Science Sucks, Tradition Rules

Let me tell you why I liked math so much. I know you might be wondering. By looking at me you wouldn’t think that I’d sit through years of pure math classes. I’m a musician, a snowboarder – I’m kind of the cool type – so, a math degree, really?

I’ve always liked science but it also kind of bugs me. At first I was planning on studying biology but it seemed like I was always calling bullshit on the researchers. You have to take math classes as a science major, and I found myself taking solace in the certainty of mathematical conclusions.

Wikipedia defines the scientific method thusly: “To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.”

And when the empirical and measurable evidence gathered is irrelevant, inconsistent, biased, or even fabricated – what is it then?

In mathematics, nothing is fabricated. Each peer reviewed paper is reproved by each and every mathematician who reads it. Scientific research is done inside of a box and the paper is as fallible as the scientist who writes it up.

Science Sucks

Physiology is vast, and our affect on it even vaster. We all know quite clearly that eating 50 nuts as compared to 20 affects our mood, digestion, water retention, eventual cellular fat composition, etc. differently. We can report similarly about other variables. What about the effects of eating fructose instead of sucrose? And the difference between the metabolism of pure fructose as opposed to fresh juice? And the difference between saturated fats and omega-6s?

Scientists deemed caloric restriction harmful, but take a closer look at the research as I did in this article and you’ll find that the subjects ate a high carbohydrate diet of processed foods. Hmm, I wonder what results they’d see if they ate real food.

Take a look at the research of zero crab diets and their affect on the thyroid and you’ll find out that the dietary formulas are total nonsense.

“The long-term study of fat overfeeding included four subjects studied before and after overeating fat for 3 mo. The excess fat in these diets averaged 895 kcal/d consisting of margarine, corn oil, a corn oil colloidal suspension, and fat enriched soups and cookies. The ratio of saturated to unsaturated fatty acids in these diets was 1:2.5.”

I could go on ad infinitum.

I am writing today because I’m pissed off at science, the dumb scientists who somehow make it out with PhDs and white lab coats, and the reporters who report their crappy results.

Feeding Mice Out of a Dropper Bottle

There are literally infinite ways to test the affects of low carb diets on mice. If you get any of those tiny variables wrong, you’ll end up reporting that their thyroid is low. Now the scientist publishes his paper on the link between low carb diets and low thyroid, while all along it was actually the high cysteine present in the isolated muscle meat that they were using for the rat’s high protein diet. Maybe if they would have fed the mice a traditional preparation of bone (gelatin) soup, their mice’s thyroid wouldn’t have suffered. Or better yet, the mice could have eaten the low carb version of their own traditional diet.

Reminiscing About Math Again

Math on the other hand uses specific mathematical axioms and previously proven conclusions to derive proofs. If a mathematician ever gets his methods wrong while solving a problem, the conclusion will remain elusive forevermore. That’s the way math works. You cannot bullshit your way to a mathematical conculsion.

The human body and nutrition don’t work this way. If there is a set of axioms available for human nutrition, we haven’t yet discovered it, or eh hem, maybe we have and it’s called Paleo, but that is NOT what scientists are using as axioms.

Scientific Research Diets

This morning, I ran into an article on Science Daily, which is a website that reports on research findings without a care in the world about the validity of the study. They reproduce anything and everything in a supportive way, some call that unbiased.

Moms Who Eat High-Fat Diet Before, During Pregnancy, ‘Program’ Babies to Be Fat, at Risk, Mouse Study Shows

When I saw the title of this article I immediately wondered what the methods were, which are never reported in the news. The readers of these news articles are supposed to (and do) take this stuff as absolute because scientists told us so. Not only are the methods not reported but the papers are generally unavailable to the public.

Why does this piss me off so badly? Because people’s quality of life is at stake here! Because growing children, pregnant women, and babies are never going to get the nutrition they need as long as there are headlines like this in Science Daily!

So I bought the original paper for $20 from the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism. The original paper is titled:

Increased Maternal Fat Consumption During Pregnancy Alters Body Composition in Neonatal Mice

The low carb diet in this study consists of 60% fat, 20% protein, and 20% carbohydrates and is pathetically fake. The low carb diet used in this study can be found in detail here (in the picture above). Tell me if you think this is something that would promote the health of a fetus!

This diet is a preparation made by Research Diets and this is what our trusting scientists use to draw conclusions about our health.

I am so disgusted with science right now, probably because I paid $20 for a study that is so utterly worthless.

Other studies on similar findings in humans are often cited. Here is the abstract of one that I’m not going to bother buying.

Maternal over-nutrition and offspring obesity predisposition: targets for preventative interventions

“Obesity now represents one of the major health care issues of the 21st century. Its prevalence has increased exponentially in both the developed and developing world during the last couple of decades. Such a rapid rise can therefore not be explained by a change in genotype, but must result from environmental factors and their interaction with our genes. There is clear evidence to show that current environmental factors such as current diet and level of physical activity can influence our risk of obesity. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that factors acting during very early life can influence long-term energy balance. One such factor that is emerging as an important player is maternal obesity and/or over-nutrition during pregnancy and lactation. Early life may therefore represent a critical period during which intervention strategies could be developed to reduce the prevalence of obesity.”

Millions of Years of Tradition

Millions of years of tradition is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. What more do we really need? Who told us that science is the answer anyway and why do we believe it?

The only way to make any sense of diet and nutrition is to listen to tradition, and not to science. Millions of years of eating the foods that have always been available on this planet has done us very well. The advice of scientists has not.