I didn't realise Walter Willett was so into veganism/vegetarianism, and also made so much money from the same

(Bob M) #1

The part about nuts I thought was illustrative: makes lots of money from nut producers, so of course nuts are good.

(Geoffrey) #2

Never trust science driven by an agenda.

(KM) #3

They lost me with Ancel Keys. Will this man’s tentacles never die? :rage:

(Alec) #4

Willett is the modern-day Ancel Keys. Both are driven by dogma and are not very good at science. But very good at politics. And FAR too influential.

It is maddening that people like Willett are listened to. His religious beliefs and conflicts of interest make him a wholly inappropriate person to be leading nutritional recommendations. The people that do listen to him are simply foolish.

(KM) #5

According to the article, Willett is not only dogmatic, his dogma is directly based on Ancel Keys’ dogma. Science, schmience.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

Somebody needs to corner him at a press conference and ask him for references to randomised, controled trials that confirm his hypothesis that red meat is bad for the body. He hasn’t done any, and there aren’t any done by anyone else, that I’m aware of.

(Brian) #7

If he’s living what he’s preaching, he probably won’t be around that much longer. There aren’t a lot of old vegans.

(Central Florida Bob ) #8

This!

The internet has risen to defend Keys. I searched on the frequently-quoted evidence that his seven countries study was cherry picked from 23 countries down to the only seven that supported his belief that high total cholesterol predicted early death and found a bunch of posts saying that never happened.

All I know is that when I worked in aviation electronics, if I was testing a system on a commercial airplane, and threw out most of the tests in favor of less than a third of the tests that said what I wanted them to say, I’d be in jail.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

Zoë Harcombe did a reanalysis of Keys’s data as part of her doctoral thesis. She showed that there were two correlations with coronary heart disease in the seven-country data, one with sugar intake and the other with saturated fat intake.

Keys dismissed the sugar correlation out of hand. Harcombe has shown that when the data from all 23 countries are analysed, the correlation with saturated fat is non-existent, but the strong correlation between sugar intake and coronary heart disease remains.

I wonder if Keys’s friendship with Walter Willett and Mark Hegsted might have been a factor in his choosing how to report his data. Willett is a vegan, and Hegsted was one of the scientists paid off by the sugar industry to make saturated fat look bad.

#10

Sounds likely. Human endeavors are a boundless depth of corruption on top of corruption. Science is no exception.

(Alec) #11

There is a massive vested interest in quashing any evidence that disrupts the current narrative, and these posts are likely simply people with a vested interest driven by dogma, belief or money.

We are battling some very powerful forces that are embedded in the establishment, religious bodies, education, government, and business. They have money, power, and fanatical belief. They are not going down without a fight. They will be lying cheating and stealing to maintain the current order.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

And it’s called the pharmaceutical industry.

The medical-care business is right behind, too. Don’t forget that recent Forbes article suggesting that curing patients “is not a sustainable business model”!

(KM) #13

I know I’m wavering into politics here, but I’m tired of the idea that if a country is capitalist, then Nothing is off the table in terms of profit. Fashion, home decorating, exotic travel, plastic surgery, football, Dancing With The Stars, bedazzling, updating your iphone every three months, Gibson guitar collections … anything that isn’t essential for basic human thriving, but is the “spice of life”, well fine, have at it, make it as expensive and trendy and unusual and dogma driven as the market will bear. Basic non-damaging food, no-nonsense medical research that seeks and provides cures, adequate shelter, objective education … get the :money_mouth_face: out of it.

(Alec) #14

Definitely politics, and there is a huge conversation to be had about that, but not for these forums.

(Alec) #15

Do I remember seeing a stat that the current annual marketing budget of the US pharma industry is approx US$8billion? And most of it spent on “influencing” ie not “normal” advertising.

If that is true, that is a hell of a lot of influencing.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #16

That’s a perversion of the writings of Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes. They all assumed that there were natural limits to a capitalist’s greed, set by religion or morals. They would have laughed at the notion of “shareholder value.” We, on the other hand, say, “Greed is good,” and “I’ve got mine–where’s yours?” and things like that.

One of our major economic success stories in the U.S., a corporation owned by rich people who despise the welfare system, deliberately built its business model on the notion of not hiring employees full time (so they wouldn’t have to provide health insurance and other benefits) and paying no more than minimum wage for the hours worked, so that their employees would be forced onto public assistance: meal programmes, public health care, and the like. They may despise the welfare state, but they are not above profiting from it. Hobbes, Locke, and Smith look down on them and are ashamed.

(Alec) #17

Having now read through Nina’s outstanding substack article very carefully (it is worth doing if you either haven’t read it or you skimmed it), I would like to make a key point.

By going back to more epidemiology research and talking about association between red meat and T2D as if it means something, Willett has undermined his own craft (epidemiology). As Nina has clearly pointed out, many RCTs have been undertaken to test this hypothesis, and they have always concluded there is no causation.

By going back to epidemiology and suggesting the same hypothesis that has already been proven false by RCTs, Willett is proving the case that epidemiology is bollox. Except it is now easier to see: we already know through RCTs already done that this hypothesis is false. by continuing to push that the epidemiology shows an association, he is proving the case that the whole epidemiology method is flawed.

Bravo, Mr Willett, falling on your own sword.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

That’s Walter Willett, hoist by his own petard, as the Bard would say.

(Alec) #19

Alas, I think this is a pretty subtle argument, and is completely lost on 99.5% of the population. A lot of them will still be reading the media articles and with the volume of articles all saying the same thing, some (even most) will believe them.