
50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016) - deegles
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
======
mgamache
This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. This type of
corrupting influence (direct or indirect) provides enough uncertainty to allow
people to ignore all research that doesn't confirm their personal bias. It
also fuels the anti-science groups that claim conspiracies to hide the
'truth'.

~~~
std_throwawayay
Both sides have convincing arguments and research to back it up. They have
good answers to the seemingly contradictory research that the other side uses.
They both provide a consistent picture.

One or both of the theories has to be wrong but I cannot decide. I can learn
and read all about it and take both viewpoints into account but I still cannot
decide. I could do my own research but I would come up with one or the other
answer depending on what data I look at but it's not better than what I have
already.

What should I do?

This is a real problem because science cannot provide the correct answer. It
is more about choosing a side and sticking with it than about finding the
truth.

~~~
bad_user
For me it’s simple ... I ask myself what did my grandparents used to eat?

I’m not from the US and in our country the industrialization of the food
supply happened much later, along with obesity and diabetes, which back in my
grandparents’ time were very rare. My grandparents lived on the countryside,
working on their farm, raising their own crops and animals.

Grandpa died at 99 years old and worked his land until 95.

He ate 6 to 8 eggs per day (they had a lot of chickens). Meat was more
expensive, sacrificing an animal about once per week, but they were cooking
with lard and butter all the time. They also had plenty of milk and cheese
from their own goat or cow. You know, the kind of really fat milk that you
can’t find in stores. They also drank their own wine, daily.

They were not eating sugar. Or vegetable oils.

~~~
asadkn
If only it were that simple. Consider the lifestyles. If you're willing to
live the same lifestyle and same environmental conditions, the same diet
variables could potentially lead to similar lifespan.

But in lieu of the same conditions, the logic to consume same diet isn't that
sound.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I think the inspiration one should take from their grandparents and further
back, is to avoid over-processed foods and highly refined foods.

They didn't eat ready-made processed meals loaded with salt and sugar, they
didn't drink soda except on rare occasions, they didn't eat nearly the same
amount of candy that we do today.

I'm only 33 and from my childhood I remember soda as a rare treat that was
saved for birthdays and other special occasions, or if my dad and I had been
working in the garden or on a DIY project. Very few things are more satisfying
than a well-deserved ice-cold sugary fizzy drink while taking a break from
hard work.

Soda was a luxury we didn't get every day, and 25cl was the standard serving
size. Anything smaller than a 33cl can seems to be exceedingly rare now, and
usually people go for the 50+cl bottles.

Our habits are completely out of whack.

------
MikeGale
For years I've essentially not consumed sugar except for that in vegetables
etc.

I still suffer from this rubbish though: 1\. I often can't find any meat in
the supermarket that has not been denatured by having the fat removed. 2\. I
reject a lot of products which I suspect I'd like because they have added
sugar. 3\. I have to tamp down on my anger when I hear somebody rabbiting on
about the dangers of fat.

Humans truly are a stupid species.

Best to ignore "Public Health" advice, too much of it is demonstrably idiocy.

~~~
grondilu
> 1\. I often can't find any meat in the supermarket that has not been
> denatured by having the fat removed.

Youtuber Thomas Delauer makes the case that this is not such a big deal since
you can always mix lean meat with other sources of fat (like butter or coco
nut oil).

Also I once heard that toxins are accumulated in fat tissue so if you eat
animals that were poorly fed (for instance cows fed with grains instead of
grass), by only eating lean cuts you dodge that bullet.

The ideal meat might come from extinct megafauna anyway : I'm personally
seduced by the theory that the neolithic revolution was some kind of a hack we
had to pull off when we hunted down all big game to extinction at the end of
the last glaciation.

~~~
stareatgoats
Unless that extinction was not due to human intervention at all, but rather a
cataclysmic event causing the Younger Dryas cooling. Maybe the meteor that
created the Hiawatha crater on Greenland. [0]

Which doesn't really contradict your theory though, only your reason for the
megafauna extinction.

[0]
[https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/695704](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/695704)

~~~
grondilu
It's a debated issue among paleontologists, IIRC. Surely, human hunting did
not help those species anyway. We also know for sure that in more recent times
humans hunted many species of large animals to extinction (like giant birds),
so until a definitive evidence is provided, to me the hunting hypothesis gets
a high prior probability.

