In my eagerness to rip out the New York Times editorial piece on lard, I totally overlooked a phenomenal essay right there on the same page on the disparagement of common sense by today’s scientists written by John Horgan. Well worth reading in its entirety.
A sampling:
Over the past century, moreover, mind-science has been as faddish as teenage tastes in music, as one theory has yielded to another. Everything we think and do, scientists have assured us, can be explained by the Oedipal complex, or conditioned reflexes, or evolutionary adaptations, or a gene in the X chromosome, or serotonin deficits in the amygdala. Given this rapid turnover in paradigms, it’s only sensible to doubt them all until the evidence for one becomes overwhelming.
Or how about that carbohydrates are nature’s wonder food while fats, particularly saturated fats, are to be avoided at all costs. Totally scientific faddery with no basis in common sense, nor in science for that matter.