"This just might be the stupidest fucking thing I've read":

This is the Internet.  I guarantee it's not even the stupidest thing you've read today. 

May I presume you're a vegan?  A lot of you seem to have anger issues.  Try substituting some fatty meat and egg yolks for that grain-based junk: the vitamin B12 alone will do wonders for your mental state.

Farn:

"what do you mean when you say "[i]f red meat caused cancer, we'd all be dead…because we're made out of it"? This seems rather quick!"

No, it isn't.  Muscles, and other lean tissue, are not static constructions.  They're constantly being broken down and rebuilt -- both at the biochemical level within each cell, and at the cellular level via apoptosis and cell division.  So their breakdown products are continually present in our bodies...most of which are large compared to the di- and tri-peptides which are absorbed by a reasonably healthy digestive system when we eat meat.

"In terms of the problems with associational studies: yes, they have many problems. But, they still provide some evidence."

No, they don't.  Odds ratios of 20-30% are COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS in that amount of statistical noise.  Here's a quote from this paper (hat tip to Sidereal):

In an unpublished study, Meehl and Lykken cross-tabulated 15 items for a sample of 57,000 Minnesota high school students, including father’s occupation, father’s education, mother’s education, number of siblings, sex, birth order, educational plans, family attitudes toward college, whether they liked school, college choice, occupational plan in 10 years, religious preference, leisure time activities, and high-school organizations. All of the 105 chi-squares that these 15 items produced by the cross-tabulations were statistically significant, and 96% of them at p < .000001 (Meehl, 1990b).

In other words, if you have a large enough data set, any correlation becomes "significant". (Note that all the data sets in the studies you mention exceed 57,000 people.)

Then, recall my example in which HRT for women produced a halving of cancer risk according to associational data -- far greater than any effect ascribed to red meat! -- yet actual RCTs showed a 30% increase.

Finally, let's not neglect the fact I already explored at length in my article -- people lie or misremember what they eat when asked to fill out a dietary recall survey.  For instance, the recall of hamburger intake is completely unrelated to actual hamburger intake (6% correlation), a fact which completely overrides any possible conclusion one can make about the actual effects of eating hamburger.  So if the correlation is real (which it probably isn't...see previous paragraph), the correlation isn't between cancer and hamburgers, it's between cancer and lying about how many hamburgers you eat.

Result: the known error terms are so large that odds ratios like 30% have no meaning.  Real scientists don't get excited about associative data until they start seeing odds ratios well above the known measurement errors. 

Nutrition is perhaps the only field in which this sort of noise-shaping gets passed off as "science".  It's quite literally on the level of "throwing the bones", or reading the entrails of the sacrificial lamb, to divine the future.

"(do you have any advice for paleo for a student with not great shared kitchen space? It's a dorm type situation.)"

(I'm assuming you're not forced to eat in the cafeteria.) 

College students will steal anything that isn't nailed down.  Get a mini-fridge and keep the meat, eggs, veggies, and coconut oil in your room.  You can even buy an electric skillet if there's nothing but a microwave...just get some plastic utensils and eat out of the skillet.

JS

Max:

No, it's not a terrible crime -- especially if you're concentrating on red meat, which is less sensitive to grain-feeding than chicken or pork (which accumulate alarming omega-6 content on an industrial diet).  Your biggest priority should be finding a source of free-range farm eggs.  (Store eggs labeled "cage-free" aren't the same thing and don't make a meaningful difference: you want hens that get to run around in the dirt and eat bugs and plants.)

So yes, it's much healthier to eat beef raised on genetically engineered corn and soy than to eat the corn and soy yourself.  I started that way myself, and it's basically impossible to ever eat out without eating industrial feedlot meat of some sort...

...but it's even better to buy beef raised and finished on grass.  As you find yourself committing more fully to your new way of eating, it'll start making sense to purchase grass-finished beef -- because you'll feel secure enough to buy it by the side from a local producer, instead of paying exorbitant prices for it by the steak.  

Also, good grass-fed, dry-aged beef is delicious!  The store-bought stuff starts tasting watery and bland by comparison.

JS

Max:

It's important to not let the best be the enemy of the good.  And it's not like you'll have a chest freezer to store a side of beef in college, so I wouldn't stress about it.  Save that for when you're no longer moving every nine months.

Optimal carb consumption is something you have to figure out for yourself.  Yes, competitive athletes will need more than a sedentary researcher trying to lose a few pounds.  Fruit doesn't have a lot of calories, and much of them are fructose, so I'd just eat more tubers.  (Not that fruit's bad, it's just not the best way to replenish muscle glycogen.)  If you really need a huge bolus of glucose, get some rice noodles from the Asian market.

However, for everyday endurance activity, I just run off my own fat unless it's an all-day epic, whereupon I'll bring lunch.  And I always bring some glucose-based candy (e.g. Sweet-Tarts, Bottle Caps...they're dextrose, not sugar or HFCS) just in case I hit the wall.

JS