Hacker News Reader

Comment by ping_pong | Hacker News Reader

This is another example of group-think in scientific research. The same thing happened for decades where low fat diets were supposed to help for heart disease but that has only recently been reversed after decades of indoctrination. This happens all throughout scientific research, where science is supposed to be immune to this, but it's obviously not. So many things we take as gospel, only to be reversed decades later, and it has to do with how things get funded which is unfortunately leading society the wrong way.

View on HN

While I'm all for changing funding systems I want to point out that there fact we have these scandals is the system somewhat working. Similarly to how constant criticism of the government/large corporations isn't a sign of rot, but of a system where improvements are still possible -as long as someone is pointing out the problems you can fix them.

And science is not supposed to be immune to this, the culture of science is supposed to uncover things like this/errors like this as part of a process. The truth has a habit of shining through if you are encouraged to keep asking questions and follow up on them.

And again, not saying the system is perfect or that calling things out is enough. But too often comments like this get turned anti-science or "we can't improve anything, slow decay is inevitable" cynicism (or FUD if you want to be less charitable)

> While I'm all for changing funding systems I want to point out that there fact we have these scandals is the system somewhat working.

After decades. The only reason there is a "scandal" is because it is medical. There is shit like this in almost every scientific field holding back progress.

> The truth has a habit of shining through if you are encouraged to keep asking questions and follow up on them.

I would say that the latest Alzheimer's drug failure finally broke the camel's back. While NIH will tolerate groupthink indefinitely, biopharma eventually wants a payback.

I suspect biopharma pulling funding and causing the amyloid people to suddenly lose clout is more to blame for the come-to-Jesus party in Alzheimer's land.

This standard sentiment seems to me to be a machiavellian justification for the status quo and for not trying to improve anything. The costs of the problems are the problem, not whether they are eventually resolved extremely ineffiently.

Yes, we can improve things, but it is important to recognise that the scientific method and process is the best thing we have right now to figure this stuff out. Making it more open and reliable (open acces by default, data and code publication by default,more funding options that encourage public participation and replication studies etc.) is definitely possible but the core is not rotten. Especially some private interests (oligarchs and those with that ambition, "race realists" etc.) like to push the meme that something is fundamentally broken with publicly funded science and we shouldn't trust those ivory tower academics - often because those academics are actually able to go for the truth instead of following the market (i.e. create disinformation). This is what I'm pushing back against

Those oligarchs and race realists have supporters within academia, when selecting the reforms for academic process, this should be considered. Also, acknowledging the core truth these people build their lies around is fundamental to dismissing the whole ball of infectious meme.

Hopefully as China comes online, and eventually India, we’ll get a lot more research globally with more ideas.

In an earlier submission I made, Peter Thiel, etc discuss how global research is changing in general:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21906424

I wouldn't count on China to provide lots of free research while it further turns into an etno-nationalist dictatorship. For India we better hope that democracy survives the next 5 years of Modi government, because the signs are they want some of that eton-nationalism themselves.

Typo in “Ethno-nationalism”

“Eton-nationalism” is what we have in the UK at the moment.

I mean, the system is working but it could work better. Politics is actually working right now too -- we have roads and jobs and we aren't starving -- but it could definitely work better.

It sounds like what science needs then is a cultural shift to supporting and funding more controversial ideas, and being more content with dissent. Maybe we need to make a more intentional effort to fund the contrarians with the understanding that maybe they're dead wrong, but maybe giving them some ammunition will give us a head start down the correct path.

The US built the atom bomb so fast because we tried multiple approaches at once. We should approach basic science the same way. (In fact, writing that is seems obvious, because I guess I assume science is "supposed" to work that way anyway.)

What controversial ideas are missing funding, which dissent is missing please? What's the bar. I'm genuinely asking constructively, because I would like to find a scalable improvement on the rather slow moving funding structure (unless driven by hype). But there are hundreds of free energy, "race realist", AGW deniers etc. being blocked by the current system, as well as genuine con men.

Also, I dislike the idea that science doesn't like controversial ideas or dissent. Yes there is group think, yes there are cabals, but in general, if you find weird results, you publish and they get discussed. What else do people want to come out of the proposal controversial ideas? Controversial doesn't make it automatically good

You have to be careful with "race realist". It can mean people who believe there is only a small number of sharply divided races, such as mongoloid, negroid, and caucasoid. But it can also be used to describe hereditarians who identify meaningful classifications of people with boundaries roughly corresponding to traditional races. Those latter ideas are quite respectable scientifically even though they're demonized in popular culture.

Can you give me some examples of mainstream geneticists (not popular, just academically accepted) which will counter h ttps://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hereditarianism and the sources in it?

Otherwise, your comment reads to me "you have to be careful with this racist euphemism, it can refer to two different attempts of racist pseudoscience trying to appear legit"

It’s not working if it takes DECADES for people to figure out that the science is wrong. And it keeps happening over and over and over again. The system is rotten and it’s not working and it’s not okay.

Parent's example comes from a field in which the system manifestly does not work. Basic tenets of nutrition change on a regular basis. Every study is funded by commercial interests. Nothing gets better, ever.

This isn't the same as the situation around low fat diet at all. That research is intentionally distorted by companies who want to avoid the reality of what is needed: moderation, modest calorie intake and low sugar diets. The situation in the scientific literature was always far more fluid and complicated than what was communicated to the public because industry paid to communicate only the research they wanted. https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article/63/2/139/772615 has a nice overview, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ talks about how industry intentionally distorted research, and http://resources.betterfly.com/uploads_resources/20000/19456... talks about how the government listens to corporations not scientists and how the science was always in doubt.

