Last Blog Post

So at last, I have written my last blog post. Enjoy.


A few weeks ago I posted an item from the Wall Street Journal about an epidemiologist who published a paper in 2005 concluding that virtually all medical science research findings are ultimately proven wrong with suggestions this may apply to other fields of science too.

At that time I referred to the finding as astonishing. However, I later found (and posted in a comment) an old paper published in Science that found only 1% of published papers ever received six or more future citations in other research. About 45% of the published papers were never cited again and about 45% were cited once. The implication was that most published research is worthless and rarely looked at again let alone replicated.

The history of bad science and pre-conceptions leading to disastrous public policy is lengthy. One example makes this clear - Nazism was built on top of the very bad science of eugenics. Bad science was adopted by Hitler to blame the Jews (and others) and whip the citizens into nationalistic furor and conformity. Nazism may have developed without the faulty science of eugenics but eugenics created a seemingly credible basis for their insanity. Skepticism of eugenics and Nazism was not tolerated within Germany.

Right now I am reading Gary Taubes' book "Good calories, Bad calories" which covers in meticulous and exhausting detail the history of nutritional dietary recommendations. The book has about 60 pages of references listed in the bibliography. The author has been a science writer for Science. He reviewed more than 100 years of published peer reviewed literature. Where possible he interviewed hundreds of clinicians and researchers. His process was to read current recommendations, and then read their referenced sources. And then read the referenced sources for those, and so on, all the way back to the 19th century to trace the evolution of nutritional guidelines.

His book is about the evidence and the flawed process that led to today's questionable nutritional guidelines and possibly leading to increased rates of disease. Contrary to drilled into our heads propaganda, high fat diets may reduce cardiovascular risk and low fat diets may increase other risks. There turns out to be little evidence supporting claims of low fat diets - the mortality of those on low fat diets is the same as those on high fat diets. How we reached this surprising state and what it means for our health is the story he tells.

This review continues - its lengthy but well worth reading ...

---

I've reposted below some items from the old blog that were original works and which were frequently visited by people searching the Internet for relevant terms. After the iPowerweb fiasco that took the site offline for a month, I lost 3/4s of my readers and decided to end the blog.

I'm off to other things - and I still maintain this blog for a school (Stop by and visit!).

Comments have been turned off because I do not want to moderate them or deal with junk comments in the future nor will I necessarily respond to emails on the essays. I'm outta here.

Bye!