Mod+ Saturated Fat discussion for David

Linda,

I just don't think you get it. A scientific theory was founded on a bogus piece of research by Ancel Keys. Richard Smith summarised what happened, but you can find corroborative accounts all over the internet. Senator McGovern also leant his weight behind the saturated fat hypothesis, and the whole thing became political.

By the time Jacob Yerushalmy and Herman Hilleboe showed that the graph of heart disease against saturated fat intake was deliberately cherry picked, the bandwagon was already rolling. Richard Smith catalogued the way that the opportunities to stop the bandwagon were repeatedly missed.

When I said "start at the bottom", I thought you would understand that I meant start with the original piece of faulty research - that is where this whole theory came from. Have you even viewed Ancel Key's graph and the way he cherry picked the data. For example, he left out France because it had (and I think still has) low levels of CVD and high saturated fat consumption.

What we are talking about - and what I think Richard Smith is talking about - is a form of corruption of science. Once an idea has caught hold - even if it turns out to be based on fraud - a strong confirmation bias then operates, driven by the fact that large institutions are using the theory. It is obviously going to be far easier to bend the rules slightly to confirm what you 'know' to be true, than to face the enormous brouhaha which would follow a volte-face on an issue like saturated fat.

By quoting the latest research without examining the roots of the mistake, you are tainted with that same confirmation bias. There are innumerable ways in which diet/health studies can be distorted - Richard Smith commented on exactly that. My favourite - which you didn't comment on - is that people who live an otherwise healthy lifestyle will tend to eat whatever is perceived as the most healthy diet. That bias will always favour status-quo science.

Corporations and governments can handle awkward news from scientists, just so long as it stays the same, but they don't like scientists who change their mind.

You of all people should be able to see the myriad of ways that this can happen.

Yes! And that is the point of foregoing crappy evidence (an ecological study, like Keys', is crappy evidence no matter how meticulously bias-free its performance) in favour of depending upon good-quality evidence, like RCTs. "Quality" means that the stuff you mentioned - confirmation bias, confounders, personal preferences and even political interference - are specifically avoided. That is, the way the research is designed, implemented and analyzed obviates the ability of those factors to alter the results.

The current recommendations depend on an evidence-based review, which means that the evidence is weighed by the extent to which confirmation bias, confounders, personal preferences, political interference, and even fraud could alter the results. This is what you seem to be asking for, but then you turn around and reject the process.

So I ask you again, given that all these factors tend to come into play for any idea someone comes up with, how would you suggest we evaluate whether or not an idea is legitimate, if we do as you say and abandon medicine's evidence-based approach (where ideas are evaluated on the basis of whether or not these factors are in play)?

Anyway, I am getting bored with this, if it has made you the slightest bit worried that medical science might have made a mistake, why not contact Richard Smith. If he tells you his article was a joke, well the laugh is on me, but if he fills you in with far more information to back up his case..............

David

I couldn't care less what Richard Smith has to say. You are the one who hung their hat on the article. If this is about you trying to save face (which you don't need to do for my sake), then you contact him. I'm interested in the story from the perspective of the process of sorting ideas on the basis of reliability and validity. But it's a story about what happens when that process isn't in place, not when it is.

There seems to be this perception that science operates in some sort of pristine environment, shut off from the ordinary influences of humankind, so that any time there is an example of someone behaving badly, or even hastily, it spells the end of science, as though research depends upon that pristine environment. In actuality, the messy, biased, adversely motivated environment in which it is performed is well-known by those working within it. The only people who seem to think that science is pure is everyone but the scientists. The methods used don't depend upon everyone behaving well. The methods used have been developed so they work regardless of whether someone behaves badly.

Linda
 
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Yes! And that is the point of foregoing crappy evidence (an ecological study, like Keys', is crappy evidence no matter how meticulously bias-free its performance) in favour of depending upon good-quality evidence, like RCTs. "Quality" means that the stuff you mentioned - confirmation bias, confounders, personal preferences and even political interference - are specifically avoided. That is, the way the research is designed, implemented and analyzed obviates the ability of those factors to alter the results.
OK - well tell me how you can use an RCT to measure the amount of heart disease as a function of what people eat (not a physiological measure such as cholesterol levels - which is itself in doubt). How can you ever correct for the fact that health motivated individuals will eat what they perceive to be a healthy diet, but will also do other things like take extra exercise.
I couldn't care less what Richard Smith has to say.
I know, and yet he must have seen more of those RCT papers pass his desk than almost anyone. He clearly doesn't believe them! I am not hung up on one article, the internet is full of articles about this subject - many of them from medical doctors and researchers.

