Recently in science Category
It's taken me a while to try to write the second part of this review. That's because Jonathan Marks' Why I Am Not A Scientist: Anthropology and Modern Knowledge is a confusing and at times infuriating read. But it's also a book that truly needed to be written. Dr. Marks, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, holds his doctorate in genetics. The confusing aspects of his book, I believe, stem from the fact that Marks is in the difficult position of critiquing a worldview which has become intractably interwoven with modern society over the last 100-200 years. Anyone who has read and loved Daniel Quinn's Ishmael should recognize this worldview as what Quinn would call a "story", a form of mythology which defines a culture's roles and expectations in the world. Western culture has been saying that "science" is one particular thing, and Marks believes that "science" is something else entirely. His is a philosophical, anthropological and semantic project.
Whereas Gary Taubes had merely (ha!) to replace one statement of fact (dietary fat is more harmful to health than dietary carbohydrates) with its opposite, Marks is trying to reform how we even think about science. A factual argument like Taubes' is easily supported using evidence, and thus evidence forms the bulk of Good Calories, Bad Calories. Marks spends more of his time attempting to dissect the meaning of various uses of the word "science". He explores several historical events in the history of science -- in particular shameful events like the proliferation of eugenics and scientific racism among scientists -- but he is less interested in showing that they were wrong (which is largely obvious), and more interested in analyzing how these events were allowed to happen.
Marks' fundamental question is this: Given what science is supposed to be, what are we to think when it is not what it's supposed to be? Do we end up with a No True Scotsman fallacy? I.e., deviations and unethical acts by scientists simply don't count as science? Or should we instead expand our understanding of science to include all activities of scientists, good and bad? Should science be considered an abstract amoral system of inquiry? Can it really be separated from the actions of the human beings who undertake it?
Critics of religion don't tolerate this gambit. To say that Christianity is really only the teachings of Jesus, and evils done by Christians are not "real" Christianity -- this is immediately excoriated as a cop-out. So why does science get the benefit of existing on a transcendent, incorruptible existential plane? And given such a metaphysical definition, how are scientists to be held accountable for their actions?
Marks raises some thought-provoking points. For instance, on the matter of eugenics movement from the late 19th to early 20th century, Marks notes that the scientific community did little to nothing to critique the theoretical basis of eugenics. It was only after the Third Reich that social pressure made eugenics unacceptable. Science did not correct itself, as it is supposed to do using the checks and balances of evidence, reproducibility or theoretical coherence - even though all the material they needed was already there to roundly dismiss eugenics. The few scientists who understood that eugenics was rubbish stayed silent. And, because the scientific community did not police itself and purge itself of these wrong ideas, the post-WWII suppression of eugenics did not really extinguish these views among the scientific and social enclaves which originally believed them. Instead, they were driven underground, to return again in the scientific racism of Sir Cyril Burt and of Hernstein and Murray's The Bell Curve. Worse, the fact that social and political standards wound up determining what was acceptable makes racists feel self-righteously "censored" or "oppressed". (Marks also groups Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology, and the adjunct support of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, as within the tradition of biological determinism that also includes Social Darwinism. Them's fightin' words. The debate on this still rages and is marked by factionalism. An excellent timeline of the Sociobiology controversy is to be found in Ullica Segerstråle's Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond.)
Perhaps the most inflammatory part of Why I Am Not A Scientist is Marks' critique of the Human Genome Project. Marks makes the outrageous statement that the architects of the Human Genome Project, in their effort to secure government funding (which was possibly to be directed to the Superconducting Supercollider instead), greatly exaggerated the practical value of what their research would uncover. Marks says that the emphasis on genes "for" things is a clever and cynical way to sway public opinion in favor of genetics research. The unintended result is an undermining of 100 years of anthropological understanding of cultural diversity in favor of a dubious theory of biological determinism. Worse, Marks argues, the Human Genome Project has yet to produce one practical (as opposed to theoretical) benefit. Scientists anticipated finding millions of genes in the human genome, but the final number was closer to 25,000 (technically "genes" are only those pieces of DNA which form instructions for building proteins, although pop culture has now normalized the use of "gene" to refer to any DNA at all). In the intervening time since the successful decoding of the human geneome, more scientists have begun to consider the enormous role of "non-coding DNA". Non-coding DNA (which was once oh-so-impartially called "junk DNA"...) probably regulates much, much more of development and life history than do genes. (The biological study of this interpretation has the catchy name of "evo-devo".)
