Tree plantations are not the environmental solution they’re purported to be

First, in both cases the science was actually bad science. Here there were tons of other scientists that said their estimates were overrated (and the original authors later admitted as much), and in the nutritionists case there were never any scientific studies that would lead to recommendations against consuming unsaturated fats (there was just an assumption that since fat is denser in calories, cutting back on fat would result in weight loss, which has now been thoroughly debunked).

My point is that if you make a "scientific" recommendation, of course companies will latch on to whatever part is in their economic benefit. That shouldn't be a surprise. So to come back later and say "I didn't think company X would do Y based on my research!" means you're either lying or an idiot.

If instead of going around shouting in tons of interviews about how planting trees can offset carbon emissions, which is what this guy did, he had gone around advocating for preservation of existing habitats and reduction of fossil fuel use (which is what he's doing now), this whole thing could have been avoided. This guy doesn't get a "oh, it's not my fault" pass just because he ignored the obvious consequences of his advocacy.

The article here points out this was not just a case where a paper was released that the media then ran with. According to the article, this guy had "dozens" of interviews making his point, and heck, he was science advisor for the "United Nations’ Trillion Trees Campaign". He himself fanned the flames of this media narrative.

Linus Pauling won a Nobel prize, twice. He got most of his attention though for spreading the idea that vitamin C is a cure for everything. He gave a lot of interviews in a lot of different places spreading that message.

In physics they are still trying to recover from 20+ years of string theory claiming they are just around the corner from a theory of everything. Smart people have done a lot of interesting work in string theory, but none of it has ever been close to a testable hypothesis. The people though knew how to use the media to spread the message and get funding - not only taking funding from more promising branches of physics, but when the funders caught on drying up the total physics pot a bit.

Not that we should get rid of manual tinkering/rewriting/expanding/deleting laws but to have some more gradual transitions.

Say sentences starting like "Since we know it is eating fat that makes you fat[committee VI] it is now forbidden..." Would be automatically suspended if committee VII does not agree to elevate the hypothesis to that level of certainty.

A bit like a legalese code of law generator.*

For nutrition at least, doing nothing to try to influence eating habits from the 50s or so would have almost certainly been better than what we have done. Probably better than current recommendations are as well, given the history and given the abysmal quality of nutritional studies.

Portraying scientists as selfless truth-seekers is largely inaccurate. They are people after all.

The basic problem of the original food pyramid is that the base is essentially "tons of processed carbohydrates" (flours, bread, pasta), while it says to minimize oils and fats.

But I think the biggest crime of the original food pyramid, and honestly much nutrition "science", is that it was not scientifically based. There were never any studies that said, for example, that mono-unsaturated fats were bad for you (the opposite is true), but the food pyramid made broad assumptions without any actual studies to back it up.

The flip-flop on dietary cholesterol is another good example. There is evidence high LDL in the blood is associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease, but never evidence that eating cholesterol leads to higher LDL levels, except in certain genetic circumstances. For decades nutritionists told us "eggs are bad for you" based on this theory without any evidence to back it up.

The calorie model was well established, so yes, they knew that you'd still get fat if you ate as much calories.

But both scientists and doctors absolutely did believe that reducing fat consumption would directly reduce the incidence of heart disease regardless of body weight. The same thing happened later when it was believed that consuming cholesterol, or even later LDL, would increase the risk of high blood cholesterol and thus atherosclerosis. This led to things like doctors and large medical bodies recommending margarine instead of butter as a health food(!).

There has been plenty of terrible advice coming directly from nutrition science and medical bodies influenced by it. Most likely even current advice will turn out to be nonsensical as we learn more.