Scientific Process

Richard Feynman  was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics.  I recall listening to him some years ago, he is no longer with us unfortunately.  

Here is the clip of what I remember:

"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works.

It’s that simple statement that is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong."

I kind of wonder about today's science and these stories that come about.  There seems to be a leaning towards consensus science and a move away from being challenged and your theory torn apart by your peers.  Surely good science can stand up to peer review, to experimentation and surely good science actually holds water, experiments can be repeatable.  Today you see modelling using computers and their results taken as Gospel and defended with religious zealotry as if they are real results.  You only have to look at the behaviour of "climate scientists" to see how they take any criticism of their work and resort to a public outburst and call people's authority to doubt and bring free speech and the scientific process (see above) into question.  

I read something the other day that some Rabbits had been fed meat and they had developed cancer and that this result was posted (I haven't been able to find it again) and published.  Now I'm no scientist but aren't Rabbits Herbivores and if you feed them things they aren't designed to eat or digest well it sure to have a bad affect on them.  Is this good science?  I suppose we needed to know that but really does it have any bearing on meat consumption in humans?  I think not but it was being bandied about as another reasons we should all become vegetarians which, is a lifestyle choice and not what our bodies are designed to be.  I've no problem with anyone deciding to do this but we are Omnivores and need vegetables and meat in our diet - that's what we are designed to eat and it sort of makes sense to put the right things into our bodies.  I could do the petrol and oil and water in a car analogy I suppose but hopefully you get the picture.  

Then there are other things out there and it all seems to me to be "Stating the Bleeding Obvious" then there are few holistics studies and then there are the statistical anomalies.  Surely if you do an experiment on 6 people in 3 months it doesn't point to long term trends and isn't actually meaningful in the overall scheme of things.  Stuff just doesn't appear to be thought through these days.  

Trying to find data that isn't statistically played with and also trying to find the good information from the bad take a lot of time.  As they said in the X-Files "The Truth is out there".  It probably is, it just takes ages to find it and then you need to read through a number of times to make sure that you've read what you thought you read and that the science holds together.

The food debate goes on and so much that I read is at variance.  One day something is good for you the next day it is bad.  I like the idea of looking back to see what we ate years ago and to try and replicate that now.  Then you'll see someone stating that people didn't live that long back in history and again why was that?  Surely our bodies are designed for more than just a couple of decades usage.  I thought it interesting to read that major problems such as heart disease and diabetes, tooth decay and obesity were unheard of hundreds of years ago.  It was only when we started to develop a taste for sugars and complex carbohydrates that things appear to have started to go wrong with our bodies. 

With so much obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer around these days one has to wonder is it to do with our lifestyle, our food or is it something else.  I've mentioned Occam's Razor before and it helps to choose some of the interpretations include:


"If you have two theories that both explain the observed facts, then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along"

"The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations."

"If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, choose the simplest."

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."

So what do I think it is likely to be?  It has to be to do with diet and lifestyle.  Diet more than anything appears to me to hold the key to this.  We have been led to believe that a diet that some call "balanced" is right for us.  I see it like feeding meat to Rabbits we are eating a lot of the wrong things (possibly as we believe it to be for the right reasons) and we perceive these things to be healthy for us.   Bread, Potatoes, Pasta and Rice.  Our mothers knew that these made us put on weight.  They fatten up livestock on this sort of stuff :-)  We all know that sugar is bad for us but we consume huge quantities unknowingly as it is trapped in most of our food in one form or the other (I'm not going to play Carbohydrates and Sugar as the same at the moment).  Fruit which is sold as incredibly good for us is just loaded with Fructose and there are few fruits that you can consider your friend.  Man has never had so much fruit available nor had it out of season.  Additionally this fruit has been so bred by the growers to contain more sugar and less fibre so that a sugar dependent public will regularly buy them.

Think back to the days when fruit and vegetables were in season.  You only got apples in autumn and vegetables were seasonal.  You could get some things year round but very few.  Some days you went hungry and that's when your mum would feed you a bit of bread and dripping or you'd have Jam sandwiches.  You had sugar as a treat not as a staple.  Most of the stuff we ate was meat and two veg but only once a day.  These days you can easily get three cooked full meals a day and that's what they call a balanced diet and eating regularly!  Really?  Surely we aren't designed to eat three times (or more) a day?  Nor at each meal to eat a balanced diet, we must have eaten what we gathered or hunted for?  We didn't have the benefit of Sodas and fruit juices, exotic fruit available from the supermarket around the corner.   Today's society is one of plenty and high availability - I'm old enough to remember shortages of staple food in the 1970s and so everywhere you look you can find food.  Fast food, out of season food and stuff from just about anywhere and everywhere.  Processed foods are perhaps the major concern.  I've found that things you wouldn't expect have High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS or perhaps sugar on its own or wheat flour and other undesirable things which "hook" us and make us wanting more.  I could hardly believe that mustard and Worcestershire Sauce contained sugar as do most pickles and some with HFCS and that's here in the UK.

I started off by looking at scientific process and have strayed a bit off subject but what I've been trying to look at is the phenomenon of "Settled Science"  we are told to have carbohydrates and fruit as an integral foundation of our diet.  Meat and Fat are demonised and yet these are the very things it appears we are designed to eat as the foundation of our diet, our carbohydrates coming from vegetables and very few fruits (certainly not fruits as we know them today).  Seeds and berries were seasonal and not available every day to us.  There is plenty of evidence that the way we eat today is leading to the modern diseases such as diabetes and obesity and heart disease and cancers.  There are whole industries set up to feed our bodies things that aren't naturally good for us and there are other industries whose job it is to provide remedies for those of us affected by these diseases. 

Surely addressing the root cause of these would be the way to do.  If you could look to diet and change it sufficiently to bring down the instances of these diseases that would be a good thing for humanity right?  Perhaps it is not a good thing for the businesses who may deliver the problem in the first place and those who treat (but don't sure) the symptoms......

Just saying :-)