RichardSmith references Ioannidis JPA. Implausible results in human nutrition research. BMJ2013;347:f6698. in connection with his suspicion that nutritional studies are not to be trusted. I can't view that article, but presumable it pours some cold water on the very RCT's that you rely on so firmly.
........., then you contact him. I'm interested in the story from the perspective of the process of sorting ideas on the basis of reliability and validity. But it's a story about what happens when that process isn't in place, not when it is.
I would try to contact him, except that I would, in fairness, have to point out that this is a site devoted primarily to ψ phenomena. I suspect he is weathering a lot of flak for writing what he did, and he won't want to compound his problems.
There seems to be this perception that science operates in some sort of pristine environment, shut off from the ordinary influences of humankind, so that any time there is an example of someone behaving badly, or even hastily, it spells the end of science, as though research depends upon that pristine environment. In actuality, the messy, biased, adversely motivated environment in which it is performed is well-known by those working within it. The only people who seem to think that science is pure is everyone but the scientists.
I am pleased that this leaves me as one of the scientists (which I once was) - I sure don't hold the view that science operates in a pristine way!
The methods used don't depend upon everyone behaving well. The methods used have been developed so they work regardless of whether someone behaves badly.
Linda
Well maybe if you did contact Richard Smith, he might spell out for you exactly why he obviously still doesn't trust the studies that you put so much faith in. I guess there is a sort of arms race between honest protocols and the scientists who for one reason or another don't want to be bound by them.

We began by discussing statins, where again, you referred to studies that showed that the number of side effects with people on statins is only marginally above those reported on placebo. Now I don't know how those supposedly perfect RCT's produced that result, but I do know that the probability that I could encounter so many actual reports of nasty problems quite informally would be infinitesimal if the RCT's were delivering a sound result.

I guess all the medical doctors who have come to worry about the dangers of statins have gone through the same kind of reasoning - somehow those RCT's aren't working as fairly as you think.

David
 
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Linda,

I actually feel I understand where you are coming from! This is not a joke, or an insult, it is meant as a serious thought that you may well agree with.

You can see how useless Ancel Keys' study was, and you know how flawed a lot of research is, but you think the RCT concept can fix all that. So if, for example, you give a set of test subjects placebo or statin tablets at random, and record the effects - good and bad - you simply must be getting at the truth with only random noise as a potential confounder. Your position is that a large body of scientific knowledge can be expressed entirely in terms of statistics collected from RCTs.

Your only fault (from my perspective) is that you take the concept to its logical extreme. This puts you into this interesting position:

1) An essay by an eminent scientist expressing doubts about any subject (covered by RCT's), can't tell us more than the statistics can, if they have been gathered in an RCT fashion.

2) Patient complaints about the effects of statins, or even doctors reports of curing people of diabetes by switching them on to a high fat diet can't really be right, and have to be the result of selective reporting, over enthusiasm, etc.

3) All the bad reports of statin side effects must either be explained by assuming (not unreasonably) that far more patients aren't making a fuss because all went well, or by assuming that people get statin-like problems when they reach statin-age.

4) Even if someone (i.e. me) for one reason or another stops and starts taking the tablets several times, and notes that the side effects go up and down seemingly in response, this must be due to a random freaky event - such as a temporary illness which happened to wax and wane in an unfortunate way.

5) Even if an idea was originally based on an utterly flawed piece of scientific work (Ancel Keys), if subsequent RCT's have backed up that idea, you would still take that as proof that the idea is sound - even though it came into being in a bogus way.

I could go on to explain my point of view, but I'd rather you first confirm or correct my interpretation of your views.

David
 
OK - well tell me how you can use an RCT to measure the amount of heart disease as a function of what people eat (not a physiological measure such as cholesterol levels - which is itself in doubt). How can you ever correct for the fact that health motivated individuals will eat what they perceive to be a healthy diet, but will also do other things like take extra exercise.

That's the point of an RCT. The comparator groups are formed on the basis of randomization, not on the basis of "health motivation". The health motivated individuals are distributed in both groups to avoid between-group differences in health motivation. And between-group differences in heart disease are how you use an RCT to measure the amount of heart disease which is a function of what people eat.

