My dad’s a scientist. Apparently a well known one. To me, he is just my dad.
And I suppose, because of him, I acquired a healthy respect for reason. And science.
And then this bullshit happens:
In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The article draws on internal documents to show that an industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to “refute” concerns about sugar’s possible role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding.
The sugar-funded project in question was a literature review, examining a variety of studies and experiments. It suggested there were major problems with all the studies that implicated sugar, and concluded that cutting fat out of American diets was the best way to address coronary heart disease.
The article got me curious. And so I asked a friend of mine who studies the scientific process what he thought:
Diet effects, especially for single nutrients, such as sugar or types of fat are so difficult to establish with observational studies that basically what you see published in the literature and then further cherry picked by media is the algebraic sum of all the ridiculous opinions of opinionated professors plus all the bribery inputs of the industry.
My friends happen to be the set of people who recognize that global warming is a fact. My cousin happens to study some of the phenomena for NASA.
And my friends and family wonder why so many people choose not to believe or listen.
And it’s because of this bullshit. When scientists decide to sell out to advance their agendas or buy a new car, science is the victim. And science and reason are the only things that can save humanity. And we’ve managed to kill science.
Scientists took advantage of the age of reason, of our need to believe in rational gods, to lie to us for their petty interests. And now we are reaping the whirlwind.
Why should we trust anything they say?
If Nietzsche were around his new tag line would be “Science is Dead.” God, on the other hand representing the age of faith and lack of reason, he would note is very much alive.
Greed trumps facts.