It also seems that most mass extinctions were not due to a single factor
anyway, but to a combination of factors. So, yeah.

------
subcosmos
We (UCSF) have a lovely database of internal food industry documents for those
of you wanting to search for, and discover, new dirt :)

Also, we've got tobacco and chemical industry collections!

[https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/](https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/)

~~~
gerdesj
Thanks for the link - that is quite a resource.

------
ummonk
And 50 years later I still struggle to find yogurt that hasn’t been stripped
of its fat at office snack fridges.

~~~
sjwright
I often struggle to find yoghurt for children that is flavoured but not
intensely sweetened... though even that's beginning to change in Australia
with some great options from a few different brands.

Look at these macros—pretty impressive for a kids food:

[http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-
content/uploads/Screen...](http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-
content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2017-02-07-at-5.46.58-PM.png)

Unfortunately they only sell it in pouches—no option to buy the same product
in a large tub.

~~~
bluejekyll
Yogurt is fairly easy to make at home, especially with electric pressure
cookers like instant pot.

Then you can guarantee what goes into it.

~~~
masonic
Where do you get cultures (or determine which are naturally present)?

~~~
triviatise
just buy yogurt with live cultures. back when I used to make my own yogurt I
would just put a tablespoon of dannon into a gallon of whole milk.

------
nayuki
Relevant talks by Robert Lustig:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI)
"Sugar -- the elephant in the kitchen" (20 minutes, year 2013)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)
"Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (90 minutes, year 2009)

~~~
superpermutat0r
The guy is a quack. Bunch of stuff he says in his Bitter Truth talk is false.

For example, Japanese consume much more fructose sugars than an average USA
citizen. He somehow skipped that, when he used the Japanese as an example of
healthy diet people. Japanese individuals consume 1000kcal less than USA daily
average. That's probably the only thing that matters.

------
gnulinux
I grew up somewhere else and came to US when I was 18 for college. One thing
that struck me was, people add sugar to their yogurt. All my life I added salt
to my yogurt. I mean, I was perfectly familiar with fruit yogurt, but adding
straight up sugar was new to me. My favorite snack is adding cucumber, olive
oil and tons of salt to yogurt. The first time my American roommate from LA
saw me eating this, he literally lost himself. He almost puked. He said "this
is so against the idea of yogurt. Yogurt must be eaten sweet".

~~~
fireattack
While yogurts in America are indeed way too sweet, sweet yogurt is definitely
not just an American thing.

I, also from somewhere in another hemisphere, never heard of "salty yogurt".

(By sweet yogurt, of course people (American or not) normally don't "add
sugar" on-the-fly. It is done during making the yogurts.)

~~~
dalore
Adding salt to something sweet can make it taste sweeter and better.

Try sprinkle a dash of flu de sel over your m deserts next time and watch them
pop.

Or a bit of salt on some strawberries before eating.

Fact your saliva is about 0.04% saline so any food not at that level will
taste a little bland.

------
xkgt
While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there was
no reverse push from the fat industry? Was it less organized than the sugar
industry or were the profit margins more slender?

~~~
oil25
> While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there
> was no reverse push from the fat industry?

The "fat" industry is the animal agriculture industry and it has heavily
swayed and influenced American dietary guidelines for decades.

 _Various food industries presented their side of the argument at a second
senate hearing in 1977. This meeting resulted in a watered down version of the
Dietary Goals, with less emphasis on reducing meat and dairy products. The
American Medical Association also protested the McGovern Report, because it
said that providing this basic knowledge on what we should eat might interfere
with the medical doctor’s right to prescribe, even though doctors then, and
now, know nothing about human nutrition. The effects of the McGovern Report
were widespread, and as a result, the consumption of meat, eggs, and milk
fell, temporarily._

 _Industries fought back successfully with every means at their disposal,
including hiring lobbyists, purchasing medical and nutrition experts,
launching huge advertising campaigns, driving the nutrition education of our
children with their bias, and funding nutrition research that favored their
products. Their success can be measured by the US food availability data,
which documents an increase in mean daily total energy intake from 2,057 kcal
in 1970, to 2,405 kcal in 1990, and 2,674 kcal in 2008. We eat more oil, meat,
and dairy now than when the McGovern Report was published in 1977. The
incidence of obesity and type-2 diabetes has both doubled in that same period
of time. These figures are undeniable evidence that industry won and Americans
lost._

[https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm](https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm)

~~~
JanSt
Total animal food consumption declined, as advised by guidelines...

