Re: Vitamins: More May Be Too Many

From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 17:20:57 MDT

  • Next message: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: "Re: my objection to the Doomsday argument"

    One of the things I see a lot is the simple fallacy of confusing
    correlation with causality. Almost every pop media source views a
    correlation as obvious proof of causation, so every single nutritional
    study yields a fad - of intake or avoidance, depending on the research
    outcome. It's quite insane...

    gej
    resourcesoftheworld.org
    jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu

    On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Keith Elis wrote:

    > Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 18:28:13 -0400
    > From: Keith Elis <hagbard@ix.netcom.com>
    > Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
    > To: extropians@extropy.org
    > Subject: Vitamins: More May Be Too Many
    >
    > Happened across this article today, which seems relevant to the recent
    > spate of diet threads.
    >
    > So far, it seems that all anyone really knows about nutrition is that
    > too much of almost everything is bad, and too little of almost
    > everything is also bad. The infuriating part of this is that no one can
    > agree on what 'just enough of everything' means. I haven't the least bit
    > of confidence that any of these nutritionists know what they're talking
    > about.
    >
    > If every physicist with a half-baked 'new' interpretation of QM saw the
    > chance to inaugurate the next 'physics fad' with a mass-market paperback
    > hyped to the gullible public, the real science being done in physics
    > would inevitably be drowned-out by the din of cranks. I suspect
    > nutritional science is in this kind of predicament today. There is a
    > demand for cranks. Wait around long enough, and even the diet of a 500
    > pound bed-ridden obese person will come into vogue.
    >
    > Keith
    >
    > http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=1&u=/nyt/20ri.org
    > 030429/ts_nyt/vitamins__more_may_be_too_many
    >
    >
    >



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 29 2003 - 17:30:56 MDT