Why You Shouldn’t Trust Science
By Jason
New to WorldFitnessNetwork.com?
Download a copy of this 100% free e-book about how to change your body type within 90 days: 3 Months to a New You.
Image credit: oatmeal2000
I can already feel the hate mail coming, but I’m going to say it anyway: you shouldn’t always trust science. Instead, we’re going to talk about a better way of going about things.
First off, I realize that there’s not a crystal ball that magically reveals all truth, and science is the best method we have for understanding health and how the human body functions.
But science is a back and forth process of sharing ideas, debate, and seeking evidence. Science isn’t always right, and all the new studies that we hear about should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, and sometimes even ignored.
Here’s why:
Statistical models show that we live in a world of healthy mediums. When we measure the characteristics of a certain population, we usually end up with a nice bell curve as shown below. For example, the average height of men in the
Let’s say for example, that you are a scientist and you are trying to figure out if saturated fats (animal fats) are fit for human consumption. You conduct a few studies that seem to show it has some negative side effects, so you conclude that people should eat zero fat. Just stop eating all fat (and that’s what we did).
A few decades later, a new group of scientists, including Mary Enig come along with a new set of studies. These studies say that maybe fat and cholesterol aren’t as bad as we once thought. Here’s a video that talks about high fat diets almost to an extreme.
My point here is not to take sides on the saturated fats debate. The point is that nobody should be hard on one side or the other, but this video does a good job of showing how scientists don’t always use data the way it should be used. Scientists take sides when they shouldn’t.
Now this video clip only says that the data against high-fat diets is unreliable. Unfortunately, that’s not what most people will get out of the video. Most people are going to watch it and feel like pizza and fried chicken (not to mention trans-fats) are suddenly O.K. to eat every night.
Mary Enig, who spoke in the video, wrote a book about fats called Eat Fat Lose Fat. In the book, she says the following on page 5 of her introduction:
Creamy sauces, buttered vegetables, and ice cream taste good for a reason. It’s not that your body is trying to torment you by making unhealthy foods seem delectable. Instead, your body is using your taste buds to signal what you need. That’s why most of us enjoy rich foods, like succulent lamb chops, berries with heavy cream, and crispy turkey skin.
Bless her heart. Dr. Enig did a great job of backing up all of her arguments with scientific studies and wonderful information to dispel the myth that we should eat zero fat and avoid all saturated fats. But people read these kind of things and say “great, ice cream is good for me now” and go skipping happily down to the ice-cream shop.
We tend to forget the happy medium that the bell curve tells us how we should be eating. But then again, you don’t become a famous scientist by preaching practicality or moderation… those kinds of things don’t get any attention, so something bold must be said. Dr. Enig has a great book, but many readers will certainly overreact to her findings.
Instead having a happy medium, we begin to have all the people that believe fat is bad on one side, and then the people that believe fat is great on the other. The bell curve that we started with now looks like this:
Where’s the happy medium? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
A better Solution:
Again, science isn’t useless, but it’s not always as scientific as it should be. If you can’t keep up with the studies for the rest of your life, a simple rule to follow is this: live as close to natural as possible. Obviously, we’re trying to build muscle and minimize fat here, so some deviations from the norm will be needed (like higher protein consumption), but you’ll understand the principal.
Here are some examples of doing what’s natural:
- Natural training: You already know steroids will mess you up.
- Weight machines: Humans were designed to pick up rocks and logs. Free weights closely mimic these movements, machines do not.
- Saturated fat: It’s there when you eat meat. Your body was built to handle the amount that comes with what you eat.
- Carbs: We’ve been eating grains as far back as recorded history goes. Don’t cut them completely out, but don’t eat all carbs because somebody put them at the bottom of your food pyramid. Remember the bell curve and moderation.
- Egg yolks: Recent studies have shown that dietary fat and cholesterol aren’t as bad as we once thought. Instead of focusing on that, believe that humans have evolved and adapted to eating egg yolks, or that God put them there because they’re good for you, whichever you prefer to believe. You would have been correct all along.
- Meds: If you take all the work away from your muscles, they will never grow. Same thing for strengthening your immune system. Use medical drugs when you really need them, not for every little twinge of pain.
- Processed foods: Don’t eat them. Eat foods the way they grew out of the ground and meats as close to their natural form as possible. Dinner does not come in a microwavable box.
I’ll stop the list there for now. You get the idea. There are always exceptions, but sticking with what nature gives us will get you on track most of the time. We should use science as a tool (and I will here), but don’t give it your 100% trust. A little skepticism will go a long ways to helping you avoid all the hype and jumping on the bandwagons that the fitness industry will send your way in the name of science.
Now, I’d love to hear your agreements, disagreements, and especially your skepticism for this approach.
Related Articles
Topics: Dieting & Food, Workout Principles |
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:41 am
Hey Jason,
Nice post. I think the problem isn’t the scientific research, but the interpretation. If you take anything literally you are going to be in trouble. Read things carefully, keep an open mind, and make decisions according to yours or your clients needs. Everyone is different. Science provides us with new ideas and theories, which are great, but reading them with a closed mind is dangerous. As always, be smart and don’t take things literally. There is always another side in the fitness industry, and nothing is concrete.
Great topic.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am
Check and see who financed the study and how random the sample was. These are the two most important elements.