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxMoxXqWsAAjlso.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxMoxXqWsAAjlso.jpg:large)

------
Quequau
My mother was a head nurse / nurse practitioner before she retired and to this
day she is a fountain of unwanted, long disproved (or at least questioned)
nutritional "facts" which she repeats endlessly.

The one that has grated on me for decades is old propaganda from WWII about
carrots promoting eye health and bestowing night vision... though fats are
easily in her top five evil substances list.

There is literally nothing I've been able to do to change behavior, including
keeping an entire directory full of publications of studies refuting whatever
falsehood she's spouting to read out loud at the dinner table when I come to
visit.

------
oil25
This undue exaggeration about sugar lobby influence has been thoroughly
debunked -
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747)

Aside, it is really a shame how reductionist the popular view of nutrition is
that we come to scapegoating "fat" or "sugar". T. Colin Campbell says it well:

 _This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-
of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time,
a recipe for failure. Reductionist experimentation is valuable for
understanding nutrient structure and function, but it too often encourages
endless speculation and confusion caused by highly subjective, personal
preferences as to which factor to favor in research and to offer to the
market._

[https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-
discu...](https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discussion-
about-saturated-fat/)

~~~
pascalxus
Nutrition is so much more nuanced than any of us really know. Everytime I
think i know something, I learn more details and learn that there's even more
to it.

Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even safely
consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon
or from 16 hours of fasting. But, do you really wanna waste you're precious
calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda?

In any case, it's good that people are starting to think about these things,
the pros and cons. Hopefully, people can learn why it's good/bad and thus
enable them to make better decisions the next time they need something sweet.

On a related note, I heard Dr. Berg say, sugar craving are a sign that your
body is not getting enough potassium. Evolutionarily that would make sense,
since fruits are higher in potassium than almost anything else except
vegetables.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even
> safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a
> marathon or from 16 hours of fasting."

Of __all__ the soda consumed what percentage would you image falls into this
loop hole?

The reality is, sugar (and carbs) for many people are not consumed
responsibly. And give the degree of irresponsibility, 99.9% of these people
aren't running a marathon or fasting for 16 hours.

~~~
other_herbert
OO I'll guess... I'll say... 0.0015%.... .. .. that also might be generous...…
and that no one who has just completed a marathon or 1/2 or any portion
_wants_ to drink anything other than water or maybe the saltiest flavor of
Gatorade or powerade that exists... seriously after a lot of physical exertion
I'd far rather see a deer salt lick and a bucket of water than an infinite
vending machine of anything...

------
zw123456
I dunno. You know… my grandpa drank a 5th of whiskey a day and smoked one
cigar a day until the day he died. Age 102. Sometimes I think that you enjoy
the heck out of life and don't worry about anything. Shrug. I hope genetics
matters more :)

~~~
jm__87
Not sure why you're downvoted. There is a guy by the name of Peter Attia who
has spent a lot of time studying centenarians and his conclusion has basically
been, these people won the genetic lottery for longevity. He of course thinks
those of us who aren't so lucky with genes can achieve similar results through
diet and exercise. Very interesting stuff.

~~~
taurath
The question is do you want to play against the averages (smokers more likely
to die sooner for example), or above them - it comes to a personal choice.
What isn’t a personal choice is how little we control the environment in
formative years. Kids growing up with parents that are told cheap carbs are
healthy are gonna have a hard time changing later when it turns out it’s not
healthy at all.

~~~
jm__87
I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to give the first poster I responded
to some credit. There needs to be a balance between quantity and quality of
life. For some, they will enjoy drinking and smoking. Personally, I think
meditation and mindfulness is a better path. But quality of life matters a
lot.

Edit: I also didn't mean to imply that I think the key to a long life is
simply not worrying. The key to a long life is definitely a combination of
genetics and how well you take care of yourself. But part of taking care of
yourself is worrying less.

~~~
zw123456
I do think stress plays a role. Full disclosure, I work out every day and eat
pretty healthy, I am not dismissing science, just saying, enjoying life is,
IMHO, and important component. Enjoy your time on this planet. It is
wonderous, all the beauty and ugliness are in an existential way, amazing.

