From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 11:29:26 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Brian Atkins wrote,
>
>>I absolutely knew you were going to do that when I posted the message.
>>That's why I specifically asked for comments on
>>that particular page instead of your opinion on
>>the other pages (which I note are written by
>>many other authors).
>
> It is a waste of my time to refute every crackpot webpage that gets posted
> for review. When a site obviously is full of misinformation and
> pseudoscience, it is inefficient to go through and "prove" each item is
> wrong. More than inefficient, it is dangerous. If I fail to prove
> something wrong, I end up believing some of the pseudoscience.
I'm still a bit unclear on your take. Obviously we both believe that
some of the articles on that site are bogus. However, as far as I can
tell, the author of the specific article I wanted an opinion on didn't
write any of those. In fact she appears to have fairly strong non-kooky
credentials from my layman perspective (PhD in Nutrition Science, lab
chemistry experience, published over a dozen papers, etc.). And again
from my layman position the article itself looks like it makes some
interesting points. If it indeed is incorrect information you should be
able to easily shoot it down, and I don't buy the inefficient argument
since it is not like I am sitting here bringing you every single
crackpot post I can find on the Net. You asked about this, and I picked
one single page after looking at many many pages, and asked for comments
only on that single page.
>
>
>>Please only respond further to this sub-thread if
>>you are willing to actually discuss the page in
>>question and its references.
>
>
> Who deanimated and made you boss?
>
> Why should I stand by quietly while people get duped into going to a
> pseudoscience website? Why shouldn't I point out that this site is full of
> misinformation and people should be careful before they start trusting this
> site as a source of nutritional advice? Nutrition is dangerous enough
> without people taking their information from sites like these.
>
I brought up the page for discussion after you specifically asked to
know if there was anyone out there advising that eating saturated fats
is useful. I intend to do my part to keep at least this small part of
the list on topic. Therefore I commented that your initial response to
my request for comments on that particular page was not very useful.
Rather than making any attempt to discuss the page, you attacked the
hosting provider of the article. If you want to start a discussion on
the usefulness of ever discussing any article that happens to be posted
to a site also containing some bogus material then we can do that on
another thread. I prefer to keep this particular little one focused on
saturated fats and related items of interest.
P.S. Here is a relevant book: "The Cholesterol Myths..."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0967089700/
I haven't ordered it, but it might be worth reviewing.
-- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/
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