What is the symmetry with a site promoting veganism? Where is the symmetric pressure where decreases in animal fat consumption results in hundreds of millions or billions, or for that matter any increase in profit for advocates of veganism? This is all the more so when on considers that the production of meat means greater production of vegetable matter per pound of protein produced. And no, I’m not a vegan, or even a vegetarian.

This seems to reflect the false symmetry of “balance” that the press substitutes for judgement, and which provides an opening for any number of ideas, positions and products to usurp public debate that should be focussed on other more pressing, more genuinely controversial issues. Issues that common sense and existing data indicate deserve such consideration. Otherwise you’re resigned to Birthers, smoking advocates, global warming skeptics and holocaust deniers pushing genuine debate of real issues off the order paper.

I will never understand why people attempt to discredit studies by following the money. It really doesn’t matter where the money comes from. Satan himself could fund a study that concludes cigarettes cause cancer. It doesn’t matter who paid for it.

A bad study has a bad methodology. Poor controls. When I hear people say, “This study is wrong because X entity I dislike is behind it,” in my head that becomes, “This study disagrees with me, but I have nothing meaningful to say against it, so I will resort to limp fallacies,” and I conclude that the study is probably correct.

For one to take the study and promote it as license to eat any quantity of fats would be just as incorrect and irresponsible as it would be to dismiss the study just because a big company was funding it.

//Honestly, I didn’t think the findings were all that controversial, and even the rebuttal agrees.

Of course it does. Scientists whose findings don’t please their sponsors stop getting grants. It’s quite Darwinian.

nothing creates bias quite like money.

Or moral philosophy. Most evangelical Christians don’t make money from evangelizing – but still they do it with fervor. Vegetarian/Veganism don’t rise to the level of religion but it’s still a moral code for its adherents and moral codes often need a punishment factor. For someone to say to a vegan that meat isn’t unhealthy is like telling Pat Robertson that there isn’t a devil.
I think that’s a stronger bias than money. Unilever can always change their product line.

Not true. For some, this can be said. For others, it’s a health or lifestyle choice that is not fundamentally based in morality.

What is it about food and sexuality topics that brings out the biggest internet arguments and “that which you like is inferior to that which I like” bashing?

(FWIW, I’ve lived as a vegan, a vegetarian, and an omnivore, and don’t consider myself a dietary or moral absolutist.)

Two questions: Do you think the little guy is always right and the big guy always wrong? And since you seem to have an opinion about this study (I don’t) did you read the study (I did not)?

Ultimately I think Virginia makes a very sensible argument, along the lines of “don’t base your dietary rationale on one meta study, there is plenty of consensus about general dietary trends (mediteranean vs western) to make a properly informed decision”.

I did think the way the blog author framed it was a bit pissy though.

Anyway, as a pisco-vegetarian of 12 years who has recently started eating red meat again, I’m off to cook a steak and pop a lipitor.

Metadata is data about data. Obtaining metadata is an essential process in data analysis. A meta-analysis cannot, by definition, obtain primary data. It is an analysis of multiple sets of existing data. Meta-analyses are done wherever existing studies are yielding conflicting or mixed results. Hence the relevance of a meta-analysis here. The role of a meta-analysis is not necessarily to resolve an issue. It may be to point out consistent design flaws in data gathering. It can have other roles.

As with any study, a meta-analysis can have design faults itself e.g. bad decisions about what studies are included or excluded. A meta-analysis could (should, in this instance IMHO) include an analysis of who is funding the studies being meta-analysed.

As with all tools, meta-analysis can be subject to misuse, but it is in itself a neutral tool.

(disclosure: lacto-ovo-vegetarian, with double degree in Medicine and Surgery)

The fact that is paid for by the dairy industry and a food company just makes it that much more iffy.

Meta analysis is where you don’t have to do your own study you just get a bunch of other people’s data, weigh it all the same (in the beginning), highlight differences, point out inconsistencies, speculate (!) without support as to the causes of the differences and later really attack the data you don’t like. That’s right it a study where data is attacked.

