ChrisHallquist comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 4: What Causes Obesity? - Less Wrong

7 Post author: ChrisHallquist 31 December 2013 10:04PM

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Comment author: ChrisHallquist 31 December 2013 04:56:24AM *  24 points [-]

One other point I should make: this isn't just about "someone" being wrong. It's about an author frequently cited by people in the LessWrong community on an important issue being wrong.

Indeed, I'm not sure I'd know about Taubes at all if not for the LessWrong community.

I've already mentioned Eliezer's "Correct Contrarian Cluster" as an example in another thread, but perhaps it would be helpful to mention other examples:

  • In a thread where someone asked what the evidence in favor of paleo was, Taubes was the main concrete source that came up. Specifically, Luke mentioned Taubes as the person he's "usually" referred to on this question, without taking a stand himself and saying he didn't have time to evaluate the evidence personally.
  • Sarah Constantin (commenter at Yvain's blog, author of reply to Yvain's non-libertarian FAQ, and I just learned a MetaMed VP) has cited Taubes a couple times partly to make a libertarian point.
  • Jack bringing up Taubes in offline conversation
  • Yvain's old blog had a review of Taubes which doesn't seem to be public right now, but which I remember as partly criticizing Taubes but also lauding him for things that now I don't think Taubes deserves credit for.

So Taubes was someone I could expect to see cited in the future when the issue of expert consensus gets discussed on LessWrong. In spite of all the people who didn't like these posts, I think I may have accomplished the goal of getting people to stop citing Taubes.

Comment author: timtyler 05 January 2014 11:15:30PM *  0 points [-]

One other point I should make: this isn't just about "someone" being wrong. It's about an author frequently cited by people in the LessWrong community on an important issue being wrong.

Not experts on the topic of diet. I associated with members of the Calorie Restriction Society some time ago. Many of them were experts on diet. IIRC, Taubes was generally treated as a low-grade crackpot by those folk: barely better than Atkins.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 01 January 2014 10:47:00PM 2 points [-]

I think people would react to your posts better if they included some of this at the top. You need to remind people why they should care

Comment author: CarlShulman 01 January 2014 12:22:05AM 10 points [-]

Taubes is now involved in an initiative with the Arnold Foundation doing randomized nutrition trials. It would be interesting to make predictions about some of those.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 31 December 2013 07:03:16AM 6 points [-]

In spite of all the people who didn't like these posts, I think I may have accomplished the goal of getting people to stop citing Taubes.

Really? Most of the negative reactions have been explicitly about finding the posts unconvincing. I doubt those people will stop citing Taubes.

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 01 January 2014 10:41:45PM 0 points [-]

It started out that way, but over time it seemed like over time the response morphed into, "okay, Taubes is wrong about thee things but so what?" Jack even made the argument that Taubes isn't a rationalist so it's unfair to hold him to that standard.

Comment author: Jack 01 January 2014 11:02:00PM 3 points [-]

Not "unfair" just not relevant to whether or not he is essentially right.

Comment author: hyporational 31 December 2013 06:05:29AM *  8 points [-]

If they do stop citing Taubes, I predict they start recommending the Perfect Health Diet. I think the correct response would be to suggest they write a summary, not write a series of articles rebuking the diet, so that we can question them and not the other way around. Make the people with novel advice do most of the work.

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