------
debt
This is pretty fucking evil considering how bad sugar is to the body.

------
scurvy
So the sugarbusters people were right after all?

------
kovek
Slightly related to research and meta-studies. The other day I was wondering:
what stops a researcher from publishing random numbers (following some
distribution they pick) as the results of their experiments?

~~~
MertsA
Reproducibility. What's worrying is the surprisingly large number of papers
that are not reproducible. Most of that is likely not because of fraud though.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002228281...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022282817303334)

------
narven
Milk industry did the same thing to make people think milk is good for people

------
alecco
Indeed. And now it's the turn of the Dairy industry. Many papers funded by Big
Dairy in Canada and other places in the last few years.

------
gamma-male
I think PhDs don't necessarily realize how the world rely on them. You're
pretty much out of school when you receive a PhD.

------
crankylinuxuser
And if I remember from a nutritionist who posted here, the way we lose weight
is by breathing CO2 out.

Food is extracted for its nutrients in our digestive tract and excreted. Yet
the way we lose weight is by breathing.

(I cannot find the source of that claim)

~~~
grouseway
TED talk

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE)

~~~
grondilu
Also a DNews video :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw)

------
DoreenMichele
I took Intro to Psychology in my mid to late twenties. We were required to
participate in a study as part of the class. IIRC, the study was being
performed by a grad student in pursuit of their degree.

So, really, both the "scientist" and subjects of the study were kind of
compelled to participate. No one was there of their free will. We were all
trying to tick off an educational checkbox on our way to a sheepskin in hopes
of a better paycheck someday.

So they played some audio tape of a black person and white person talking. The
theory was that they would switch the labels around and see if the same words
were interpreted differently depending on whether you thought they were said
by a black person or a white person.

The problem is that this was about as effective as switching the labels as to
who was male and who was female on an audio recording of a discussion. None of
us were fooled by labeling the black speaker "white." We could tell by the
sound of their voice.

I participate regularly in unpaid surveys to get points for a reward program.
They are often stupid questions like "Which pet would you prefer? A kitten? Or
a puppy?" And I randomly click one when the real answer is "I'm not a pet
person. I'm not likely to ever own either." But "None of the above" is never
an option.

It's rare for me to see a survey that I feel is well designed and well
executed. I think most of them are pretty sucktastic even before getting into
questions of "Was this some Machiavellian plot?"

In many cases, it makes more sense to attribute it to unconscious bias or
conflict of interest, not Machivellian plot. I rarely feel that the people
involved are talented enough to successfully pull off some Machivellian plot.
The grad student thought she was all clever at telling us the black guy was
really white, as evidenced by how she behaved at the big reveal, while we
looked at her like "I can't believe you think we were really fooled by this."

(I am not simply inferring this. Another student, coincidentally a black guy,
outright told her "We weren't fooled. You can tell he's black when he
speaks.")

Food interactions with the body are quite complex and there are myriad other
factors involved. We really need to move past the fat vs sugar debate
entirely. It's overly simplistic.

~~~
antt
I'm not sure what a social science study has to do with a biology study.

If you feed rats sugar and 50% of them die of heart attacks and you have a
control group where it's 10% you have found something about sugar and rats.

I'm not sure what the number in this case were but the sugar lobby scientists
did a meta study where they used the logic in your post to throw out the
studies that made sugar look bad, while keeping all the ones where it looked
good.

At any rate the people who I've seen use the "It's just incompetence not
malice" defense were most often both.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I've seen terrible logic errors in biology models as well. It just tends to be
drama when I talk about those examples.

I have a form of cystic fibrosis. According to the CF Foundation website (last
I looked), my body overproduces mucus and I am drowning in my own mucus and
this is why lung clearance methods are prescribed.

I have seen exactly one study that concluded that people with CF actually
underproduce mucus. This study makes more logical sense and fits with my
first-hand experience that I'm sicker and cough more when my sinuses are too
dry. I have more lung issues on days where my sinuses appear to have too
little mucus, not too much.

It's more logical because mucus plays a critical role in the immune system in
keeping out invaders and people with CF are chronically ill and infected due
to a terribly compromised immune system.