However, despite the disappointing yield of the HGP, Marks recounts being shouted down at a conference for daring to question the real value of the project. He attributes the dogmatic defense of the HGP to the perennial quest for more and more funding. Marks' conclusion is that scientists, especially geneticists, will say anything, regardless of whether it's true, if it will help draw more funding. Perhaps the worst hypocrisy is the way in which the HGP backers, Marks claims, attempted to dismiss the aims of the Superconducting Supercollider as too theoretical.
Despite his fantastic, blood-boiling analysis, Marks stumbles a few times. I was particularly dismayed by his interpretation of the Sokal affair. Marks doesn't really condone Sokal's deception of social scientists, who only trusted Sokal in good faith. When a scientist submits an article, how is a social scientist to blame for trusting that a scientist knows what he's talking about? It's not their field, and to trust the other's expertise is in fact the most humble response. On this matter, I can agree with Marks. However, he doesn't make it clear enough that postmodernism really started it. Literary theorists really were making completely uninformed, unscientific positive statements about the nature of reality. Sokal's hoax was immature, although justified, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it didn't really do much to open up any debate between the Two Cultures.
Marks also makes the absurd statement that science which contributes to human unhappiness should not be undertaken. If happiness (as opposed to truth) were the goal of science, probably many discoveries would have not been made, because they arose from "bad" science. Marks is right that science cannot be divorced from culture or politics, but it runs both ways. If not for military research (whose result is often better ways to kill), we would not have the peaceful by-products. Marks also doesn't seem to consider the changing cultural definition of human happiness. Had the metric of human happiness been applied during the Medieval period, heliocentrism could probably have been powerfully argued to contribute to human unhappiness. If doubting the Bible causes people to go to Hell, how could science which produces such doubt possibly be ethical? Marks doesn't realize the diversity of cultural standards of happiness -- which is particularly ridiculous, since he's an anthropologist!
My great hope is that Why I Am Not A Scientist will be read by many, and outrage at least a few. More books on this matter must be written, as the voices of the non-scientific disciplines are progressively drowned out by the march of captial-S Science. Science is overdue for its Martin Luther. Marks (for better or for worse) is not this figure, but perhaps Why I Am Not A Scientist will inspire that person yet to be.
Whereas Gary Taubes had merely (ha!) to replace one statement of fact (dietary fat is more harmful to health than dietary carbohydrates) with its opposite, Marks is trying to reform how we even think about science. A factual argument like Taubes' is easily supported using evidence, and thus evidence forms the bulk of Good Calories, Bad Calories. Marks spends more of his time attempting to dissect the meaning of various uses of the word "science". He explores several historical events in the history of science -- in particular shameful events like the proliferation of eugenics and scientific racism among scientists -- but he is less interested in showing that they were wrong (which is largely obvious), and more interested in analyzing how these events were allowed to happen.
Marks' fundamental question is this: Given what science is supposed to be, what are we to think when it is not what it's supposed to be? Do we end up with a No True Scotsman fallacy? I.e., deviations and unethical acts by scientists simply don't count as science? Or should we instead expand our understanding of science to include all activities of scientists, good and bad? Should science be considered an abstract amoral system of inquiry? Can it really be separated from the actions of the human beings who undertake it?
Critics of religion don't tolerate this gambit. To say that Christianity is really only the teachings of Jesus, and evils done by Christians are not "real" Christianity -- this is immediately excoriated as a cop-out. So why does science get the benefit of existing on a transcendent, incorruptible existential plane? And given such a metaphysical definition, how are scientists to be held accountable for their actions?
Marks raises some thought-provoking points. For instance, on the matter of eugenics movement from the late 19th to early 20th century, Marks notes that the scientific community did little to nothing to critique the theoretical basis of eugenics. It was only after the Third Reich that social pressure made eugenics unacceptable. Science did not correct itself, as it is supposed to do using the checks and balances of evidence, reproducibility or theoretical coherence - even though all the material they needed was already there to roundly dismiss eugenics. The few scientists who understood that eugenics was rubbish stayed silent. And, because the scientific community did not police itself and purge itself of these wrong ideas, the post-WWII suppression of eugenics did not really extinguish these views among the scientific and social enclaves which originally believed them. Instead, they were driven underground, to return again in the scientific racism of Sir Cyril Burt and of Hernstein and Murray's The Bell Curve. Worse, the fact that social and political standards wound up determining what was acceptable makes racists feel self-righteously "censored" or "oppressed". (Marks also groups Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology, and the adjunct support of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, as within the tradition of biological determinism that also includes Social Darwinism. Them's fightin' words. The debate on this still rages and is marked by factionalism. An excellent timeline of the Sociobiology controversy is to be found in Ullica Segerstråle's Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond.)
