The Sugar Conspiracy (The Guardian) "scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life"

This a very long article, but a good one. I'm already familiar with the history of the now debunked theory that "saturated fat is bad and causes heart disease", but this article has some details and background I had not read about before. While reading it these specific passages stood out to me in that some of these same things are likely at play in the world of ME/CFS.....

In a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?, a team of scholars at the National Bureau of Economic Research sought an empirical basis for a remark made by the physicist Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

The researchers identified more than 12,000 “elite” scientists from different fields. The criteria for elite status included funding, number of publications, and whether they were members of the National Academies of Science or the Institute of Medicine. Searching obituaries, the team found 452 who had died before retirement. They then looked to see what happened to the fields from which these celebrated scientists had unexpectedly departed, by analysing publishing patterns.

What they found confirmed the truth of Planck’s maxim. Junior researchers who had worked closely with the elite scientists, authoring papers with them, published less. At the same time, there was a marked increase in papers by newcomers to the field, who were less likely to cite the work of the deceased eminence. The articles by these newcomers were substantive and influential, attracting a high number of citations. They moved the whole field along.

A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling.

This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sugar-conspiracy

 

A rather depressing thought for us in the ME community in the UK, as though some of the BPS cultist are at retiring age, there is still a number of proffessors (deliberate pun) in their forties and fifties. Can we wait another thirty years to see any significant improvements in UK science and healthy policy in relation to ME? A lot of suffering can happen in that time.

 

Here is a link to a PDF of the "Science Advances One Funeral At A Time" paper published in 2015

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21788.pdf

 

Wow! when you read this it's like time travelling into the future & reading an article about ME. Tell me this series of quotes doesnt read exactly like the story of ME/PACE etc..

I cant read any more right now, but yikes, if the answer to the problem is for younger researchers to replace those who come to the end of their lives, then we are in deep trouble, but at least it's some hope for the younger generation. It's unspeakably bad if the change doesn't come until then but tbh i was concerned that it never would.

For any CBT/GET Biopsychosocial proponent/fan/researcher/defender or journalist reading this thread.... None of these remarks here should be misinterpreted or construed as any kind of desire that anyone would die.
Quite the reverse, i want all people to stop suffering & dying, including those with ME/CFS.

 

Can we put this on a giant banner - addressed to Wessely, Crawley, etc - and hang it outside their offices?

Perhaps accompanied by a grinning Grim Reaper.

 

The author of the original article https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin

is Ian Leslie
Ian Leslie, the author of Curious: the Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, is a regular contributor to the Long Read. Twitter: @mrianleslie

Does anyone know anything about him? Might it be worth contacting him? I just wonder whether having researched an article like this, he could be more open minded to the truth & the similarities of what is currently happening to us, than many journalists are.
I'm afraid i havent the courage to contact him, i'm feeling a bit wobbly at the moment & am not succinct enough in my writing in any case i dont think, but perhaps it's worth considering? Be great to direct him to @dave30th ?

I cant help thinking that the story he has written here about a historical event, is what we are currently living through & i'd have thought he'd be interested in that.

I'm certainly going to look into his book, i hope its on Audible

 

Looks like he might have a personal connection:

https://twitter.com/user/status/513797255426768896

 

interesting.....

 

This bit about cholesterol and eggs made me laugh:

This has a very familiar ring to it, as does much else in the article.

 

The story continues ...

https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition-science-crusade-fell-apart/

 

The press is full of the benefits of fibre and wholemeal bread this morning, for example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46827426