I know, and yet he must have seen more of those RCT papers pass his desk than almost anyone. He clearly doesn't believe them!

I have no idea what he believes, given that he chose to have his article published in the Christmas BMJ edition, rather than at any other time of the year. And it doesn't matter, as his opinion is only valid to the extent to which it is supported by the evidence. So either way, it behooves us to look at the evidence.

RichardSmith references Ioannidis JPA. Implausible results in human nutrition research. BMJ2013;347:f6698. in connection with his suspicion that nutritional studies are not to be trusted. I can't view that article, but presumable it pours some cold water on the very RCT's that you rely on so firmly.

It says the same thing I have been saying with respect to RCTs.

http://www.dcscience.net/Ioannidis-2013-nutrition-bmj.pdf

And I am interested in Ioannidis' opinion on these matters.

We began by discussing statins, where again, you referred to studies that showed that the number of side effects with people on statins is only marginally above those reported on placebo. Now I don't know how those supposedly perfect RCT's produced that result, but I do know that the probability that I could encounter so many actual reports of nasty problems quite informally would be infinitesimal if the RCT's were delivering a sound result.

No, we should have hundreds of thousands of people, just in the US, able to report nasty problems if the RCTs are delivering a sound result. The number you have come across is a mere handful compared to what you should be able to find, in the absence of severe side effects due to statins. From the trials - adverse events bad enough to stop the 'drug' (placebo) were about 5-10%. This is only going to be higher in a more general, less healthy population (RCT trial subjects tend to be in better shape than the target population).

I guess all the medical doctors who have come to worry about the dangers of statins have gone through the same kind of reasoning - somehow those RCT's aren't working as fairly as you think.

David

It just shows that physicians, like everyone else, are also subject to the faulty use of intuition.

Linda
 
Linda,

I actually feel I understand where you are coming from! This is not a joke, or an insult, it is meant as a serious thought that you may well agree with.

You can see how useless Ancel Keys' study was, and you know how flawed a lot of research is, but you think the RCT concept can fix all that.

I think that attending to the quality of the research and to establishing some element of plausibility can fix that (not sure what you mean by "fix that", but I'm willing to go along with it).

So if, for example, you give a set of test subjects placebo or statin tablets at random, and record the effects - good and bad - you simply must be getting at the truth with only random noise as a potential confounder. Your position is that a large body of scientific knowledge can be expressed entirely in terms of statistics collected from RCTs.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. A large body of scientific knowledge can be expressed in terms of good-quality evidence. I'm not sure why this should be regarded as concerning.

Your only fault (from my perspective) is that you take the concept to its logical extreme. This puts you into this interesting position:

1) An essay by an eminent scientist expressing doubts about any subject (covered by RCT's), can't tell us more than the statistics can, if they have been gathered in an RCT fashion.

Before you get to far with this RCT thing, what I'm referring to is good-quality evidence. This isn't RCTs. Not all RCTs are good quality. And not all good quality evidence is an RCT. So I'm going to substitute "good-quality research" where you say "RCTs", assuming your point remains the same.

I agree than an essay is no better than the information on which it is based. The value comes when you know you've found someone who provides a reasonable overview of that information, including criticisms.

2) Patient complaints about the effects of statins, or even doctors reports of curing people of diabetes by switching them on to a high fat diet can't really be right, and have to be the result of selective reporting, over enthusiasm, etc.

That has certainly been the overwhelming history of medicine (almost nothing based on patient complaints or claims of cures from a hundred years ago or more has turned out to be valid). There are very few high validity environments in which this would work, nowadays. The vast majority of medicine operates under low validity environments for these kinds of claims. The validity of an environment refers to opportunities for the practitioner to learn about valid associations (e.g. firefighters sensing imminent danger (high validity), picking stocks (low validity)).

3) All the bad reports of statin side effects must either be explained by assuming (not unreasonably) that far more patients aren't making a fuss because all went well, or by assuming that people get statin-like problems when they reach statin-age.

Not necessarily "all". An unknown amount of 'at least some'. And no one has to "assume" that people get these problems. We already know that people got these problems when they weren't taking statins.

4) Even if someone (i.e. me) for one reason or another stops and starts taking the tablets several times, and notes that the side effects go up and down seemingly in response, this must be due to a random freaky event - such as a temporary illness which happened to wax and wane in an unfortunate way.