Perhaps the most inflammatory part of Why I Am Not A Scientist is Marks' critique of the Human Genome Project. Marks makes the outrageous statement that the architects of the Human Genome Project, in their effort to secure government funding (which was possibly to be directed to the Superconducting Supercollider instead), greatly exaggerated the practical value of what their research would uncover. Marks says that the emphasis on genes "for" things is a clever and cynical way to sway public opinion in favor of genetics research. The unintended result is an undermining of 100 years of anthropological understanding of cultural diversity in favor of a dubious theory of biological determinism. Worse, Marks argues, the Human Genome Project has yet to produce one practical (as opposed to theoretical) benefit. Scientists anticipated finding millions of genes in the human genome, but the final number was closer to 25,000 (technically "genes" are only those pieces of DNA which form instructions for building proteins, although pop culture has now normalized the use of "gene" to refer to any DNA at all). In the intervening time since the successful decoding of the human geneome, more scientists have begun to consider the enormous role of "non-coding DNA". Non-coding DNA (which was once oh-so-impartially called "junk DNA"...) probably regulates much, much more of development and life history than do genes. (The biological study of this interpretation has the catchy name of "evo-devo".)
However, despite the disappointing yield of the HGP, Marks recounts being shouted down at a conference for daring to question the real value of the project. He attributes the dogmatic defense of the HGP to the perennial quest for more and more funding. Marks' conclusion is that scientists, especially geneticists, will say anything, regardless of whether it's true, if it will help draw more funding. Perhaps the worst hypocrisy is the way in which the HGP backers, Marks claims, attempted to dismiss the aims of the Superconducting Supercollider as too theoretical.
Despite his fantastic, blood-boiling analysis, Marks stumbles a few times. I was particularly dismayed by his interpretation of the Sokal affair. Marks doesn't really condone Sokal's deception of social scientists, who only trusted Sokal in good faith. When a scientist submits an article, how is a social scientist to blame for trusting that a scientist knows what he's talking about? It's not their field, and to trust the other's expertise is in fact the most humble response. On this matter, I can agree with Marks. However, he doesn't make it clear enough that postmodernism really started it. Literary theorists really were making completely uninformed, unscientific positive statements about the nature of reality. Sokal's hoax was immature, although justified, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it didn't really do much to open up any debate between the Two Cultures.
Marks also makes the absurd statement that science which contributes to human unhappiness should not be undertaken. If happiness (as opposed to truth) were the goal of science, probably many discoveries would have not been made, because they arose from "bad" science. Marks is right that science cannot be divorced from culture or politics, but it runs both ways. If not for military research (whose result is often better ways to kill), we would not have the peaceful by-products. Marks also doesn't seem to consider the changing cultural definition of human happiness. Had the metric of human happiness been applied during the Medieval period, heliocentrism could probably have been powerfully argued to contribute to human unhappiness. If doubting the Bible causes people to go to Hell, how could science which produces such doubt possibly be ethical? Marks doesn't realize the diversity of cultural standards of happiness -- which is particularly ridiculous, since he's an anthropologist!
My great hope is that Why I Am Not A Scientist will be read by many, and outrage at least a few. More books on this matter must be written, as the voices of the non-scientific disciplines are progressively drowned out by the march of captial-S Science. Science is overdue for its Martin Luther. Marks (for better or for worse) is not this figure, but perhaps Why I Am Not A Scientist will inspire that person yet to be.
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
Charles Wilson Peale - The Artist in His Museum 1822.
The following is a transcription of a flyer, printed in the early 19th century. The skeleton of a mastodon was unearthed and preserved in the private museum of Charles Wilson Peale, a painter who is most famous for his portraits of George Washington.
(An interesting side note - Peale was a dentist as well. He crafted a dental prosthesis for Washington, for the express purpose of keeping his mouth in an attractive position during the long sitting times for the portraits. Washington supposedly preferred Peale's denture over many others which he had tried. One of the reason Washington looks so frowny in most other portraits is that his cheeks were sunken in from having lost so many teeth, and his dentures weren't great.)