The situation isn't even close, low-fat diets are an example of how science is distorted by evil and money without a care for the lives of millions.

The underlying cause may be completely different, but it’s probably useful to group them together under the category “ways our societies can be wrong, even if part of that society tries to correct the whole”.

Useful if you want to make a list of all the different ways, but not at all meaningfull if you want to make society steer a sensible course as they cannot be treated the same way.

I think your list needs to have religion and political game theory on it as well.

No. The fact is decades of research confirmed this wrong science, or the scientific community just ate what was spoon fed to them. No one questioned it. I lived through decades of indoctrination that low fat diets helped and this was echoed by everyone including doctors and scientists. The same goes for things as wide spread as amyloids or even string theory. Decades are wasted because scientists are too afraid of getting their careers ruined.

Scientific truth is a competing value, not an exclusive one.

I wish it was exclusive, but it just isn't. There's ego, prestige, institutions, social arrangement, capital structures... The practice of science is the cleanest practice we've found but its quest for truth hasn't fully escaped the influence of these things.

There may be a way to structure the finances, work, and collaboration to escape these things through some new kind of institutional approach, but it's just not there yet.

Compare science to its predecessors, such as witchcraft and magic (ex: a medicinal herb would have been called magic for centuries). Look at zoology's predecessor, bestiary studies, wherein sea monsters, unicorns, and a giraffe were considered in the same class of anecdotal creatures. Psychology works far better than its predecessors as well, astrology and exorcisms.

Science is a far better approach then these things but there's still work left to do. We're not at the end of history but instead are tasked with moving it forward.

That kind of behaviour in science was identified a long time ago, as Max Planck put it:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

> “ The same thing happened for decades where low fat diets were supposed to help for heart disease but that has only recently been reversed”

Oh did not know that. Do you have reference material?

A shill scientist was paid to promote high sugar, low fat diet a few decades ago by the sugar lobby.

Just like every other food paper quoted in the press.

Read this: https://thebigfatsurprise.com/

The website initially may look like yet another diet approach, but this is actually a serious publication. And a good read.

I spoke to someone about this the other day and they claimed it was now the dairy and meat industry campaigning in response to get their fatty foods re-accepted. Is there any truth to this? Or anyone heard anything about this?

I actually did read the book. It is really well researched. It certainly did not come across like that when the book was first published.

Which book do you mean?

It's certainly a controversial book. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Teicholz

> Teicholz' claims were harshly criticized by the DGAC, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and others, including a petition signed by 180 scientists, and they called for the BMJ to retract the article or issue corrections.[11][13][16][19][20] The BMJ issued a correction in October 2015 and another in December 2016, the latter with a statement that after an independent review of the paper, it had decided not to retract it.[21][22][23][24]

> Meanwhile, the Arnold Foundation had been pressing for Congressional hearings about the DGAC report and attempted to block the release of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans; its lobbying group arranged meetings for Teicholz with members of Congress and White House staff.[11][13] Teicholz and the Foundation were criticized at the time for being allies of the meat and dairy industries in their lobbying and other public relations efforts to maintain high levels of meat and dairy consumption by US consumers.[25][26]

Yes, the sugar industry was not silenced by this book, so the fight continued. And I am sure you can come up with criticisms about any research publication. But the main point is undisputed: the "low-fat" science at that time was not purely science. It had been influenced - for years - by lobbyists and scientists with a personal agenda.

Then it becomes like so many topics these days: when people (I don't mean you anewvillager) throw enough counter arguments - true or not - distinguishing the truths becomes harder and harder, certainly for the population at large, not so well versed in the subject.

[BTW: I have no affiliations whatsoever with the author or the books, other than that I read it]

There is a lot of evidence that low fat diets have contributed to the metabolic syndrome epidemic over the last few decades. Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The latest studies show overwhelming evidence of the dangers of cutting back on fat but many academics refuse to change their views.

The original health warnings were not about fat, but about meat. That ran into the meat-packing lobby, and then everything after had to be couched in terms of fat.

There has never been evidence that fats were bad, as such, just meat as produced in the US, and sugar. But no one was allowed to say so.

But how do you define 'original'? in 1956 the American Heart Association announced that a 'diet which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs, and beef would lead to coronary heart disease'. Not just meat! See also the enormously influential study and conclusion by Ancel Keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys. His seven countries study stressed the dangers of cholesterol and fat.

It's interesting that Keys, credited with discovering the Mediterranean Diet, died at the age of 101.

Fred Kummerow died at 102. And unlike Keys got to eat eggs and butter every morning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Kummerow

People living over 100 years old obviously have huge genetic factors that allow them to have unhealthy habits (or at least unhealthy for the normal person). I mean, there are people over 100 that smoke every day.

parent tried bolstering his claim by mentioning the Keys lived to 100. I point out that Kummerow who did good research outlived him.

Seriously Keys work is garbage. Where the publicly unknown Kummerow's research was spot on. If you don't know who Kummerow is he's the guy that finally forced the FDA to ban transfats decades after they were known to be poison.

Thank you, Kummerow looks very interesting. I have some reading to do now.

The thing about low fat diets is that you are not supposed to compensate the lack of fat by adding more refined sugar.

That's a fairly different example, as there has been a lot more low quality, industry funded science in nutrition than in Alzheimers. Sad as it is, those who profited from sugar sales funded a lot of garbage work into low fat diets.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge climate change believer. But it does strike me as funny that climate change is above being charged with group think. We label them deniers.

> We label them deniers.

I don't remember ever being modded down here by challenging some GW related assumption.

But if people come just generally stating that GW is based on group thinking, with no scope or analysis of what they disagree, they do get modded down, as they should.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com