It's more that the process of starting and stopping based on the presence or absence of the side-effect, will always create the appearance that the side-effect is due to whatever you choose to start and stop. Any real effect which may be hiding in there will be swamped by the biased environment you have created.

5) Even if an idea was originally based on an utterly flawed piece of scientific work (Ancel Keys), if subsequent RCT's have backed up that idea, you would still take that as proof that the idea is sound - even though it came into being in a bogus way.

Yes. Better quality research trumps the results of lower quality research. It's very common for there to be discrepancies (agreement is probably the exception). And it's almost as if the poor-quality information doesn't even exist when you operate within a high-quality environment. A good-quality experiment which shows a valid association does not establish that the associations found in the poor-quality research were valid.

Linda
 
Christmas issue

We publish a special two-week issue of the BMJ over Christmas and New Year. We are pleased to consider all kinds of articles, including reports of original research, for this issue and particularly welcome colour illustrations.

All submissions should follow the standard requirements for BMJ articles. The final deadline for submission is usually in mid September, although articles can be submitted earlier in the year and saved up for consideration nearer Christmas. Our first editorial committee for the Christmas issue is in late August, and for consideration then we'd need the piece by July.

Submissions are peer reviewed in the normal way but those we want to consider in more detail are usually held over for appraisal at one or more Christmas hanging committees in the autumn.
 
Linda,

OK - it sounds as if substituting "good-quality research" (GQR) for RCT would more or less bring my idea of what you think close to what you actually think. Plus you do accept that a small number of statin side effects are real.

My position is that I am fairly sure something has gone wrong with the GQR at some point in the process. The reason I say that, is that this evidence doesn't square with an awful lot of other evidence on the internet, and my own personal experience (mainly the numbers of people I have encountered who report these problems). I don't need to give you specific links to the various reports of the merits of high fat low carb diets, nor do I need to give you more reports of statin side effects - you know there are masses of these reports available.

Regarding your hundreds of thousands of people who should have been bitten by statins, my guess is they probably have. In many cases (not mine) these happen quite soon after starting, and I think they simply discard the tablets and don't order them again - indeed some people told me they had done just that! It is also frightening to wonder how many have accepted their statin-induced side effects as something else - maybe just part of the ageing process.

It is also clearly the case that a lot of medical experts - of which Richard Smith is but one - are calling for a re-think. He clearly knows all the GQR, and he comes to his conclusion despite it.

Exactly what has gone wrong isn't clear, but I am damn sure it has something to do with the billions made by big pharma, and the bias introduced into the system (which I know you think can't actually influence GQRs) once doctors started to publicly back the anti-saturated fat campaign. Saying "oops we made a mistake!" would be damn hard.

Let me put it this way, suppose big pharma took on a magician (nothing to do with ψ), explained the process of the various studies, and how much doctors believed them, do you really think he couldn't find a way to bend the system? Please be clear, I am not saying that this is exactly what big pharma explicitly did, but I don't believe your GQRs are incorruptible - because practically nothing is.

Big pharma have already been fined billions of dollars for cheating and deliberately causing people to die - the purpose of my mentioning VIOXX was only to show how ruthless these people are. So what could they do to bust the GQR's?

1) Maybe they manage to put something into the placebo pills that shouldn't be there and causes side effects to match those in the real pills.

2) Perhaps they hack the computers that contain the GQR data.

3) Conceivably they have even found a way to use ψ to influence the results! I would not dismiss this possibility. Your whole way of looking at the world is based on materialism and nothing else - remove that assumption and all sorts of things are possible.

If GQR's were part of a plurality of data sources, the system would be more robust, but heaping trust on one part of the system may be exactly what has let it break down.

David
 
Back in the day, when the latest issue of the medical journal would arrive in the mail and be read cover to cover, it made more sense to have a special issue. And when finding references didn't involve reading those articles online, but digging them up in the library, you still were exposed to these articles within the context of a specific edition.

I sorta think anyone who 'inadvertently' uses the prayer study highlights their own deficiencies, though. After all, its nature is obvious if you just read the damn thing. The bigger problem is opinion pieces like the article we've been describing. How are you supposed to take it seriously when the author chose to publish it in the joke issue? And how are you to realize that its seriousness is questionable if you come across it outside of its context?