Skeleton of the Mammoth
IS NOW TO BE SEEN
At the Museum, in a separate Room
FOR ADMITTANCE TO WHICH, 50 CENTS; TO THE MUSEUM,
AS USUAL, 25 CENTS
IS NOW TO BE SEEN
At the Museum, in a separate Room
FOR ADMITTANCE TO WHICH, 50 CENTS; TO THE MUSEUM,
AS USUAL, 25 CENTS
Of this animal, it is said the following is a Tradition, as delivered in the very terms of a Sbawanee Indian:
TEN THOUSAND MOONS AGO, when nought but gloomy forests covered this land of the sleeping Sun, long before the pale men, with thunder and fire at their command, rushed on the wings of the wind to run this garden of nature...when nought but the untamed wanderers of the woods, and men as unrestrained as they, were lords of the soil...a race of animals were in being, huge as the frowning Precipice, cruel as the bloody Panther, swift as the descending Eagle, and terrible as the Angel of Night. The Pines crashed beneath their feet; and the Lake shrunk when they slaked their thirst; the forceful Javelin in vain was hurled, and the barbed arrow fell harmless from their side. Forests were laid waste at a meal, the groans of expiring Animals were every where heard; and whole Villages inhabited by men, were destroyed in a moment. The cry of universal distress extended even to the region of Peace in the West, and the Good Spirit interposed to save the unhappy. The forked Lightening gleamed all around, and the loudest Thunder rocked the Globe. The Bolts of Heaven were hurled upon the cruel Destroyers, and the mountains echoed with the bellowing of death. All were killed except one male, the fiercest of the race, and him even the artillery of the skies assailed in vain. He ascended the bluest summit which shades the source of the Monogahela, and roaring aloud, bid defiance to every vengeance. The red Lightening scorched the lofty firs, and rived the knotty oaks, but only glanced upon the enraged Monster. At length, maddened with fury, he leaped over the waves of the west at a bound, and this moment reigns the uncontrolled Monarch of the Wilderness in despite of even Omnipotence itself.
Tastes like chicken - not Maker of Yummy Vat-Grown Fungus Sued Over "Dangerous Reactions"
Above, an article on Consumerist.com about a pending lawsuit by watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), against the manufacturers of a faux-meat product called Quorn.
CSPI exists for only one reason: to tell people not to eat things. And my, how many things! Instead of listing the foods which CSPI thinks are bad (which would take days), it should just be noted that CSPI essentially urges a low-fat, low-salt, vegetarian diet (with some fish), and no alcohol consumption. They also encourage taxing all foods & beverages which fall outside of this diet.
The curious thing about CSPI is the religious fervor with which they try to demonize enemy foods. They use the most melodramatic language possible to suggest that eating "bad" foods -- even occasionally -- will kill you. It's like fundamentalist nutrition. CSPI also relies heavily on lawsuits and press releases to call attention to the "bad" food of the week.
Their position on Quorn is similar to the war they waged against Olestra back in the 1990s. When Olestra (an uncanny calorie-free fat substitute) was originally introduced, CSPI was largely responsible for the level of panic about the additive's possible side effects. Soon enough, all of pop culture was completely convinced that Olestra gave everyone...well, you know the story. The problem is that the gastrointestinal effects of Olestra were greatly exaggerated. To get sick from eating it, you would have to eat a huge amount in a very short period of time. CSPI had a problem with Olestra simply because it was man-made, new and different. (I also suspect that they felt confounded by the notion that people would be able to eat potato chips with fewer calories and therefore less guilt). In the end, they got what they wanted - everyone was afraid of Olestra, and the product failed on the market.
(By the way -- you can still buy Olestra potato chips at the supermarket, and the FDA took off the warning label a few years ago. Turns out it wasn't really justified.)
A similar situation is happening right now with Quorn. Quorn has been available in Europe and the UK for about 30 years. It has only recently been introduced in the US. CSPI has been doing its damnedest for almost 10 years to make people hate and fear Quorn:
CSPI's Quorn Page
Above, an article on Consumerist.com about a pending lawsuit by watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), against the manufacturers of a faux-meat product called Quorn.
CSPI exists for only one reason: to tell people not to eat things. And my, how many things! Instead of listing the foods which CSPI thinks are bad (which would take days), it should just be noted that CSPI essentially urges a low-fat, low-salt, vegetarian diet (with some fish), and no alcohol consumption. They also encourage taxing all foods & beverages which fall outside of this diet.
The curious thing about CSPI is the religious fervor with which they try to demonize enemy foods. They use the most melodramatic language possible to suggest that eating "bad" foods -- even occasionally -- will kill you. It's like fundamentalist nutrition. CSPI also relies heavily on lawsuits and press releases to call attention to the "bad" food of the week.
Their position on Quorn is similar to the war they waged against Olestra back in the 1990s. When Olestra (an uncanny calorie-free fat substitute) was originally introduced, CSPI was largely responsible for the level of panic about the additive's possible side effects. Soon enough, all of pop culture was completely convinced that Olestra gave everyone...well, you know the story. The problem is that the gastrointestinal effects of Olestra were greatly exaggerated. To get sick from eating it, you would have to eat a huge amount in a very short period of time. CSPI had a problem with Olestra simply because it was man-made, new and different. (I also suspect that they felt confounded by the notion that people would be able to eat potato chips with fewer calories and therefore less guilt). In the end, they got what they wanted - everyone was afraid of Olestra, and the product failed on the market.
