timtyler 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: William_Quixote 30 December 2013 12:24:34PM *  19 points [-]

So, I’ve liked this series (and upvoted it), but I’ve had mixed feelings about the most recent post. It feels like this is verging dangerously close to “someone is wrong on the internet” (1) territory.

In particular, something that seems to me like a major failing is that I’m now 4 posts into a series on nutrition and I don’t know the right answer. I don’t even know your best guess as to the right answer. Without an executive summary on “the right answer to nutrition” this series has no actionable take away points. Its clear to me that a lot of research was done to write this series. The series would be more valuable if you shared the fruits of that research.

Actionability aside, not stating a view on what someone ought to conclude makes it hard to see just how wrong Taubes is or isn’t. Will following his advice kill me? (Taubes is a dangerous madman). Will following his advice cause me to gain weight or fail to lose weight? (Someone is wrong on the internet). Is Taubes directionally correct such that following his advice will cause me to lose weight but he overstates his case while taking rhetorical cheap shots at strawmen? (Someone is technically incorrect on the internet).

1: http://xkcd.com/386/

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.

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