Meta analysis rarely prove something, they usually seek to disprove.

Many meta analysis say smoking doesn’t case cancer, global warming isn’t real, exposure to leaded gasoline doesn’t drop IQ points of children, xyz product is in no way related to cancer. They are easy to make and meant to cast doubt.

Go on and keep believing “the study is good” despite who paid for the research.

My only point is that, while it is fair to criticise knappa’s assertion that all vegetarians choose their diet based on a passionately held ethical position, it would be naive to ignore the fact that many vegetarians, especially vegans, do choose their diet based on a strong ethical stance, and accordingly there is good reason to approach a blog article on vegan.com with some expectation of bias.

Like I said, Virginia Messina’s comments are the sort of level headed common sense that is very difficult to dispute. And the blog author is slightly dickish.

Increased meat consumption — resulting from a sense that meat is safer — imposes large and increasing environmental costs on everyone that don’t correspond to a benefit to vegetarians. An argument against public harm doesn’t necessarily suggest an expectation of private benefit. The skeptical inference that Ms Messina’s argument is made in expectation of benefit has as its premise that if I sell knives, my desire not to be shot corresponds to a preference for being stabbed.

To address the margarine argument: Unilever’s interest would be in selling as much product, of as many types, at as great a profit, on terms as favourable to it as possible. Macdonalds is probably one of the biggest single sellers of salads in North America, and perhaps the world. You can’t conclude from that that they see their Big Mac sales as cannibalizing their salad sales. I doubt that Macdonalds would conclude that a report suggesting animal fat is dangerous is a good thing because it will sell more salads.

There’s a problem when skepticism becomes a reductio ad absurdum: I am skeptical of the study, but I am skeptical of the skeptic of the study, the skeptics of the skeptic of the study etc.. The value of Ms Messina’s assessment would appear to be that she has established credentials in the area of nutrition, and it is reasonable to suspend skepticism of the skeptic if a.) they have little or no demonstrated gain to make from their expressed opinion, and b.) their credentials suggest that they adhere to reasonable standards of professional inquiry, and c.) her statements are consistent with established bodies of knowledge that a similarly knowledgeable individual would have. Since I don’t know Ms Messina, and you have drawn attention to her response, I am taking it as a given — based on what I know of your integrity — that these things are true. In other words, I don’t need to be radically skeptical of everything, since I live in a reasonably ordered society that allows trust to be developed between individuals. I can, based on my prior knowledge of your writing, accept the qualifications of Ms Messina.

Where skepticism is properly applied is to uncover the truth, starting from an assumption that what we are being told is not necessarily true; our degree of skepticism is an index of our estimation of how much effort we are likely to have to make to uncover the truth.

My motivation to obscure invidious facts is proportional to the benefit that I stand to gain. It’s reasonable to say that the harder I work to obscure a fact, the harder it will be to reveal it for someone looking into my claim. So if we think someone stands to gain more, we are being reasonable in being more skeptical of their claims than those of someone whose gain is nil or minimal. The radical skepticism of the RAW epigram is a formula for cynicism, particularly in the areas of policy and society. where judgement, and not objective facts only, come into play.

Again, none of this touches on an assessment of the facts in the study by me; only that the relative degree of skepticism applied in a case is proportionate to the degree of disinterestedness of the party making the statement. This requires judgement, and so your little guy/big guy dilemma is obtuse, since it supposes that a hard and fast rule is what I am advocating, which is diametrically opposite of my position. However, as I’ve tried to show, a radical application of skepticism _is_ a formula for the abandonment of a key form of judgement, forcing us to at all times call into question the statements and motivations of those we rely on to make disinterested judgements, and so making civil life impossible. The Birther claims are an exemplar: to the degree that we abandon judgement based on gain, taking seriously the claims made, and ignore the bonds of trust that civil societies allow, the less tenable that society becomes.

I eat meat, but I find bacon repellent. And don’t get me started on butter.

I understand that you disagree and feel I shouldn’t have mentioned that Messina is a vegan advocate. Thank you for sharing that with me.