The tech industry is filled with people who do not respect scientific inquiry.
At most every company I’ve worked for, there have been coworkers who held beliefs that seemed antithetical to what I expect from the tech savvy. I equate tech-specific knowledge with general scientific knowledge, and that hasn’t been the case. Some previous examples that contradicted my expectation: a Young Earth creationist who worked on low-level hardware drivers, a CTO who proudly told the company how his wife prayed for, and contributed to, a fix to some server downtime, another CTO and a lead developer who felt the scientists behind the New Horizons mission “knew nothing,” and the manymany who didn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change. The New Horizons insult coming from programmers about other, better programmers was stunning, but the downtime prayer was particularly insulting since it insulted those who worked long overtime hours to actually troubleshoot and fix the issue. Religion was a key factor in all of these, but it doesn’t diminish my shock at such prejudice coming from tech people. It does diminish pride in my profession.
More recent mania has been coming in the form of junk science beliefs from sources that use loose cherry-picking of data to build a, let’s say, non-canonical picture of the natural world.
One subject discussed was based on the common belief that natural equals good and man-made equals bad–or at least less good. This is a noble savage approach to our interactions with the environment. Do we go through periods on the man-made of over-optimism (early 1900s utopianism or late 1950s plastics/drugs/space mania) and of excessive mistrust (the late 1800s Arts and Crafts movement, the 1960s return-to-nature)? The article Manmade or natural, tasty or toxic, they’re all chemicals … (where the image at the bottom was taken) explains the nuance of categorizing what is healthy and not. The split rings of natural/man-made and their 90-degree rotated overlap with toxic/non-toxic is a clean, clear shorthand for the messy reality. Not exact, but more correct that not. Natural can be deadly and man-made can be healthy.
Similarly, there was a discussion on the health and provenance of current dietary choices. This is a subject frequently examined in American culture through decades and multiply at any point in time… does this obsessive-like behavior exist in any other country? So there’s a documentary called What the Health that criticizes the reasoning behind and validity of common choices of food consumption.
I have not watched it.
I have, however, read the rebuttal from Vox titled Debunking What the Health, the buzzy new documentary that wants you to be vegan. It argues that the documentary is filled with cherry-picked details from WHO research and exaggerations of results. An extended section:
The film is filled with bad gotcha journalism
Abuses of science aside, Andersen also repeatedly engages in poorly executed gotcha journalism in an attempt to suggest patient groups are trying to cover up the truth about diet he’s stumbled upon.On numerous occasions during the film, he calls these groups, such as Susan G. Komen or the American Heart Association, which he correctly points out often take money from the food industry. He then asks receptionists long-winded and detailed questions about nutrition science. When the receptionists, caught off guard, say they can’t answer his questions, Andersen huffs in frustration, apparently hoping to imply there’s a conspiracy afoot.
In another instance, Andersen interviews an official at the American Diabetes Association who won’t get specific with him on diet because, he says, the research doesn’t support very specific claims. Andersen also reads this as a conspiracy.
There’s no doubt food companies have distorted nutrition science and health research, and have tried to influence health guidelines and the lifestyle advice people get. Patient groups like the ADA and the American Heart Association do have deep ties to industry, as I’ve reported. But Andersen’s pseudo-sting operations are silly and reveal nothing of these facts. They also offer no evidence that disease groups are engaged in a vegan cover-up.
I may just be rigid in my adherence to the rigors of science but, of course, I don’t believe so.
