Experts in Refutation

[Craig Johnson]

SInce I started following items in science, theology and research of various kinds I have become fascinated by the predilection for refutation and for finding definitions that grow increasingly hard to re-refute. I mentioned this to a researcher friend of mine several years ago and at first he just gave me a blank look. I commented, "Researchers when presented with a scientific conundrum, basically disproving their theoretical stance, usually first say something like "We don't know." Then later they say "We don't know yet." Then "We think we know." And lastly "We now know." He did reply then that he found it concerning too. Why do they never abandon theories and postulations that the heaviest weight of observations refute and just find new ways to try to keep the wrong theory afloat? I think it is money and the determination to not abandon what is to them a religion. I welcome input on this from anyone.

[BeNotDeceived]

Dr Lustig provides a great example of this in one of his videos, and searching the transcript of his long video proved difficult.

I tried a few tricks, but selecting the selecting the text proved difficult, but alas perseverance paid off.

http://ccm.net/faq/40644-how-to-get-the ... tube-video tells how to show the transcript, and the key trick is to do a (crtrl/cmd + F) for find while hovering the mouse over the text.This works directly on youtube and http://www.wikisubtitle.com/video/ceFyF9px20Y

As you suggest they'll just say something; anything just to show not everyone agrees, and suggesting there is no proof, which is a rigorous definition of a simple concept. They also fund fraudulent studies slanted to their interests. Rather that seeking truth they seek to confuse the argument and continue thier profits via the status quo via political meddling. A fun one to search for in the transcript is "black hole".

The find trick is weird, because no text box appears, but the letters indeed do highlight in a helpful way.

and we asked the question: what about the world's diet predicts diabetes prevalence change over time worldwide? That was our question, everybody with me? Ok

So here's what we did, 204 countries, we had complete data for 154, the 50 that we did not use were no different from the 154 by a very fancy set of statistics we did a lot of statistics, this is called an econometric analysis now a standard, percent vs percent, would be called an ecological analysis this is not an ecological analysis, this is an econometrical analysis this actually won 2 economists Nobel Prizes for being able to predict stock market crashes based on what's happening before, to predict what happens after ... because there is causation inference in this.

Generalized estimating equations with a conservative fixed effects approach, called the Hausman test, a hazard model to control for selection bias called the Heckman test, this is the important one, since we had the whole decade we didn't have a snapshot, we had the movie ... that's called the Granger causality test, because we can determine what came first, 'cause you can't infer causation if something didn't come first, right?

Proximate cause, you need proximate cause and period effects to control for secular trends, so we did all of this really really neat statistical analysis and Sanjay Basu is an absolute genius ... that means that 26% of all diabetes in America today is due to sugar and sugar alone.

See: Dude's an Idiot!

Where a profiteer promulgates confusion.

[gardener4life]

I just think it's amazing how many people are bias. They will throw away and destroy evidence of stuff just because they have preconceived notions.

[BeNotDeceived]

Oops

The Black Hole State isn't exposed in the Fat Chance Videos, but rather in "Processed Food: An Experiment That Failed"

I think Dr. Lustig should be in the First Presidency of Free Food, that I may post about in a new thread.

[Craig Johnson]

I just think it's amazing how many people are bias. They will throw away and destroy evidence of stuff just because they have preconceived notions.

We are all biased. My bias is pretty profound I think and not in a good way at least half the time, which used to get me into physical altercations. One thing I strive to do is see how a theory or postulation measures up against God's truth (as I understand it). Further, when I know a researcher or a scientist is biased or if they have lied in the past it makes it that much more difficult to want to take the time to see if there is ANY truth in what they say, there almost always is some truth or they would be totally disregarded and of course that brings us back to mixing truth with not-truth in order to fool enough people long enough to get the next grant. This brings up another point, that if enough theorists believe a theory we can now call it a fact, that I find irresponsible.

[inho]

My background is in natural science, and I am not sure if I get your point. I see theories been discarded all the time due to new observations or experiments.

[David13]

My background is in natural science, and I am not sure if I get your point. I see theories been discarded all the time due to new observations or experiments.

I think his point is the reluctance, the slowness with which they discard their theory that has now been proven wrong.

They like to cling to their old ideas. They don't like to admit that they were wrong. They only do so very slowly, and over time, so it all just seems to slip away ...

I think.
dc

[inho]

My background is in natural science, and I am not sure if I get your point. I see theories been discarded all the time due to new observations or experiments.

I think his point is the reluctance, the slowness with which they discard their theory that has now been proven wrong.

They like to cling to their old ideas. They don't like to admit that they were wrong. They only do so very slowly, and over time, so it all just seems to slip away ...

I think.
dc

Thanks, that actually cleared up this a bit. I can see that happening. However, I don't think it is due to money as Craig suggested. It is just basic psychology. If you have spent a lot of time with a theory and put a lot effort and time in developing in it, it might become so big part of your life that it might be hard to just give it up. Especially, if it is something you have originated yourself and feel proud of.

[Lyster]

It's not as though all positive evidence disappears when a negative is found. When a negative happens, it is natural to see how the new negative fits in with the host of positive evidence already seen. I would be more worried if someone found a small negative and threw out everything in a fit. People do that with gospel, and we would all agree that's more harmful than not.

[BeNotDeceived]

It's not as though all positive evidence disappears when a negative is found. When a negative happens, it is natural to see how the new negative fits in with the host of positive evidence already seen. I would be more worried if someone found a small negative and threw out everything in a fit. People do that with gospel, and we would all agree that's more harmful than not.

... In his 2009 "viral video" Sugar: The Bitter Truth,[71] Robert Lustig (MD, PhD) criticized Keys' Seven Countries Study.[72] Lustig gave details in his book Fat Chance: that Keys cherry-picked seven of 22 countries; consumption of trans-fat peaked in the 1960s and Keys failed to separate them out; results for Japan and Italy could be explained by either low saturated fat consumption or by low sugar consumption; and Keys wrote that sucrose and saturated fat were intercorrelated but failed to perform the sucrose half of his multivariate correlation analysis.[73] However, in his later monograph of 1980, Keys included multivariate regressions in which sugar is added to the regression and saturated fat is controlled for. In this regression, Keys found that sugar was not statistically significantly related to incidence of heart disease when dietary saturated fat was controlled for.[8] Today, sugar intake is known to increases the risk of diabetes mellitus, and increased dietary intake of sugar is known to be associated with higher blood pressure, unfavorable blood lipids and cardiometabolic risks.[74][75][76] Albeit, a 2010 conference debate of the American Dietetic Association expressed concern over the health risks of replacing saturated fats in the diet with refined carbohydrates, which carry a high risk of obesity and heart disease, particularly at the expense of polyunsaturated fats which may have health benefits.[77] ...

In this case they choose which countries data agreed with their model, and disregarded the rest.

What you describe is what I’ve heard called “stumbling blocks”. Read the intro to the Book of Mormon and you will see that even it, only claims to be “the most correct book”.

It is folly to expect absolute correctness, when no such claim is made.

[Craig Johnson]

Truly, if we had access to something that is perfect 24/7 it is unlikely we would ever leave it, even to go eat dinner! Then I remembered access to God through prayer...

[Lyster]

Prayer may be sent to a perfect being, but it comes back to humans who struggle to decipher the answers.