<story><title>Rethinking Diabetes – interview with Gary Taubes</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/14/unlocking-the-truth-about-diabetes-is-it-time-for-a-diet-based-treatment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>n2d4</author><text>Good article, but there&amp;#x27;s one thing that really bothers me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;perhaps because of his serious and scientific background – he has a physics degree from Harvard and studied aerospace engineering at Stanford [...]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which, for the thing he&amp;#x27;s doing now, is not a serious background! Knowledge isn&amp;#x27;t transferrable and there are plenty examples of people who transfer fields with unwarranted confidence and make totally bogus claims (see the Nobel disease [1]). I wish we would stop claiming the opposite, because especially in a field like nutritional sciences you can find some &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; for any theory (see eg. the Chemical Hunger drama [2]).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nobel_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nobel_disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ&amp;#x2F;on-not-getting-contaminated-by-the-wrong-obesity-ideas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ&amp;#x2F;on-not-get...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jandrewrogers</author><text>It kind of is a serious background. The standards of intellectual and academic rigor in physics and aerospace engineering is &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; higher than nutrition science or whatever. What the domain specialists have is familiarity with the existing literature, but that is readily remedied as anyone with an interest and motivation can become familiar with literature like nutrition science in short order.&lt;p&gt;All things being equal, I would probably trust the judgement of someone that went deep in the hard sciences and engineering, and then educated themselves on the literature of some soft science specialty on the side, than the average person whose entire education was in the much less rigorous and more shallow soft sciences. I have seen far too much sloppy and motivated reasoning in the soft sciences to trust anything that comes from people that exclusively live in that world. I am sure there are proper scientists in those fields doing good work, but that isn’t the average.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know anything about this particular case, but it is much easier for someone with mastery of the hard sciences to become fluent in the soft sciences out of interest than vice versa. It may not be fair but I have seen so many real world examples of this, where hard science&amp;#x2F;engineering experts became recognized experts in softer science fields entirely out of interest, but never in the reverse, that it is difficult to ignore.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rethinking Diabetes – interview with Gary Taubes</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/14/unlocking-the-truth-about-diabetes-is-it-time-for-a-diet-based-treatment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>n2d4</author><text>Good article, but there&amp;#x27;s one thing that really bothers me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;perhaps because of his serious and scientific background – he has a physics degree from Harvard and studied aerospace engineering at Stanford [...]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which, for the thing he&amp;#x27;s doing now, is not a serious background! Knowledge isn&amp;#x27;t transferrable and there are plenty examples of people who transfer fields with unwarranted confidence and make totally bogus claims (see the Nobel disease [1]). I wish we would stop claiming the opposite, because especially in a field like nutritional sciences you can find some &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; for any theory (see eg. the Chemical Hunger drama [2]).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nobel_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nobel_disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ&amp;#x2F;on-not-getting-contaminated-by-the-wrong-obesity-ideas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ&amp;#x2F;on-not-get...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shermantanktop</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s like some kind of Gell-Mann effect corollary.  Scientists and other educated experts quoted in a newspaper carry automatic authority unless you understand the target field well enough. But if you do, you realize they are no more trustworthy than a guy on the bus.&lt;p&gt;Titles don&amp;#x27;t help.  An &amp;quot;environmental engineer&amp;quot; might not have sufficient knowledge about zoology or bridges to support whatever they are talking about, but a layperson might not realize that.</text></comment>