(By the way -- you can still buy Olestra potato chips at the supermarket, and the FDA took off the warning label a few years ago. Turns out it wasn't really justified.)
A similar situation is happening right now with Quorn. Quorn has been available in Europe and the UK for about 30 years. It has only recently been introduced in the US. CSPI has been doing its damnedest for almost 10 years to make people hate and fear Quorn:
CSPI's Quorn Page
It's pretty low, for a group that uses the word "science" in its name, to exploit people's fears and base reactions to things. It's also extremely immature. First of all, CSPI never misses an opportunity to point out that Quorn is made from a fungus, as though fungus is somehow inherently bad. They also like pointing out that the Latin name of the fungus includes the word "venomous", which is extremely misleading, because the species includes a variety of strains, some of which are not poisonous at all. This is like the authorities of 16th-century Europe who warned people that tomatoes were poisonous, because they are in the same family as deadly nightshade.
Second, the photo they use calls attention to the fact that Quorn can be made into various shapes and textures. Well, so can textured vegetable protein, another non-meat protein which is now ubiquitous in vegetarian products like fake sausages, fake chicken, fake bacon and fake turkey. I don't really like the texture of TVP products, so I doubt I would like Quorn, but it seems disingenuous to demonize one and not the other.
The "Medical Evidence" section of their Quorn site is pretty laughable. It's got one unpublished study, several peer-reviewed studies which did NOT find a strong adverse effect of Quorn, and several letters which CSPI's executive director sent to journals stating his own opinions. The few corroborative pieces of evidence are articles about a handful individuals who have allergies to Quorn - certainly not enough to justify a huge scare campaign.
The brunt of CSPI's case against Quorn is their database of customer complaints -- complaints which they solicited. As they report, "Since 2002, more than 1,400 British and American consumers have filed adverse reaction reports on a website maintained by CSPI, quorncomplaints.org."
7-8 years, 1,400 complaints. (They say "more than", but it's probably between 1,400 and 1,500, or else they would have said "more than 1,500"). That averages out to about 200 or so per year. Quorn's manufacturer reports that in that timespan, 40 million servings of Quorn have been sold in the US, and something like 500,000 servings are consumed PER DAY in the UK. It would be one thing if CSPI wanted to play the cigarette card and say that Quorn will eventually kill us all, but from what is actually happening right now, I don't think their ire is justified.
The fact of the matter is that CSPI isn't anything more than a cult of personality for its Executive Director, Michael Jacobson. I have never seen another human face connected with CSPI. He makes all their public statements and press conferences. Whenever an article mentions CSPI, only he is ever quoted. Everything he eats is OK, and everything he doesn't eat must be banished.
Second, the photo they use calls attention to the fact that Quorn can be made into various shapes and textures. Well, so can textured vegetable protein, another non-meat protein which is now ubiquitous in vegetarian products like fake sausages, fake chicken, fake bacon and fake turkey. I don't really like the texture of TVP products, so I doubt I would like Quorn, but it seems disingenuous to demonize one and not the other.
The "Medical Evidence" section of their Quorn site is pretty laughable. It's got one unpublished study, several peer-reviewed studies which did NOT find a strong adverse effect of Quorn, and several letters which CSPI's executive director sent to journals stating his own opinions. The few corroborative pieces of evidence are articles about a handful individuals who have allergies to Quorn - certainly not enough to justify a huge scare campaign.
The brunt of CSPI's case against Quorn is their database of customer complaints -- complaints which they solicited. As they report, "Since 2002, more than 1,400 British and American consumers have filed adverse reaction reports on a website maintained by CSPI, quorncomplaints.org."
7-8 years, 1,400 complaints. (They say "more than", but it's probably between 1,400 and 1,500, or else they would have said "more than 1,500"). That averages out to about 200 or so per year. Quorn's manufacturer reports that in that timespan, 40 million servings of Quorn have been sold in the US, and something like 500,000 servings are consumed PER DAY in the UK. It would be one thing if CSPI wanted to play the cigarette card and say that Quorn will eventually kill us all, but from what is actually happening right now, I don't think their ire is justified.
The fact of the matter is that CSPI isn't anything more than a cult of personality for its Executive Director, Michael Jacobson. I have never seen another human face connected with CSPI. He makes all their public statements and press conferences. Whenever an article mentions CSPI, only he is ever quoted. Everything he eats is OK, and everything he doesn't eat must be banished.
