So, we have a pretty clear view that in the area of nutrition, the conventional wisdom (CW) is just plain wrong.
What other important areas of our lives is the currrent conventional wisdom just plain wrong? Any area, not just health. What is your pet subject where you think the CW is just wrong? You don’t need to back your opinion up by science, that would be no fun. 
Well up to now conventional wisdom has dictated that everyone be a financial slave to the cable companies. People are finally getting away from that. We use a regular indoor antenna and subscribe to Netflix. Totally entertained and no longer paying for a gazillion channels we never watch.
Conventional wisdom says…
You can rely on there always being groceries in the grocery store.
You can rely on government to take care of you.
You can’t survive without a cell phone (glued to the side of your head or your eyes glued to the screen of it).
You can’t live without television / cable.
You can’t live on less than (pick a number) $
You can’t live in less than (pick a number) square feet.
You can’t live on less than your income.
You can’t live without a microwave.
You can’t live without a city water connection.
You can’t live without being connected to the electrical grid.
You can’t live without a car.
I’m sure there’s a bunch more stuff. But there are a lot of things that we just assume are necessities that a few years ago didn’t even exist. Yes, many are very nice to have.
Brian
I love those 2 especially as I did both of these for 5 years. No water or power connection. We lived off water collected from the roof, and sunshine we collected in our solar system. It was great fun.
And living in the Australian bush, we had a mob of about 300 kangaroos bound past our place every morning and night: in the morning to go into the bush for shade, and in the evening the other way to get out into the plains to graze. It was always awesome, never got tired of it.
As someone with a degree in Education, I can tell you there’s a whole hell of a lot about the American educational system where the CW of the politicians who dictate curriculum is just plain wrong, and just as disasterous to our kids future as the CW of health standards are.
But that would be a very long, technical and perhaps political conversation to go into details.
I’ve seen the sometimes disastrous effects of catharsis first-hand with a good friend.
LeeAnn
Ooooh, you’ve hit on a topic I was passionate about a looooooooong time ago, but my enthusiasm has waned. Do tell me a couple of key points, and we’ll see if your thinking is any way aligned to my old soapbox. My gurus were Postman and Weingartner. Being a trained Educator, you may know those names? And if you know what their philosophy was/is, you’d know what I believe.
You can read more here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/think-crying-is-cathartic-not-always/
Anecdotally, the “stiff upper lip” seems to serve family and friends better than “letting it all out.” Repeated listens to this might help make the point 
Ah, got it now. Yes, I have always been of the view that the “let’s talk it though” strategy doesn’t always lead to the best results. I have always been a stiff upper lip man! 
Let me list a few:
Teaching to a test has to top the charts
The sheer level of testing for another
Pushing kids at younger and younger ages
I’m not a huge fan of phonics, though used in conjunction with whole language is not as bad as using it singularly.
Inserting political and/or religious biases into curriculum over science. (Little known fact, in the US, much of the countries textbooks are dictated by whatever schools in Texas decide to purchase due to the sheer volume of books they order. Not exactly sure why, as one would think California would have more sway, but there’s an expression in teaching that as Texas goes, so goes the rest of the country.). At least that was the case when I was teaching years ago.
The removal of arts from the curriculum.
But right now my biggest issue is with the idea that struggling schools should get “punished” monitarily while successful schools should get more funding as well as tying teacher performance to pay. The most consistent indicator of student performance that crosses all borders is the socioeconomic level of the student. If we want to improve failing schools, we have to combat poverty.
CW says that people of opposite backgrounds, races, nationalities, religions, levels of education, etc., etc., will probably not have a successful marriage. We get odd looks in checkout lines. When we go into home depot, a cashier, trying to strike up conversation, will politely ask “Oh, is that your landscaper?” That’s happened more than once. SoCal, 2018, when will this change?
I thought the CW was “opposites attract.” But perhaps cultural boundaries were never intended in such an adage.
For me personally, I’ve always said opposites attract, but they seldom endure.
When I say that though, I mean a person’s belief system. Their values. I think it’s difficult to maintain a lasting relationship with someone if your core values are opposed. For the most part, my husband and I align pretty well. But it frustrates me to no end when I’m passionate about something that he could care less about.
Very interesting distinction. Our core values do mesh. But no one on the outside is privy to that, so they make snap judgments. They judge the book by its cover!
There’s a very good chance - about 70% - that any medical study done is wrong. In August of 2005, a researcher named John P. A. Ioannidis published a paper called, “Why Most Published Research Findings are False”. It went on to become one of the most downloaded papers ever. He said it’s largely due to bad use of statistics (“math is hard” - Barbie), but also had a list of factors that lead to bad science. One of the most insidious things is the drive to publish, which means the hotter the research area, the more likely that the science is wrong.
A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. In 2012 researchers the biotech firm Amgen found they could reproduce just six of 53 (11%) “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. … In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.
My wife was treated with a bone marrow transplant for breast cancer in 1997. A year or two later, it was found that the paper it was based on was junk science. The investigator fudged the data. A friend we met during her treatment, part of her cancer survivor group, had the bone marrow transplant, too. She died a few years ago from a leukemia that was attributed to the transplant, so fudging the data wasn’t a victimless crime.
There are so many papers being retracted that a website was founded to keep track of them. https://retractionwatch.com/
With new science as bad as it is, there really is a better than 50% chance that any medical advise you see is wrong.
Fiber may be swell for lots of folks, but it is not good for everyone. I couldn’t make my gastritis stop bothering me until I cut way back. The only nuts I don’t pay dearly for if I eat them are macadamias. My bowels are lots happier too.
I believe constant use of sunscreen is what is causing, or at least exacerbating, skin cancer. How do we have rising rates of skin cancer and an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency?
I use it on occasion if I will be out a long time in a boat or something, but am not one to put it on every day.
• Most lawns are unnecessary.
• Landscaping with plants that evolved thousands of miles away forces extinction of your local ecology.
• Native plants preserve the web of life that evolved over tens of thousands years on the very spot where you stand. They’re better for water and air quality, diversity and sustainability.