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Toumina's Journal

 
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22 June 2018

Weigh-in: 220.4 lb lost so far: 23.6 lb still to go: 75.4 lb Diet followed reasonably well
   (9 comments) losing 0.4 lb a week

19 June 2018

13 June 2018

07 June 2018

Let's talk about science, baby!

In case you've been living under a rock, there have been a lot of discussions here recently about approaches to diet and "the science", or lack thereof, to support or disprove each approach. The problem is that a lot of people are making claims and saying those claims are supported by "science", when that isn't quite the case. This isn't limited to one side of the CICO/keto battle; it's on both sides, and in fact, it's going far beyond the CICO/keto battle and showing up in other areas also.

I think it's important to establish that people are not lying, and they're not wrong, exactly, but there's a good deal of misunderstanding and misrepresentation going on here about what scientific studies are, what they do and do not tell us, and where we're actually at in regards to understanding metabolism and nutrition.

Yesterday someone suggested I put something together in my own journal about this so I could cite links better, and since this is kinda my thing, I'm actually really excited to nerd out a bit in front of you. I have realized that this is going to be too much for one post though, so I'm going to break it up over a couple days.

For my fellow science geeks, be aware I'm going to be breaking this down as best I can to an ELI5 level. Some of things I say may not be *as* correct as they could be, so try to understand that I don't really have the time or space to build the proper schema for everyone, and I'm doing my best to work with schemas most people will already possess and understand. That being said, please feel free to call me out on anything you think you can explain better on an ELI5 level within the existing schemas.

Today, we're gonna start with scientific studies and how to tell if the study being cited actually supports what a person is claiming. In other terms, do they have a "valid argument"?

Do you remember sometime in grade or middle school, you had to take a sort of logic test? The problems would look something like this:

True or False - If all Bloops are Bleeps and all Bleeps are Blarghs, then all Bloops must be Blarghs.

This one's pretty easy to identify as true, or "valid". But can we say from this information that all Blarghs are Bloops? Can we say that all Blarghs are Bleeps? Can we say that all Bleeps are Bloops? No, we can't. And this is where we're currently running into problems with the discussions were having on FS. People are taking a study that says "All Bloops are Bleeps" and claiming it supports the argument that "All Bleeps are Bloops". But it doesn't work like this. This is called a "logical fallacy".

Now, if you've fallen into this trap I want to be very clear about two things - *YOU ARE NOT STUPID* and *THIS MOST LIKELY WASN'T YOUR FAULT*. Let me explain...

Imagine if while you were in school you never learned that a rectangle must have 4 sides of equal length to be called a square. You learned that all squares have 4 sides and that they all have 90 degree angles. You also learned about rectangles and how they too have 4 sides and 90 degree angles. You also learned that all squares are rectangles, but for whatever reason, the fact that a rectangle must have 4 sides *of equal length* to be a square was considered "advanced" learning and wasn't taught to you before you left school. That doesn't make you stupid.

Now imagine if someone figured out they could make money by using that gap in your knowledge to convince you that all rectangles are squares... They remind you how you already learned all this stuff in school, tell you that that's all you need to know or neglect to tell differently, and they use the gap in your knowledge against you to lead you to a false conclusion. See? It's not your fault, either.

Tomorrow I'm going to look at a couple studies I've seen cited on here and point out how valid findings are being used to present and support false conclusions. And I'll also break those studies down a bit to make it clear what the "sound" conclusions were.

If you want to read more about logical reasoning and all the ways people try to take advantage of you by inserting false premises or invalid arguments in a conversation, check out http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1440/invalidity.pdf and also http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1440/invalid.pdf

Thanks for reading!

07 June 2018

Weigh-in: 221.2 lb lost so far: 22.8 lb still to go: 76.2 lb Diet followed reasonably well
   (8 comments) losing 4.4 lb a week

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