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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that old people have seen many popular scientific truths come and go. The food pyramid, for example, has killed literally millions of people with terrible nutrition advice. Trusting the scientific community is a good basic model to go by, but it's understandable why people with more life experience may be more skeptical.

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> The pyramid, for example, has killed literally million of people

I actually think you're just reflecting the currently vogue "common sense" view of carbs as the worst macronutrient. Neither this view, nor the view which produced the original food pyramid, is accurate. But saying the food pyramid has "killed literally millions" is incredibly hyperbolic. Starvation has killed literally millions. Cereals on the other hand, have literally been the most common dietary staples of most human diets for most of post-agricultural history.

Food pyramid:

> The first chart suggested to the USDA by nutritional experts in 1992 featured fruits and vegetables as the biggest group, not breads. This chart was overturned at the hand of special interests in the grain, meat, and dairy industries, all of which are heavily subsidized by the USDA.

Calling this the recommendation of the “scientific community” is ridiculous.

Yes, I'm well aware of the history of the food pyramid. It was in my science books in school. It was taught and talked about in the public sphere as if every expert on the planet agreed that the grain based food pyramid was undisputed among the scientific community. If that example is too far away for you, how about WMDs in Iraq. Do you remember how "every expert" said they existed and how if you were skeptical you were a national heretic?

Every party-affiliated "expert". IIRC the intelligence community didn't actually present the case itself. Just people like Colin Powell going up and lying to Congress.

You're missing my point in the same way the person arguing that the food pyramid wasn't valid science is missing the point. The food pyramid, Iraq WMDs, peak oil, and climate change all look exactly the same to the average citizen. If you're not a climate scientist yourself and you believe you can tell the difference, I'm skeptical of that. There is no category of argument you can make about climate change that was not similarly made for the food pyramid, WMDs, peak oil, etc. during their heydays. The way climate change is presented to the public is exactly the same way those previous scams were presented to the public.

FWIW, I am not a climate change denier.

Edited: removed something that unintentionally sounded like an insult.

Public opinion about most of these topics seems to me to be much more driven by well-organized well-funded propaganda campaigns than anything to do with public support for science per se.

The problem is that everyone believes they are somewhat uniquely capable of telling the difference, but statistically that simply isn't true.

The food pyramid is/was an economic model to satiate lobbyists, not a scientific one.

That is not what people were told, and that is kind of the point.

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