Since the 1970s almost everyone in this country has been subjected to a barrage of propaganda about saturated fat. It was bad for you; it would kill you. Never mind that much of the nonsaturated fat was in the form of trans fats, now demonstrated to be harmful. Never mind that many polyunsaturated fats are chemically extracted oils that may also, in the long run, be shown to be problematic.
Never mind, too, that the industry’s idea of “low fat” became the emblematic SnackWell’s and other highly processed “low-fat” carbs (a substitution that is probably the single most important factor in our overweight/obesity problem), as well as reduced fat and even fat-free dairy, on which it made billions of dollars. (How you could produce fat-free “sour cream” is something worth contemplating.)
But let’s not cry over the chicharrones or even nicely buttered toast we passed up. And let’s not think about the literally millions of people who are repelled by fat, not because it doesn’t taste good (any chef will tell you that “fat is flavor”) but because they have been brainwashed.
And this junk-science nutritional advice almost certainly contributed to my father’s death thirty-five years ago. I hope, at some point, that they stop putting all the “fat free” labels in the candy section.
Just as the AAAS seems to be going all ass hat, the APS is rethinking its position on the “consensus.” Mann’s, Romm’s et al heads must have exploded when they saw that Curry, Lindzen and Christie are half of the working committee.
Last July, when he testified before a Senate Committee examining climate change, Pielke even raised the hackles of President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren. Perhaps that’s because Obama himself resorts when convenient to claiming that extreme weather has become more frequent and intense.
In any case, Holdren recently took the stunning step of telling Congress that Pielke was outside “mainstream scientific opinion” — although the evidence Holdren provided pertained only to droughts and didn’t actually refute Pielke at all.
As the CU professor points out, imagine the outcry if George W. Bush’s science adviser had used his prestige in an attempt to smear an academic.
I’ve always wondered how anyone can think they know what an accent from before Edison would have sounded like. How do we know that Romans would have spoken the Latin of the modern Church?
[Update a few minutes later]
That second video on the how Shakespeare would have been performed in the day is quite interesting.
I agree. The problem isn’t a shortage of workers in that field. But innumeracy and scientific illiteracy is a big problem in our society, particularly among the voters. And that includes the illiteracy of those who mindlessly accept a lot of bogus nutrition and climate “science.”
We’ve been doing it for thousands of years. The theory that it happened with the advent of agriculture because they were hanging out in the granaries to catch rodents makes sense to me.