Linda
 
Linda,

OK - it sounds as if substituting "good-quality research" (GQR) for RCT would more or less bring my idea of what you think close to what you actually think. Plus you do accept that a small number of statin side effects are real.

My position is that I am fairly sure something has gone wrong with the GQR at some point in the process. The reason I say that, is that this evidence doesn't square with an awful lot of other evidence on the internet, and my own personal experience (mainly the numbers of people I have encountered who report these problems). I don't need to give you specific links to the various reports of the merits of high fat low carb diets, nor do I need to give you more reports of statin side effects - you know there are masses of these reports available.

How can that be an indication that it has gone wrong? What you're saying is "information which is too ridiculously confounded and biased to be anything but false contradicts good quality information which is likely to be true, so we should presume that it is the good quality information which is false". How does that make sense or serve as proof that the practice of collecting good quality information should be abandoned in favour of ???? (you refuse to explain what you are substituting for evidence).

Regarding your hundreds of thousands of people who should have been bitten by statins, my guess is they probably have.

I know that's your guess. I'm just pointing out that your guess is contradicted by the actual facts.

Exactly what has gone wrong isn't clear, but I am damn sure it has something to do with the billions made by big pharma, and the bias introduced into the system (which I know you think can't actually influence GQRs) once doctors started to publicly back the anti-saturated fat campaign. Saying "oops we made a mistake!" would be damn hard.

Why would it be damned hard? Doctors have reversed their strongly held stances on multiple issues, based on evidence. What happened when the WHI study results showing a lack of benefit for HRT came out?

Let me put it this way, suppose big pharma took on a magician (nothing to do with ψ), explained the process of the various studies, and how much doctors believed them, do you really think he couldn't find a way to bend the system? Please be clear, I am not saying that this is exactly what big pharma explicitly did, but I don't believe your GQRs are incorruptible - because practically nothing is.

So again, what are you suggesting otherwise? What would be less corruptible, and more valid?

Big pharma have already been fined billions of dollars for cheating and deliberately causing people to die - the purpose of my mentioning VIOXX was only to show how ruthless these people are. So what could they do to bust the GQR's?

1) Maybe they manage to put something into the placebo pills that shouldn't be there and causes side effects to match those in the real pills.

This could only be sporadic, given that studies are performed by competing companies and by non-industry players, rather than a single source.

2) Perhaps they hack the computers that contain the GQR data.

Again, sporadic at best.

3) Conceivably they have even found a way to use ψ to influence the results! I would not dismiss this possibility. Your whole way of looking at the world is based on materialism and nothing else - remove that assumption and all sorts of things are possible.

I'm not a materialist, so don't make assumptions. The effects of psi would be the effect of unblinding and we already know what that would look like.

If GQR's were part of a plurality of data sources,...

They are. I mentioned previously that it included attention to establishing some element of plausibility.

...the system would be more robust, but heaping trust on one part of the system may be exactly what has let it break down.

David

But you have yet to show that it has broken down. All you have offered is a disconnect between the sorts of connections we make due to bias, prejudice, fraud and wishful thinking, and those we make when those elements are obviated. How can you declare connections made in the setting of bias and prejudice are "true" while those made in the setting of GQR are "false"? And how are you making the decision of what is "true" or "false" in the absence of GQR?

Linda
 

I'm not sure what your position is, TL, but I think I get what the Atlantic is saying: papers the BMJ thinks laughable that have been published in pukka journals should be permanently tagged as laughable so that no one ever again (hopefully) cites them.

Carry that to its logical conclusion and relativity, QM, continental drift, bacterial origin of stomach ulcers and puerperal fever, would never have made the final cut, because they were all subject to some degree of ridicule or derision.

I'm not saying some papers aren't in fact ridiculous. I'm saying that some that have been ridiculed have later turned out to be the bedrock of science. Conversely, some that had easy acceptance and could have been justifiably ridiculed haven't been. We've probably all heard of the famous PLOS paper about why most published research is wrong:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Some of the research labelled ridiculous may have been carried out painstakingly and correctly, however counter-consensual the conclusions (The Atlantic article acknowledges this). OTOH, we have the PLOS paper implying that a lot of research which gibes consensus can be accepted even when its methodology is highly suspect. IMO, it's actually the latter which should provide the most cause for concern. It implies that the scientific establishment is less concerned about quality than it is about supporting favoured paradigms.

