Making One’s Own Reality – Food Babe Edition ... by Steven Novella, MD [View all]

[HuckleB]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/making-ones-own-reality-food-babe-edition/

The default mode of human activity is to construct our own internal model of reality based upon our desires, biases, flawed perceptions, memories, and reasoning, and received narratives from the culture in which we live. That model of reality is then reinforced by confirmation bias and jealously defended.

But we also have the capacity to transcend this pathway of least resistance. Philosophy is the discipline of thinking carefully and systematically about ideas to see if they at least are internally consistent. Science is the discipline of systematically and carefully comparing our internal models of reality against objective reality, and then changing those models to suit the evidence.

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The culture war continues. The Food Babe and others are attempting to distort the process of science in order to promote their alternative world view. Part of the strategy is to dismiss and discredit scientists who know enough to level devastating criticism at their particular brand of nonsense.

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However, we need to engage all the more because of popular nonsense like that peddled by self-proclaimed but entirely incompetent “experts.”

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A very good read on a topic of increasing importance. It's worth digging in to the whole thing, and it's not that long.