Absolutely. If Nobel's were worth anything, he deserves one. I don't know what category it'd fit under though: he should get an award for being an outstanding educator, the conscience of science etc. AFAIK, there's none such.
He did get one for science writing, though that doesn't really highlight the absolutely fantastic job he's done in pointing out how science fails, and tying together threads that specialized (and NIH funded) researchers have no incentive in doing.
NIH needs to set up an educater/conscience medal just for this guy imho.
I really hope he expands that book into a site where he could make available his original interview audio etc.
1. I hope everyone realises that reading one abstract online does not constitute medical advice, or even the true state of scientific knowledge on the field.
2. If regardless you do intend to base your life decisions based on something you read on-line, I direct you to the publications of the Cochrane Collaboration - the gold standard in meta-analyses and as close as you can get to the final word on the current state of the publication field.
In this particular case, the relevant Cochrane reports seem [I am not a doctor nor do I play one on HN] to say two things:
1. Dietary changes do affect your cardiovascular risk
2. But they have to be maintained for long periods (> 2 years) and the vast majority of people are not compliant so in practice they are ineffective.
If you read farther down in your first link: There was no significant effect on total mortality. Do you care if you have reduced your risk of CVD death, if risk of other deaths increase?
The second review is pretty much worthless for the point at hand as it is just determining if dietary advice affects risk factors (and the main benefit found- total LDL reduction- is not a good risk factor anyways).
Do you care if you have reduced your risk of CVD death, if risk of other deaths increase?
I might if I have a family history of heart disease. I might if I have confounding factors for CVD (like being on oral contraceptives). The point is, this is why people have doctors who went to medical school. Dr Google doesn't know about your particular situation.
Moreover, if I may channel badscience.net for a minute, I think the whole "science says don't eat butter! science says butter is okay!" ping pong reporting undermines public understanding of the scientific process. While this complaint is usually addressed at traditional media, we are in fact being complicit by submitting/upvoting these kind of stories, since we are essentially meta-publishing them.
I do actually agree with you about the fact that total mortality is the most appropriate indicator for people to take to heart, and I do agree that there is a lot of evidence that points to the fact that cholesterol levels are not as correlated with mortality as people who sell you statins will have you think. But that is beside my point.
I am glad we are very like-minded, but I will continue to focus on the few differences:
The point is, this is why people have doctors who went to medical school.
The average doctor knows very little about nutrition and exercise. They are lucky to spend a week's worth of time on it in medical school and generally just repeat what they have been told on the subject. Following your doctor's advice on these issues is a sure way to ruin your health.
Following your doctor's advice on these issues is a sure way to ruin your health.
I actually don't agree with that. While I am willing to believe that the average doctor's understanding of nutrition is incomplete, I doubt the average punter's is any better.
Most people I personally know that "self-medicate" with advice they found on the Internet or read from some popular pseudo-science book seem to be engaging in magical thinking, and/or doing a great job ruining their own health by themselves. Perhaps you run with a more informed crowd.
I agree that this is a big problem. However, there aren't just 2 alternatives: your doctor's pseudo science or somebody else. Another alternative is to not listen to any advice at all and just eat what you want. America might actually be much healthier today if the government (including through doctors) never started pushing their nutritional advice on us.
I do agree that taking responsibility for your own health is a difficult, time consuming task that may be highly wasted if one can't distinguish between valid and invalid information. I wish I could figure out a way to help people with this process. If I show someone scientifically dense information their eyes glaze over.
The National Dairy Council: sounds like an official, government-backed organization. It turns out to be a brand owned solely by the American Dairy Association.
Always this tangential choice of words that don't quite hide, don't quite tell the truth.
Wrap this in a seemingly serious research paper, and you've got yourself a new "fact" that the average Joe sure can't debunk.
The campaign against saturated fat was itself spearheaded by the vegetable oil and processed food industries. I remember hearing a series of CBC radio broadcasts about this a number of years ago, and the role played by these industrial interests in shaping a pseudo-scientific nutritional consensus was striking. All that nonsense about how eggs will kill you, etc. etc., which was foisted on the public for a generation, was propaganda.
It seems the ship is now slowly being righted. The OP looks like a great example of this. I wonder how much mainstream attention it will pick up.
Edit: one interesting thing I remember from that radio series, which does not often get mentioned, is how much fear people had about heart disease in the 1950s and 60s. The meme of the seemingly-healthy middle-aged man who suddenly drops dead of a heart attack no longer has the power it once did. (Other fears have taken its place.) But in the early days of the campaign against saturated fat, this fear was widespread and highly exploitable, and it was deliberately and very successfully exploited. (This, at least, was what the radio program argued, credibly to me at the time. I'd like to hear it again.)
Also supported by the NIH. Why is it that Dairy is a conflict of interest, and the NIH isn't? These researchers may have trouble every getting an NIH grant again. People don't realize the kind of influence that our government funded research system has on the outcome- it is perhaps the main reason why the result of this study might be surprising to someone.
Overall the dairy industry would probably greatly benefit from a recognition that saturated fat is healthy. However, the economics of Dairy with fat/saturated fat is actually kind of strange. On the one hand, dairy ends up getting demonized. But on the other hand everybody buys low-fat milk and low-fat cottage cheese. This lets the re-use the most valuable part of the milk (cream) at low costs for butter, ice cream, etc. Even though those foods have been demonized too, people will always want to eat ice cream.
"Also supported by the NIH. Why is it that Dairy is a conflict of interest, and the NIH isn't?"
Because "Overall the dairy industry would probably greatly benefit from a recognition that saturated fat is healthy."
Again, I'm not saying the research is invalid. It would benefit everyone to accurately know what's healthy, what's not, and what doesn't matter so much.
And yes, of course, an industry that sells saturated fat should know as much about saturated fat as possible. But this is the world, and it makes sense to treat such a study and its participants with healthy skepticism.
An addendum to your last point: people want to eat REAL ice cream.
The only time I've heard of a non-dairy ice cream actually being called good by anyone but a health-freak was coconut based (incidentally, not coconut flavoured).