I've seen at least two discussions on the internet where women with CF
complained about vaginal dryness ruining their sex life. I have yet to see a
woman with CF claim she left a mucus trail behind her like a giant garden slug
and could comfortably have sex with ten men a day because she's just soaked
all the time.

Yet, women with CF also complain of vaginal "goopiness."

Logically, the vaginal goopiness and the gunk filling the lungs of people with
CF are both some form of phlegm or pus, not the body overproducing mucus. But
that's not what the medical literature states. The medical literature
illogically claims that I am merely overproducing mucus and drowning in my own
mucus.

I'm getting well when the world says this can't be done, ergo my mental models
are probably more accurate than the medical literature.

But I'm a former homemaker, so I am routinely told I'm crazy and making all of
that up.

Whether you are talking racism or biology, our mental models for how it works
shape outcomes. Weirdly, people seem to often think this is not true for
biology.

~~~
darkerside
Sad that this is getting down voted. Science is wonderful, and it's behind
many incredible breakthroughs in modern technology, obviously.

But in my book, logic beats science every time. You can point to all the
studies in the world, but if they conflict with my own literal experience, I
am going to be at the very least skeptical of the science.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you.

I wish people would actually engage me on the logic rather than acting like I
must be crazy and making things up while they pretend such assumptions aren't
some form of prejudice.

I'm starved for actual meaty engagement on such subjects. Like explain to me
why you think I'm wrong instead of telling me I hallucinated my entire life
and if I really do have CF and I really am getting well, it's 18 years of
placebo effect and I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about.

Fear me. I can apparently hallucinate my body into better health. Up next:
Darth Vader Force chokehold, clearly.

~~~
darkerside
Reading other replies to your original post is alternately enlightening and
incredibly frustrating. So much armchair crap from people who have clearly
never encountered anything outside of established science and so refuse to
believe that anything outside of established science can exist! As if
established science were somehow virgin birthed into existence, and not built
upon centuries of painstaking observation and analysis.

Especially considering your form of CF is atypical, you'd think researchers
would be tremendously interested in identifying a possibly conflated disease
that presents with the same symptoms.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It's definitely very frustrating. In the good news column, this discussion is
the most meaty engagement I've ever gotten and I'm generally pleased with this
unexpected turn of events.

I think the most charitable reading I can give is that when I was much sicker,
I tended to do a poor job of trying to present my case and "you never get a
second chance to make a first impression." Hopefully the silver lining is that
some people will recognize how much my writing has improved over time and will
see my past typo-filled and often not very coherent posts as compared to later
ones as evidence that my claim that I was very sick at one time and I've
gotten healthier holds water and makes sense, even without ever meeting me in
person.

------
edoo
This explains the full corruption of the food pyramid. Not all carbs are
equal. Fast carbs damage you.

------
jMyles
That's why it's important to personally check to which "science" comports with
your living experience. In this age (and in the one we're entering), it's
important to not only personally check, but to promulgate your assessments
throughout your social graph in order to keep "science" in check with
_science_.

~~~
Fomite
This feels like saying "It's important to check science against a biased
sample of confirmation bias."

~~~
jMyles
I dispute both your use of the word "science" and your characterization, "a
biased sample of confirmation bias."

The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is
often _not_ science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate
application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the
results.

And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation
bias," but instead an interwoven web that connects to the entirety of living
human society and which helps you glean truth about the world. I realize that
Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are all interconnected and capable
of learning from and teaching each other and the internet is young.

There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to
blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural
company, pharmaceutical company, or government.

Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect.
Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is
another.

I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I feel
confident that it's necessary.

~~~
Fomite
"The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is
often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate
application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the
results."

You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant
funding.

"And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of
confirmation bias, but instead an interwoven web that helps you glean truth
about the world. I realize that Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are
all interconnected and capable of learning from and teaching each other."

I don't know why you're taking a jaded, skeptical approach to science, but an
idealistic one to your social graph. Your social graph _is_ biased. It just
is. Homophily and communities are things for a reason.

"There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to
blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural
company, pharmaceutical company, or government."

You have just described, especially with that last one, all research.

"Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect.
Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is
another. I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I
feel confident that it's necessary."

While I think critical engagement with science is essential, "checking it
against lived experience" _is_ comparing your biased anecdotes to study
results, and trying to draw a conclusion from that. That, itself, is not
science, and is absolutely the fuel behind things like the use of "As a
mother..." in antivaccine discussions.