The result is a tendency to scientific stasis. I like Rupert Sheldrake's idea that a certain proportion of funding (say 10%) should be set aside for research in areas that normally can't very easily get it. This by no means should be restricted to the area of psi research: there are plenty of other areas considered beyond the pale for which there is actually at least some evidential support. It should become acceptable for such areas to be funded, and for those scientists prepared to explore non-consensual areas to be respected as making useful contributions to scientific debates.

I blame it on the demise of religion in the West. We still can't seem to do without doctrine and dogma, and so it has become displaced into science. This has gone to the heads of those in the scientific establishment, who have become members of a new sacerdotal class. Given the surety of funding, it's my suspicion that many, many scientists would choose to be researching things other than what they have to research on pain of excommunication.
 
I'm not sure what your position is, TL, but I think I get what the Atlantic is saying: papers the BMJ thinks laughable that have been published in pukka journals should be permanently tagged as laughable so that no one ever again (hopefully) cites them.

Carry that to its logical conclusion and relativity, QM, continental drift, bacterial origin of stomach ulcers and puerperal fever, would never have made the final cut, because they were all subject to some degree of ridicule or derision.

You are misunderstanding the point. We're not talking about seriously held ideas which have been ridiculed. These are minor projects which the authors' don't take seriously, offered up for a lighthearted edition. This has nothing to do with your examples.

In reality, I imagine that if it did turn out from actual research that apples lose their health benefits after the age of 55 (an actual Christmas project testing the effect of apples on the prevention of myocardial infarction), the idea won't have difficulty gaining acceptance just because someone was trying to be silly back in 1998.

Linda
 
Who gives a shit about diet? Just diversify your intake and try not to eat more than you need. Go ask a reasonably healthy 90-something if (s)he gives a crap about nutrition. Those wrinkly old crypt stavers don't care about saturated fat. They simply eat. But they're never fat either. Just eat your goddamn food and shut the hell up. Idiots.
 
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I wonder if some of the seeming discrepancy between a lot of real world experience and Linda's GQR's, is actually due to the experimenter effect.

When people talk about the 'experimenter effect', they usually really mean that the experimenter was careless or even fraudulent, or if the experimenter was trying to debunk a result, that he/she didn't take enough care.

However Rupert Sheldrake takes the experimenter effect much more seriously - suggesting that experiments are actually influenced by the intentions or desires of the experimenters or others around them. He suspects even physics experiments may be subject to this effect.

Think of an experiment to look at statin side effects. You randomly assign participants into two groups, and give one statin pills, and the other a placebo. This setup is rather reminiscent of some ψ experiments, where people are trying to influence the outcome of random events such as 2-slit quantum experiments by sheer mental force. There is certainly a powerful desire among the researchers to show that statins are not guilty, and suppose that that operates by shunting people who would show statin-like side effects into the placebo group (regardless of whether these would be real or incidental), and moving people who will not respond adversely to statins into the group that receive real statins! Likewise, there is possibly an even more powerful desire not to face the ridicule and fury of people if traditional diets that contained more saturated fat turn out to be better for us after 60 odd years of pushing the 'low fat' (i.e. low saturated fat) mantra.

A existence of a genuine experimenter effect would blow RCT's out of the water!

This might explain why, people end up having so much difficulty with drugs that are supposed to be very well tolerated. It might also explain how it is that Prozac seemed at one time to perform much better than a placebo at relieving depression, and yet in a recent test performed no better than a placebo!

Clearly a real experimenter effect is effectively a manifestation of ψ, and it could be that when the statin scandal breaks, it won't just be another pharmaceutical horror story, but will reveal something deeper about our relationship with the physical world.

David
 
Who gives a shit about diet? Just diversify your intake and try not to eat more than you need. Go ask a reasonably healthy 90-something if (s)he gives crap about nutrition. Those wrinkly old crypt stavers don't care about saturated fat. They simply eat. But they're never fat either. Just eat your goddamn food and shut the hell up. Idiots.
Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes episode earlier this year about "living to 90 and beyond"? It was interesting - it was based on a study of people living in a leisure community where they had all lthe data on them going back decades, and they found surprising results along the lines that what gets you to 70, health-wise, isn't necessarily related to what gets you to 90 and beyond (if you make it to 70).

