I recently finished reading two "popular science" books. That is, books about science directed at a lay audience. Both were very challenging reads, and the two had some significant elements in common. I hope explore this connection in a multi-part review.
The first book is "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Taubes, a journalist who specializes in science, has been writing about diet issues for years. The first most notable example was his 1998 article for the journal Science, "The (Political) Science of Salt" (get a college friend to help you with fulltext access...). This article was a historical analysis of the scientific research that built the dogma that salt causes hypertension in otherwise healthy people. Taubes' conclusion was that the scientific literature itself was not really enough to substantiate the supposed connection. This led him to the hypothesis that confirmation bias on the part of doctors and public health advocates was skewing the conventional wisdom.
The second big article in Taubes' timeline was his 2002 cover story for the New York Times Magazine, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". It was a similar historical look into the scientific literature that formed the bedrock of the dietary fat/cholesterol/heart disease triumvirate, which is now the unquestionable basis of all dietary recommendations in the US. Once again, Taubes found a discrepancy between the actual conclusions of the body of scientific literature, and the vehemence with which doctors and public health advocates insist that dietary fat leads to certain death.
After the stormy reception of both these articles, Taubes embarked upon a book-length exhaustive unraveling of the dietary fat/heart disease story. The resulting book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories," (GCBC, for brevity's sake) is a historical, statistical, anthropological and physiological treatise, ending with over 100 pages devoted to citations and footnotes. It's dense, technical and vitriolic -- and it will blow the top of your head right off.
It's worth reading Taubes' Times Magazine article for a summary of GCBC's findings. It's hard to encapsulate such a tome, particularly one whose burden of proof is particularly high. It's hard enough to convince a neutral party; Taubes first has to show that the past 60 years' worth of common knowledge is wrong, and then has to build a case for a completely different understanding of diet and health.
People familiar with the Atkins diet won't be surprised by his conclusions: consumption of sugars and starches causes the hormones which regulate fat-storage to go haywire. Normally, fat tissue dynamically releases caloric energy to meet minute-to-minute metabolic needs; excess carbohydrate, and the resulting disruption of insulin, prevents fat from being used, resulting in both obesity and other endocrine-based health problems. While the concept of obesity as "Metabolic Syndrome" is not new, GCBC is indispensable in its own right because it cites recent research which Atkins, writing in the 1960's, could not yet have at his disposal. Atkins wrote from the standpoint of creating an effective weight loss plan (by which he himself lived); Taubes is making the physiological case for why such a diet makes sense. This explanation is well-organized and convincing, but it isn't what makes GCBC so inflammatory, or important.
The value of GCBC is its critique of the culture of science, that is, the culture of scientists. The low-fat diet, Taubes argues, did not become law because scientists impartially followed the direction of the literature. Rather, cliques, warring personalities, paternalism and political favoritism allowed one faction of the medical & scientific community to effectively silence another. History, and public health recommendations, were written by the winners. And, as with any institutionalized orthodoxy, dissent makes you not only a heretic yourself but a threat to those around you. Get the doctrine wrong and you damn your flock to hell; challenge the health wisdom and you doom your patients to die.
The modern conceit of science is that it exists independently of society. This could only be true if science were undertaken by machines. But because science is done by human beings, it loses its transcendence. People, scientists included, have agendas and grudges. Lack of self-awareness causes scientists to confuse their personal beliefs with the conclusions of their research. The second book on the docket, "Why I Am Not A Scientist", by Jonathan Marks, delves deeply into the social consequences of this problem.
End of Part I
The first book is "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Taubes, a journalist who specializes in science, has been writing about diet issues for years. The first most notable example was his 1998 article for the journal Science, "The (Political) Science of Salt" (get a college friend to help you with fulltext access...). This article was a historical analysis of the scientific research that built the dogma that salt causes hypertension in otherwise healthy people. Taubes' conclusion was that the scientific literature itself was not really enough to substantiate the supposed connection. This led him to the hypothesis that confirmation bias on the part of doctors and public health advocates was skewing the conventional wisdom.
The second big article in Taubes' timeline was his 2002 cover story for the New York Times Magazine, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". It was a similar historical look into the scientific literature that formed the bedrock of the dietary fat/cholesterol/heart disease triumvirate, which is now the unquestionable basis of all dietary recommendations in the US. Once again, Taubes found a discrepancy between the actual conclusions of the body of scientific literature, and the vehemence with which doctors and public health advocates insist that dietary fat leads to certain death.
After the stormy reception of both these articles, Taubes embarked upon a book-length exhaustive unraveling of the dietary fat/heart disease story. The resulting book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories," (GCBC, for brevity's sake) is a historical, statistical, anthropological and physiological treatise, ending with over 100 pages devoted to citations and footnotes. It's dense, technical and vitriolic -- and it will blow the top of your head right off.
It's worth reading Taubes' Times Magazine article for a summary of GCBC's findings. It's hard to encapsulate such a tome, particularly one whose burden of proof is particularly high. It's hard enough to convince a neutral party; Taubes first has to show that the past 60 years' worth of common knowledge is wrong, and then has to build a case for a completely different understanding of diet and health.
People familiar with the Atkins diet won't be surprised by his conclusions: consumption of sugars and starches causes the hormones which regulate fat-storage to go haywire. Normally, fat tissue dynamically releases caloric energy to meet minute-to-minute metabolic needs; excess carbohydrate, and the resulting disruption of insulin, prevents fat from being used, resulting in both obesity and other endocrine-based health problems. While the concept of obesity as "Metabolic Syndrome" is not new, GCBC is indispensable in its own right because it cites recent research which Atkins, writing in the 1960's, could not yet have at his disposal. Atkins wrote from the standpoint of creating an effective weight loss plan (by which he himself lived); Taubes is making the physiological case for why such a diet makes sense. This explanation is well-organized and convincing, but it isn't what makes GCBC so inflammatory, or important.
The value of GCBC is its critique of the culture of science, that is, the culture of scientists. The low-fat diet, Taubes argues, did not become law because scientists impartially followed the direction of the literature. Rather, cliques, warring personalities, paternalism and political favoritism allowed one faction of the medical & scientific community to effectively silence another. History, and public health recommendations, were written by the winners. And, as with any institutionalized orthodoxy, dissent makes you not only a heretic yourself but a threat to those around you. Get the doctrine wrong and you damn your flock to hell; challenge the health wisdom and you doom your patients to die.
The modern conceit of science is that it exists independently of society. This could only be true if science were undertaken by machines. But because science is done by human beings, it loses its transcendence. People, scientists included, have agendas and grudges. Lack of self-awareness causes scientists to confuse their personal beliefs with the conclusions of their research. The second book on the docket, "Why I Am Not A Scientist", by Jonathan Marks, delves deeply into the social consequences of this problem.
End of Part I