~~~
jMyles
> You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant
> funding.

Thank you for disclosing that you have a vested financial interest in this
topic.

FWIW, you are talking to someone who didn't need an exposé to realize that
sugar was bad for me and made me feel bad. :-)

> I don't know why you're taking a jaded, skeptical approach to science, but
> an idealistic one to your social graph. Your social graph is biased. It just
> is. Homophily and communities are things for a reason.

I don't think that my approach is jaded, but skeptical yes. What's wrong with
that?

Yes, my social graph is biased. What's wrong with that?

> While I think critical engagement with science is essential, "checking it
> against lived experience" is comparing your biased anecdotes to study
> results, and trying to draw a conclusion from that

Yes, I expect that study results, if they want to be taken seriously, not be
easily disproven by available anecdotes in my life.

I remember the day - literally the day - in 2002 when a study - conducted at
Johns Hopkins and published in _Science_ \- concluded that MDMA was a
potential cause of Parkinson's disease.

In the study, a drug purported to be MDMA, in a dose purported to be typical,
was administered to 10 animals - baboons and squirrel monkeys - and two of
them died as a result of the drug.

I didn't need anything but personal anecdotes to tell me that something had
gone horribly wrong in this study, since I had dozens of friends (and myself)
who had taken MDMA and none of us knew anybody who had died. It was obvious to
everyone from the very first day either that these animals had a very
different sensitivity to MDMA or that a different drug or different dose had
been administered.

I recall that Myself, Rick Doblin, Tom Angell, and many others took to the
SSDP mailing list immediately to point this out.

However, it took another year for Johns Hopkins to sheepishly claim that a
"labeling error" had caused the animals to be injected with methamphetamine
and not MDMA.

Of course the study was retracted on this basis, but not before it went
through all the rigor and peer review that is required to pass the filters and
both Johns Hopkins and _Science_. [0]

That's the kind of bullshit that I'm talking about that masquerades as science
and that personal anecdotes can easily and convincingly defeat, and the kind
of thing I'm saying is required to verify with lived experience.

> That, itself, is not science, and is absolutely the fuel behind things like
> the use of "As a mother..." in antivaccine discussions.

This seems like an unmitigated cum hoc fallacy to me. The fact that I assert
that lived experience is a meaningful mechanism to discover truth does not
mean that I agree with every silly conclusion drawn by people who perhaps
agree with me on this point.

[0]: [https://maps.org/research-
archive/mdma/retraction/maps_respo...](https://maps.org/research-
archive/mdma/retraction/maps_response_100203.html)

------
tim333
I wonder if you could sue anyone for damages? The harm done must be in the
trillions by now.

------
known
Isn't govt suppose to protect us from these types of frauds?

------
partiallypro
Someone watched Adam Ruins Everything

~~~
timbit42
Adam is pretty late on this topic.

------
bad_user
There is no research that proves saturated fat is in any way harmful to
humans. Quite the contrary, humans are designed to digest saturated fat
effortlessly and saturated fat provides the majority of our energy needs,
regardless of what we eat.

The available studies only show that high fat diets can lead to an increase of
LDL particles in the bloodstream but there are two problems with such studies
...

For one LDL isn’t bad per se, LDL providing just transport for triglycerides
in the bloodstream and it’s more important what those particles contain.
Saturated fat leads to big, fluffy LDL particles which aren’t considered to be
a threat.

On the contrary it is sugar that leads to LDL particles that are low density
and dangerous. If you’re worried about LDL, it’s much better to cut the sugar
and the poly-unsaturated fat.

The second problem with such studies are the common confounders: sugar and
PUFAs. Whenever you see negative claims about fat in studies, read the actual
study and more often than not you’ll see sucrose or PUFAs being used in the
diet of the subjects.

What’s absolutely ridiculous is that excess carbohydrates get converted to
saturated fat. Our body only needs about 600 calories per day from
carbohydrates, the rest being converted to fat.

It is saturated fat that provides a majority of the daily energy needs, not
just in humans, but in all mammals.

~~~
cageface
Yet the longest lived populations on the planet eat diets loaded with carbs
and mostly unsaturated fats.

[https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-
carb-...](https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-carb-or-keto-
diets-could-lead-to-shorter-lifespan/)

