Thread by @AlisonBlunt

Highly recommend listening to 'Myth of Scientific Objectivity' by Dr. Terence Kealey, helps to understand the reason why we are fed pseudoscience

"So, let me just tell a few stories first. When I was an intern in my medical - in my hospital, and don't forget in Britain doctors go to medical school much younger than here,so I was only 23 or 24 at the time - I worked for the professor of medicine, and we had a patient who.."

.."was extremely ill, but the professor of medicine persuaded the professor of surgery to operate on this person almost as a favor. And so I wheeled the patient across through what we call the operating theatre, patient was operated upon,very predictably died.And the professor.."

.."of surgery instructed me to take this patient out of his operating theatre and put the patient in the anesthetic room, because he didn't want his statistics mucked up. I obeyed orders, whereupon the professor of anesthetics, in a rage, threw me out of his anesthetic room..."

.."and said, “Under no circumstances will this patient be registered as dying in the anesthetic room.” So, rather reluctantly, I went back to our own ward so that the patient could be registered as having died under the professor of medicine, who was my boss, who told me very..."

..."clearly — this is a true story, by the way — that admission was denied. And in the end, the patient was registered by me as having died in the corridor, and so no one had to take responsibility."

"But I learned a lesson then about just how reliable some medical data can be. I then did a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, and I discovered that my Ph.D. supervisor, when presented with data, had a sort of trick." ...

"He would look at the data, and he'd say, “Well, that point’s an outlier, isn’t it? I'm not sure about the circumstances of that experiment.” And he would remove the points, and then whereupon statistical significance would emerge and would publish."
crossfit.com/health/terence…

Another quote, "Now we are told — now I know little about global warming, but I will say one thing about global warming. We are told that the science is settled and 97% of scientists will agree that CO2, blah, blah, blah, you all know the story. When our first child was born..."

.."in 1991, we were told, although it wasn’t put in these words, but we were told the science was settled, and 97% of neonatologists agreed that newborn babies had to be moved on their tummies to avoid what we call cot death. You have a slightly different name for it. In 1993,.."

"when our second child was born, we were told the science was settled and you had to put a newborn baby on its back. Because it turned out that putting babies on their tummies was responsible for over 70% of cot deaths.
What was fascinating to me was no one ever apologized."

"No one said, “You know, we might have got this wrong.” What you actually got — it was almost like a Stalinist state — complete monolithic dogma. And then one morning, a completely different monolithic dogma, but both completely dogmatic. The science is settled, and 97% of..."

..."scientists agree. So, it was almost as if science is like a huge school of fish all going in the same direction. There's a sudden flash as each fish turns around, but you hardly see the flash and then they're all going in the same direction with the same utter confidence..."

..."as before. And I wonder if this isn't in fact a quality of science."

Quote from 'Dr. Terence Kealey and the Myth of Scientific Objectivity' crossfit.com/health/terence…

Another quote, "So, I wrote a book, which I'm just coming to, called Breakfast Is a Dangerous Meal. I would have liked it to have been about sugar and fat. I would have liked to have written the sort of book that our two other authors today have written, but that was already..."

..."covered by people like them, and breakfast is where I came into it. So, I wrote it about breakfast and I — I review about 200 papers in here, and only one of them I think was actually dishonest. I think only one of these 200 papers I could sense where the scientists had..."

..."done what my Ph.D. supervisor had done and pushed a few data points around. The other 199 rubbish papers were written by scientists who either interpreted it willfully wrong or were fooling even themselves."

"So, let me tell you how I got into the business of nutrition." ...

..."And I'm obviously not a very great person, because very great people work things out on abstract principles. The only things I've ever done of interest are those that struck me personally. So, I could see for myself that British science wasn't in decline and that..."

..."bothered me, and I could see for myself that breakfast is a dangerous meal, and that happened very simply."

"2010 I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes." [details] ...
"And what I was told to do was I had to eat frequently, and lots of complex carbohydrates, and avoid fat..."

..."and don't drink.That's what I was told — 2010.I was given — I went to see the dieticians. I was given all this stuff, and I obeyed orders, but the one thing I did that disobeyed orders — So,this is England remember,which is a socialist country — I got hold of a glucometer."..

..."Which, England, they don't give to patients, because they don't really like patients measuring their own blood glucose levels because they might work things out for themselves. Although curiously they haven't. Millions and millions and millions of Type 2 patients have..."

..."glucometers.I appear to have been the 1st one to point it out the crushingly obvious fact that if you are a Type 2 diabetic,as I discovered within two or three days,and you eat a standard breakfast as instructed by the dieticians — Porridge we call it,oatmeal you call it."...

..."That's what I was told to eat. — Your blood sugar levels just shoot — it starts off high, and it shoots up into the sky.

It turns out that the British Diabetic Association, which unlike the American Diabetic Association if the first talk is to be believed, still says you..."

..."must eat carbohydrates and breakfast. The British Diabetic Association has now given up on giving patients glucometers in Britain, because, apparently, patients record all this and don't understand what it means. It's really very bizarre. But I trained as a doctor,..."

..."and then did a Ph.D. in metabolic biochemistry, so I was able to interpret a blood glucose level, as everybody in this room can as well.
What I very quickly discovered for myself, feeling very lonely, is that breakfast was very dangerous for diabetics, because of course —"...

..."and everyone in this room knows this — you have the morning cortisol peak. And the morning cortisol peak gives you instant glucose resistance. It's the one time you should not be eating carbohydrates. The effect, by the way, on diabetics of skipping breakfast is very..."

..."dramatic, either Type 1 or Type 2 — and it — many of you will have such patients.
Anyway,I very quickly followed my own advice,which is no carbohydrates, no glucose. England in 2010 was not friendly — I felt very lonely working these things out for myself, but there we are."

.."And I went back to my doctor, and she said to me — and I've never forgotten this conversation — she said, “Fewer than one patient in 100 has achieved what you've achieved. What — fewer than one in 100 — you have reversed your Type 2 diabetes.” Actually, it's not completely..."

..."reversed. Most of my HbA1c levels fall in the sort of pre-diabetic range, but everything had been pretty damn reversed. “And you've done all the things I told you not to do,” and I said to her, and she's a great doctor by the way, so this is not a criticism of her, she's..."

..."a lovely doctor. I said to her, “Well, doesn't that make you think?” And she said, “No,” she said, and she produced what we in England call the NICE guidelines. NICE stands for National Institute of Clinical Excellence, which is a Stalinist body that tells you what you..."

..."have to do in medicine or you can get sued. “No,” she said, “here are the NICE guidelines, and it’s my job as a doctor to obey the NICE guidelines. It's not my job to think, to do things original.” And so, I got nowhere with her."

Quote from crossfit.com/health/terence…

"If you were ever to come to the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and you were to walk into the doors with me, and you can go without me by the way, there's a very nice gentleman who sits at the front. He's a black gentleman, he's about 65, he's a retired staff sergeant..."

.."of the United States Air Force,and if you walk in with me, he will stand up and salute — not you — it's me he's saluting, and the story is fascinating.
I got there about a year ago after — I won't bore you the details of my chronology at Cato,but about a year ago we were..."

.."chatting, and he was telling me he'd been diagnosed with Type 2, and then it progressed to insulin dependence, as many of you will know, and it was terrible. He was completely out of control. His feet were becoming really painful. His doctor was beginning to talk to him..."

.."about, “Hmm, that's bad news about feet hurting all the time.” His lipids were out — everything was out of control, and he was on insulin and the whole shooting match. And I said, “Have you thought of going on a glucose-, carbohydrate-free diet?” “Oh no, I can't do that,” ...

.."he said. “I'm told I’ve got to eat breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. I got to eat complex carbohydrates, no sugar, but lots of complex carbohydrates and no fat.“

That's what he was told in Washington, D.C., a year ago. Just a year ago. So, I persuaded him — and my..."

.."wife said, “You realize you're gonna get sued?” But anyway — I persuaded him. Within 10 days, not only was he not on insulin, he was on no drugs. He was completely cured. Completely. And now a year later, even his feet are beginning to hurt less. So, he went to see..."

..."his doctor, and they sweetly took a copy of my book where all this is explained, and it was like a television show, the conversation I’d had with my doctor. She said even more enthusiastically, she said, “This is miraculous! We were talking about an amputation, and now..."

..."you're cured.” She said, “I have never seen this before,” and he said, “Would you like to read the book where it's all explained?” And she said, “No.” He was really shocked, being a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. n his naivety, he assumed that doctors and scientists.."

..."were rational, curious folk who wanted to know how the world worked so their patients could get better. His doctor’s clearly a good person, but you can see the cognitive dissonance. What if she said that to another patient? You can imagine being sued a thousand times over."

"So, we have a problem,which is that it’s not just doctors, it's scientists as well,that we commit to paradigms, and then we bend the data to it. So, I wrote this book, which is I think why I'm here today — this article for Cato,which is “Why Does the Federal Government Issue..."

.."Damaging Dietary Guidelines?” You all know the story, but let me just revise it, because it is so fascinating."

Quote from crossfit.com/health/terence… 'Dr. Terence Kealey and the Myth of Scientific Objectivity'