RT
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Great post! Next time somebody asks me why I made the moronic decision to try to eat paleo, I’ll point them to this.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Lauren- Agreed, the biggest problem is the interpretation. Studies can easily be done to show either side of most issues we face, but proper interpretation is vital.
RT- The commercial incentive overrides all other factors. If a company is sponsoring the research, it will always come out in their favor, or else you will never hear of it. Great point.
Lucas- The paleo diet is interesting, and probably has it’s pluses and minuses depending on which variant you practice. I like the concept of trying to eat natural though. On the other hand, I wonder how we can really know what pre-historic humans ate when there’s no historical record other than some old bones. I’m no anthropologist, but it’s a curiosity.
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:29 am
As someone who has battled with my weight for years, this article ha been a joy to read. I have jumped on every band-wagon from Atkins to Weight Watchers and have never been successful.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to conform to an unrealistic standard of looks and eating. I had a minor epiphany yesterday as I have been looking into cutting sugar from my diet. I (like a lot of people) depend on sugar/chocolate to get me through the day. How insane is this!!!??? I cant see many a cave man saying ‘Ug! Cant find mammoth…need my chocolate first!’
I bake my own bread (it takes hardly anytime), I always cook meals from scratch and I eat lots of fruit and vegetables. So, for me, it stands to reason that the processed sugar is causing me problems.
So as you say, I will be trying to stick to what nature gave us, be chosey when it comes to latest ’scientific’ research and fad diets and start to excercise more!
Well done and good luck!
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Elizabeth- Thanks for the kind words. Your experience is not an exception in any way, and so many others are trying the fad diets and bandwagons. This is very usual for us though, because the modern world has conditioned us to believe that science will figure out a complicated solution for us that makes our lives easy. The truth is that the solution is very simple, but not always easy. Best of luck with processed sugar, it’s simple to do, but it’s not easy
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
As a biologist I was about ready to send the hate mail flying at you when I saw the title, but read through the article first. Its all quite true. Most of what we hear in popular culture are media sensationalized interpretations of studies. Rather than understanding the limitations inherent in the methods used, the media takes the basic lesson and applies it entirely too broadly.
One thing people should keep in mind is that the way their body deals with food is unique so different things will work for different people. Experiment, but use moderation.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Kenneth- *WHEW*
that’s my sigh of relief that the article passed the biologist test. Fortunately, independent scientists will agree about those inherent limitations as they don’t have a special agenda to push or corporate profits to protect. Thanks for your input.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:01 am
[…] about why you shouldn’t trust science & the thermic effect of […]
March 6th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I am a student currently completing a B.Sc. Chemistry.
Your are correct about the problems with making assumptions based on statistics.
However that is not SCIENCE. There is nothing wrong with Science. There is something wrong with believing in statistics. Statistics should not be trusted, because they are manipulated so easily and rarely give the full picture. So don’t blame science, blame statistics. Stats are just a guide, not a truth.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Adam- Thanks for finally spicing things up a bit. I was expecting a fair amount of push-back to the article.
And I agree, there’s nothing wrong with science per se. But it’s no crystal ball that gives infallible answers, and it does have its inherent limitations just as statistics does. Our conclusions are sometimes only as good as our assumptions.
Which is why I’m glad you brought up statistics. Most statistical studies are very limited by error and confounding variables if we’re not careful (and we’re not always careful). Ironically though, as you get into post-graduate work, I’ve heard that many disciplines (including sciences) rely heavily on statistics to make conclusions.
Statistics apply to medical sciences as well. The classic study you might hear is “We found that “X”% of particapants had “Y” reaction to variable “Z”. Therefore, we conclude “XYZ”. Many such research papers then end with a discussion of it’s own limitations.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
The content of the article is fairly true, but as Adam mentioned the problem is not science, it is the interpretation of the science.
I am completing a B.sc. in Biochemistry, so I also have a quite a bit of knowledge about science, and specifically the biochemistry behind diet.
This is a good article, but the title is very misleading, and in fact incorrect.
Good, peer reviewed science should always be trusted, not the interpretations but the data obtained.
The media will often find out about some scientific study and completely misrepresent it to the public as if that one study held the truth about a particular topic. This is simply not true, in almost every field of science there are studies that come out with seemingly contradicting results. The data of a good study is true (although no data is ever 100%) but the interpretations can be off.
The article should read “Why you shouldn’t trust the media’s interpretation of science”
Science will always be the closest answer to the right answer of any question. However, science is not truth, science is simply the closest thing to the truth.
Also, there are no “inherent” limitations to science. Anything that affects this universe in any way whatsoever can (theoretically) be studied scientifically. There are many things that we are not yet capable of studying, but this is simply a matter of time.
The reality is, if people knew more about the scientific process and could read scientific articles easier, it would be much easier for people to come to rational consensus on issues.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
nornerator- “Why you shouldn’t trust the media’s interpretation of science”. Hmmm…
It’s a pretty good title. More direct, to the point, captures the heart of what the article is trying to say… but I don’t know if it would have drawn in as many people read it and get the point.
Your comments do a good job of capturing the heart of the article, but I think what you said in your last sentence is the most important issue. Most people aren’t going to read scientific articles and come to sound conclusions. Most people will jump on the bandwagon of a new fad that claims scientific foundations. The industry is filled with these, especially the muscle mags. Read them for a good laugh