Some of the data findings in this study of what (statistically, group-wise) gives you a better shot of getting to 90 once you made it to 70:
- not-smoking
- exercising a little rather than not (15 minutes makes a difference, 45 minutes is the best, beyond doesn't make a difference) - and the exercise doesn't have to be intense or continuous (can be spread across the day)
- drinking alcohol moderately (2 drinks a day), rather than not any - and any alcohol was better, not just red wine
- taking 1 to 3 cups of coffee a day, rather than not drinking any
- maintaining a normal weight or gaining a little weight (but not obese), rather than losing weight or being too slim

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/living-to-90-and-beyond/
 
Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes episode earlier this year about "living to 90 and beyond"? It was interesting - it was based on a study of people living in a leisure community where they had all lthe data on them going back decades, and they found surprising results along the lines that what gets you to 70, health-wise, isn't necessarily related to what gets you to 90 and beyond (if you make it to 70).

Some of the data findings in this study of what (statistically, group-wise) gives you a better shot of getting to 90 once you made it to 70:
- not-smoking
- exercising a little rather than not (15 minutes makes a difference, 45 minutes is the best, beyond doesn't make a difference) - and the exercise doesn't have to be intense or continuous (can be spread across the day)
- drinking alcohol moderately (2 drinks a day), rather than not any - and any alcohol was better, not just red wine
- taking 1 to 3 cups of coffee a day, rather than not drinking any
- maintaining a normal weight or gaining a little weight (but not obese), rather than losing weight or being too slim

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/living-to-90-and-beyond/

Let me ask you this. Can a disease be unhealthy? I don't think so, because it is exactly what we consider unhealthy to be. A diseased state is an unhealthy state, but the diseased state can't itself be unhealthy. These old people are nothing but a disease. They should have died a long time ago.
 
This might explain why, people end up having so much difficulty with drugs that are supposed to be very well tolerated. It might also explain how it is that Prozac seemed at one time to perform much better than a placebo at relieving depression, and yet in a recent test performed no better than a placebo!

Clearly a real experimenter effect is effectively a manifestation of ψ, and it could be that when the statin scandal breaks, it won't just be another pharmaceutical horror story, but will reveal something deeper about our relationship with the physical world.

David

SSRIs outperform placebos by many magnitudes. It's not even questionable. Those studies are flawed, because they involve subjects who are not seriously depressed, yet fit the diagnostic criteria. For MDD (Major depressive disorder) anti-depressants (as a general category) will outperform placebos every time. Also, Prozac isn't any less tolerable than Tylenol. If there is such a thing as a miracle drug, Prozac is certainly one...
 
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A existence of a genuine experimenter effect would blow RCT's out of the water!

This might explain why, people end up having so much difficulty with drugs that are supposed to be very well tolerated. It might also explain how it is that Prozac seemed at one time to perform much better than a placebo at relieving depression, and yet in a recent test performed no better than a placebo!

Clearly a real experimenter effect is effectively a manifestation of ψ, and it could be that when the statin scandal breaks, it won't just be another pharmaceutical horror story, but will reveal something deeper about our relationship with the physical world.

It seems I didn't read your comment clearly. Apologies. I didn't notice you stated the efficacy of Prozac has declined only recently. I didn't know that... Not like my comment had anything to do with your point anyway, but whatever. Ian liked it and that's all that matters. Okay, I gotta get back on 9/11.

Don't any of you jerks have any opinions on 9/11?

Linda, what are your views on 9/11? Why don't you stop discussing boring research stuff and come over to the 9/11 thread (or one of its child forums) and have some fun for a change? Apparently, there are a lot of people in this world who don't seem to understand how physical reality operates. The very things we spend our time as infants learning. For example, a 3-year-old should understand that if somebody throws a baseball at his chest fracturing his collar bone, that an hour later his entire body will not explode.
 
[quote="Super Sexy, post: 50915, member: 753"

Don't any of you jerks have any opinions on 9/11?.[/quote]

My feeling is that 9/11 was almost certainly not as portrayed - very murky - but I always tend to go for muddle theories rather than conspiracy theories. The problem with a simple conspiracy theory is that so many people would have to be in the know, and inevitably some would feel it was their patriotic duty to expose the truth.

I think that for me, the awful truth is that I don't trust the US government at all - I tend to side with Putin in the Ukraine, and also his judgement regarding the Middle East seems far more reliable. I guess the truth about 9/11 can't compete for me with the truth about consciousness. 9/11 is just another grubby historical event, like the Bay of Pigs, assorted assassinations, the weapons of mass destruction ...................

David
 
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