Comment Re: Science... Yah! (Score 3, Interesting) 958
This also sounds like voodoo:
1) Are my grandparents healthier? No, all 4 died below the average life expectancy for their gender. 2 from diabetes, 1 from lung cancer and 1 from liver failure. Anecdotal insofar as large numbers are concerned, but you said "my grandparents". Life expectancy has been increasing, statistically, so on average we are still doing better all things factored in (http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html). How much of that is science and how much of it is brushing teeth and regular baths? We don't know...
2) As the united states became more industrialized, we gained access to foods that would have been an impossibility for us in various regions. As a result my grandparents (or really their parents) would have primarily eaten what they could grow and trade for regionally. This would conflict with all food pyramid/discs/oblate-spheroids/etc. that are published as "healthy balanced diets" today. Granted, we have no way to know how much of the government recommendation is based on science, and how much based on say, a corn lobby. Maybe "eat local" should be a movement.
3) As it happens, depending on your definition of grandparents, the "caveman diet" is one doctors have recommended once or twice in the past 15 years. But cavemen weren't known for long, happy lives and we're again not really sure as a matter of science, if that's better or not. It just has that sort of "conventional wisdom" vibe.
This is how non-science has failed us. Actual science in this case probably takes too long to be interesting or to help boost your companies profits and thus is relegated to whatever researcher who can scrounge up the funds to do it. Then get heard over the noise of BS. What I read from Scott Adams resonates pretty strongly, it is very hard for the layman to make heads or tails of actual science amidst the trumpeting cacophony of marketing bullshit.