: pjeby 08 March 2011 10:16:03PM *  0 points [-]

Nevertheless, the consensus among dieticians, physicians, and scientists is that the theory is unsupported by scientific evidence.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

AFAICT, not one of those seven references involves a journal citation at all; they are all either "we don't think this is credible", or "we need more evidence". (The seventh is a (valid, IMO) critique of D'Adamo's epistemology.)

I notice, however, that your quotation from the Wikipedia page is from a less-informative part of the page, than say, this one:

D'Adamo's Blood Type Diet has met with criticisms for many different reasons,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] some of which have been addressed publicly by D'Adamo.[9]

And D'Adamo actually provides journal citations backing many of his responses. The strongest argument against him is, "not a lot of clinical evidence", which is quite a bit different than "shown false". (And a critique that could be equally levelled at Seth Roberts.)

Except for the (IMO valid) epistemological critique, the seven "against" references rely on either simple dismissal or attempts to refute points that D'Adamo actually has cites in his favor for.

IOW, you're not providing any new useful information here.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 March 2011 10:29:02PM 1 point [-]

IOW, you're not providing any new useful information here.

I have stated my decision to defer to mainstream consensus in the face of, basically, very little that would leave me to doubt it.