More Unscientific Science

In my previous rant on unscientific science, I focused on the downfalls of both the Big Bang theory and string theory. Although these are the most detrimental (due to such large followings) there are a number of other so-called scientific disciplines that should not be classified as science.

Nutrition has been grouped in with the biological sciences over the years without applying any scientific methods. In any fundamental statistics class, it is taught that correlations merely show a relationship between two variables. A cause and effect relationship cannot be inferred from any correlation. This is well-known throughout the scientific community. Yet when it comes to nutrition, this tabiya gets thrown out the window.

Nutritionists are constantly using correlational data to conclude some type of cause and effect. A negative correlation between some food item and some disease always gets reported as "This food item prevents this disease." If that were true, then the correlation could be explained. But no true scientist should ever arrive at such a conclusion based on a mere correlation.

Furthermore, scientists often use jargon in order to communicate. When it comes to various units of measurement all scientists should agree. Units such as a meter, kilogram, or second do not change as we jump from one scientific discipline to another. This allows all of the scientists to communicate with one another, as various sciences tend to overlap on a number of topics.

Then we come to nutrition. There is a unit of energy known in science as the calorie. It contains 4.184 joules of energy. A calorie in all areas of science is known to be 4.184 joules of energy...all except one. Nutritionists have decided that a calorie consists of 4,184 joules-- a thousand times greater than the true value! Any other scientist would refer to this quantity as a kilocalorie, but not the nutritionists. After all, what does it matter if no other scientist defines a calorie as containing that much energy. It's not like a nutritionist would ever be interested in conversing with a physicist or chemist anyway. That would be too scientific.

Finally, science should be falsifiable. This philosophy of falsificationism has already been discussed in a previous rant. I will try to sum it up in a single sentence here. When it comes to science, there should be a hypothetical scenario in which a particular theory could be proven wrong. In other words, there should be some form of data that would either support or refute any scientific idea. When it comes to nutrition, this is not the case.

If a particular food product is said to cause people to die early, the nutritionists always create a tautology. They have an answer for every possible outcome, and this is not how science should be. Someone may offer an example of a person that ate the food product every day, yet lived to age 95. Rather than admitting defeat, the nutritionist will reply "Well maybe if that person didn't eat the food product, they would live to age 110." Perhaps it is a clever retort. But whatever the nutritionists are doing, it cannot be considered science.

Next week I will mention more unscientific areas and ideas that are falsely classified as science.