180 Dinosaurs Can’t Be Wrong, Can They? – Call For BMJ To Retract Criticism of Dietary Guidelines

You can't challenge the status quo without resistance. The BMJ recently published a harsh criticism of the obsolete and unscientific government advice to avoid saturated fat.

Now a big group of experts are calling for the retraction of this criticism, because of numerous "errors". In fact there are no less than 180 people, many of them prominent scientists with long careers behind them, signing the letter. And 180 dinosaurs can't be wrong, can they?

The low-fat diet is dying. There's no good health reason to avoid natural saturated fat, like butter. Most informed people know that now, most people that is... except for the aging experts in charge.

Two ways to shut your critics up

There are two favored tactics of people in charge who happen to be wrong, when they want to silence their critics. Number one is appeal to authority. They are running the show, so they must be right. Right? Why get 180 signatures to a letter? The number is clearly over the top (while still only a tiny percentage of all the nutrition researchers out there).

The second favored tactic is attacking the critic instead of the message (ad hominem). This includes mentioning that your critic has written a book on the subject, as well as finding any little error or perceived error, the implication being that if there are any small errors there's no reason to believe the main message either.

Was a report published in February of 1980 or was it in fact published in May of that year? Did the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend to not eat eggs or did they, in fact, only advise people to switch to egg whites or egg substitutes? That's the level of nitpicking going on.

History goes on

Nothing in this niggling about details or bloated list of signatures can change the arc of history. The low-fat diet is useless for preventing heart disease and the least effective diet for losing weight. The asteroid has already hit and the 80s style fat phobia, like recommending skim milk, is a dying. No appeal to authority can change that.

Earlier

TIME: Eat Butter. Scientists Labeled Fat the Enemy. Why They Were Wrong. The US Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee Said to be "Completely Dissociated" From the Top Level Scientific Community The British Medical Journal Slams Unscientific and Biased Low-Fat Dietary Guidelines! Credit Suisse: The Future is Lower Carb, Higher Fat Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Stop Worrying about Saturated Fat! Headlines All Over the World: The Fear of Fat Was a Mistake from the Beginning