I’ve been skeptical about the link between dietary fat, and weight and poor health for a long time (at least since I first read Barry Sears’ analyses, over a decade ago). John Tierney (who has fortunately escaped from behind the Times Select prison) writes that the “science” behind the linkage is bogus, and that our fat aversion is probably one of the leading causes of obesity, since we switched to carbohydrates, which are much worse for us. But the reason that the bogus theory was promoted and accepted for so long is an interesting story of scientific sociology:

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn