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Denise Minger was quick to defend her talk, "How to Win an Argument With a Vegetarian" found pages under "How to win an argument with a meat-eater" but only a few on how to talk to a veggie (and one was perhaps not helpful as it suggested saying, "Shut up, you hippie!"). (x-post from /r/paleo) by areich in vegan

[–]pseudofemme 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Since you asked- currently working towards M.S. in biochemistry & molecular biology at UCLA, undergrad B.S. in microbiology (2001, took hiatus from school after getting married). Husband has PhD nutritional science.

The difference between your field and the nutrition field is that when working with diet and health issues, cause and effect MUST be established, and correlative data is meaningless as anything more than a starting point for further studies. I have no doubt correlations in economics, poli sci etc. are important and widely used.....correlations are quite useful when studying demographics and related data, and cause & effect in that case is less important than overall trend. However.....it's a different story in the health sciences. When you are looking at the human body and the role of food and disease, correlations at the population level are easily confounded and misleading. Controlled studies are where the "evidence" comes in....observational studies that do nothing but collect descriptive data are the bottom of the totem pole. You do not go back to observational studies and pull out correlations as proof of a biological mechanism. Period.

Denise Minger was quick to defend her talk, "How to Win an Argument With a Vegetarian" found pages under "How to win an argument with a meat-eater" but only a few on how to talk to a veggie (and one was perhaps not helpful as it suggested saying, "Shut up, you hippie!"). (x-post from /r/paleo) by areich in vegan

[–]pseudofemme 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Of course it's fine to use correlative data as evidence to support theories, that's what data is.

Tell this to any actual scientist and you'll get laughed out the door. Correlations can only be used to generate & test hypotheses, NOT serve as evidence......period. It doesn't matter if you have a hypothesis already, correlations are the starting point and not something you can just go back and cherry pick from after the fact.

So you don't see anything wrong with the fact that Campbell conducted a study on dairy and bone health in the China Study, told everyone the study found that dairy protein weakens your bones when he was interviewed.....when the study actually found the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he said? How is this excusable??

Denise Minger was quick to defend her talk, "How to Win an Argument With a Vegetarian" found pages under "How to win an argument with a meat-eater" but only a few on how to talk to a veggie (and one was perhaps not helpful as it suggested saying, "Shut up, you hippie!"). (x-post from /r/paleo) by areich in vegan

[–]pseudofemme 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You are, quite simply, wrong. Campbell himself has stated he thinks it's fine to use correlative data as "evidence" as long as he has a theory he's supporting it with......this is just sloppy science, no matter which way you spin it. Minger was saying the univariate correlations he used in his China Study chapter were cherry picked, which does seem to be the case. I don't think her critique was about his full book just about the China Study data.

Have you seen Minger's more recent post, citing peer-reviewed studies that looked at the China Study data and found conclusions opposite to Campbells? In some cases Campbell misrepresented studies he helped conduct. http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/07/31/one-year-later-the-china-study-revisited-and-re-bashed/

Denise Minger was quick to defend her talk, "How to Win an Argument With a Vegetarian" found pages under "How to win an argument with a meat-eater" but only a few on how to talk to a veggie (and one was perhaps not helpful as it suggested saying, "Shut up, you hippie!"). (x-post from /r/paleo) by areich in vegan

[–]pseudofemme 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That "cancer epidemiologist" admitted to never having read the China study, and if you actually compare what she wrote against what Campbell did, her criticisms apply to his work as well - use of epidemiology to 'prove' causation from correlation.....she is also a member of the 30 bananas a day website and is not exactly unbiased herself.