eddie:

I prefer "Big Fat Fiasco" too: Fat Head moves a bit slowly for me.  But Fat Head is a movie, i.e. entertainment...you can't get away with showing people Powerpoint slides. 

Do you have any suggestions for alternate terms?  Bull**** is universal, but I'd rather not use it.  "Rubbish" is great, but it's strongly British, just as "baloney" is American -- and the term "junk science" has been partially hijacked by Steven Milloy to advance his transparently pro-corporate agenda (he's taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Philip Morris, and even the Cato Institute won't sponsor him anymore).

Jan:

Much appreciated!  I can't guarantee you won't be shocked...but it won't leave you unscathed, that's for sure.  And printed copies have a way of disappearing.  I've had several people tell me they've purchased multiple copies to give to friends.

Bodhi:

"They" count on us trusting authority figures.  Seriously: livestrong.com?  Really?  

I'm trying to move us beyond the mindset of debunking individual studies (fun as that is, it's a Sisyphean task) and towards a greater understanding of human biology and metabolism that allows us to dismiss them a priori.  For instance, once you understand how fats and cholesterol are packaged and transported throughout the body, it's easy to ignore statements like "saturated fat clogs your arteries".

Sandy:

Absolutely!  I wrote an article debunking the Stossel/Capper rubbish months ago: you can find it here.

The polite term is "industry consultant": the impolite term is "shill".

JS

Asclepius:

"...a broad appreciation of paleo-anthropology and an understanding of what it means to ‘live close to the ground’" is absolutely relevant to what I'm advocating: "understanding how human bodies work".  That is how we can avoid getting dragged into the details of each individual study.

Elenor:

Scientists have bills to pay and children to feed.  When (as Naughton pointed out in Fat Head and Big Fat Fiasco) your career can be destroyed by opposing the prevailing orthodoxy, you'll find a way to support it.

I've watched all his other stuff -- but I haven't seen "Science for Smart People" yet, so I'll definitely make time for that one.

Paul:

In a way, I'm trying to give people back their bullshit detector by providing a fact-based basis for it: human biochemistry, informed by evolutionary context.  

The debunkings in the middle aren't really the point of the article: they're examples of how to create counterfactual conclusions that we should be able to simply dismiss out of hand.  But without a fact-based "bullshit detector", we're vulnerable to the continued onslaught of bad advice, and stuck in the muddle of details.  

None of us, including me, have time for that.

It's like someone in the modern age bringing up phrenology: we don't have to find a controlled study to know that it's baloney.  Human biology does that for us.  And it's the same for the "clogged drain" model of heart disease: once we understand how fat transport and metabolism actually works, we can dismiss it as silly without having to refer to the medical literature.

It may seem like a subtle point, but it's not.

JS

Txomin:

I agree!  It would be nice to say "Just use common sense", but that doesn't work either, because "common sense" is mostly cultural bias.

I'm trying to think of a snappier way to conclude this essay, but "understanding how human bodies and metabolism work" is the best I can do for now.

Thanks for joining the gnolls!  Do stick around.

JS

AHH:

Research is driven by funding for research.  Once you've got someone willing to fund an experiment, the last thing you want is someone to tell you why it's a silly idea.  And you're likely to design the experiment in order to get the results that your funders wanted.

JS