I don’t know about that book in particular, but the “look and feel of science” is a defining characteristic of pseudoscience.
It takes evolution as a starting point, basically as a source of Bayesian priors. It has lots of scientific citations. It uses probabilistic reasoning where the authors admit they are guessing at what is healthy.
Do the authors estimate these “priors” using some reliable methods or do they just pull numbers out of thin air and multiply them to get whatever result they wanted to get?
The paleo community seems to have a high opinion of the book.
Again, I didn’t read this specific book so I don’t want to bash it, but the whole idea of paleo diet is just patently stupid. I mean, if trying to reproduce a paleolithic diet was a good idea, then why stop at it? Why don’t also try paleo healthcare or paleo housing? There weren’t many modern drugs or brick buildings in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, right?
Of course it could be theoretically possible that the paleo diet folks happen to believe a correct thing for the wrong reasons, but it isn’t likely.
I mean, if trying to reproduce a paleolithic diet was a good idea, then why stop at it? Why don’t also try paleo healthcare or paleo housing?
I can think of at least one obvious answer to this question. Was it supposed to be rhetorical?
Modern medical and housing technologies are dramatically superior to ancient ones. A modern house is a better place to live than an ancient dwelling in quite a lot of ways. Modern technology gives us the ability to produce much more food than the ancients did, but it is unclear that the food is superior: nutritionally, modern foods do not have obvious and dramatic advantages over ancient foods (in many cases it’s the same food!), certainly not to the same degree modern medicine can outperform ancient herbalism.
(This is not by itself sufficient to justify the idea of a paleo-like diet. That specific criticism just doesn’t hold up.)
“look and feel of science” is a defining characteristic of pseudoscience.
I don’t agree. Most pseudoscience is created by and for people who don’t understand science.
Do the authors estimate these “priors” using some reliable methods
It’s more like if something has been consumed by our ancestors for millions of years it’s probably healthy, although we are willing to let data change our position on this, or breast milk is the perfect food for babies and given how babies differ from adults we guess we probably need to make this adjustment...
Science and engineering work and have given us stuff much better than what our paleolithic ancestors had. In contrast, the field of nutrition has not succeeded in giving us a better diet than our ancestors ate.
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization. The goal of many paleo people is to take the best of the paleo and modern world.
The rapid growth of obesity in the modern world shows that something is seriously wrong with modern diets and going to a paleo diet, which evolution conditioned us to for millions of years, seems like a safe alternative.
The big insights of paleo movement are that:
(1) evolution didn’t have enough time to adapt us to a diet with lots of sugar and/or grains, (2) archaeology of graves shows a reduction in average health shortly after a community switches from hunter-gathering to agriculture, and (3) many people seem to get a lot healthier after going paleo.
I don’t agree. Most pseudoscience is created by and for people who don’t understand science.
It has to look sufficiently “sciency” to the target audience. Different target audiences have different expectations on what a proper scientific theory within a certain domain should look like.
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans? Anyway, many paleolithic humans died in their childhoods, and those who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties, therefore it seems pretty natural that they had lower rates of diseases that correlate with old age.
The rapid growth of obesity in the modern world shows that something is seriously wrong with modern diets and going to a paleo diet, which evolution conditioned us to for millions of years, seems like a safe alternative.
Considering different target lifespans, paleo diets don’t strike me as particularly safe. For instance, eating a lot of meat could have given a paleolithic man an evolutionary edge, even if such diet clogged his arteries and would eventually have killed him by heart attack at the age of 60, because he probably never got to reach the age of 60 anyway.
hunter-gatherers...have very low rates of...the so-called diseases of civilization.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans?
James said HG, not paleolithic. We can look to modern HG and observe their causes of death. This does become a problem when he wants to make evolutionary arguments. Do they eat the same as in the paleolithic? Do we even know what people ate then? If we can’t compare modern HG to ancient, the causes of death of ancient ones are irrelevant, but we can still consider adopting the diet of modern HG (with less justification).
paleolithic humans...who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
I went by memory. But anyway, if the total life expectancy at 15 was about 55, it would still be the case that they would have been disproportionally less subject to old-age diseases than we are.
(and anyway, modern hunter-gatherers are generally at least neolithic, not paleolithic)
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization.
I wonder if those have been actually tested. You can’t reliably tell why someone died without medical records or autopsy.
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization.
But at the same time the vast majority of them die of something unclassified. Dying in your sleep “of old age” is basically unclassified.
The big problem with 1 is assuming evolution will ever select out dietary diseases that show up after your prime reproductive years. Thats not how evolution works.
Which isn’t to say something hasn’t been going wrong in our modern diet (I personally tend to avoid most highly processed foods), just pointing to right-thing-for-wrong-reason.
I don’t know about that book in particular, but the “look and feel of science” is a defining characteristic of pseudoscience.
Do the authors estimate these “priors” using some reliable methods or do they just pull numbers out of thin air and multiply them to get whatever result they wanted to get?
Again, I didn’t read this specific book so I don’t want to bash it, but the whole idea of paleo diet is just patently stupid.
I mean, if trying to reproduce a paleolithic diet was a good idea, then why stop at it? Why don’t also try paleo healthcare or paleo housing? There weren’t many modern drugs or brick buildings in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, right?
Of course it could be theoretically possible that the paleo diet folks happen to believe a correct thing for the wrong reasons, but it isn’t likely.
I can think of at least one obvious answer to this question. Was it supposed to be rhetorical?
Modern medical and housing technologies are dramatically superior to ancient ones. A modern house is a better place to live than an ancient dwelling in quite a lot of ways. Modern technology gives us the ability to produce much more food than the ancients did, but it is unclear that the food is superior: nutritionally, modern foods do not have obvious and dramatic advantages over ancient foods (in many cases it’s the same food!), certainly not to the same degree modern medicine can outperform ancient herbalism.
(This is not by itself sufficient to justify the idea of a paleo-like diet. That specific criticism just doesn’t hold up.)
I don’t agree. Most pseudoscience is created by and for people who don’t understand science.
Science and engineering work and have given us stuff much better than what our paleolithic ancestors had. In contrast, the field of nutrition has not succeeded in giving us a better diet than our ancestors ate.
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization. The goal of many paleo people is to take the best of the paleo and modern world.
The rapid growth of obesity in the modern world shows that something is seriously wrong with modern diets and going to a paleo diet, which evolution conditioned us to for millions of years, seems like a safe alternative.
The big insights of paleo movement are that:
(1) evolution didn’t have enough time to adapt us to a diet with lots of sugar and/or grains, (2) archaeology of graves shows a reduction in average health shortly after a community switches from hunter-gathering to agriculture, and (3) many people seem to get a lot healthier after going paleo.
It has to look sufficiently “sciency” to the target audience. Different target audiences have different expectations on what a proper scientific theory within a certain domain should look like.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans?
Anyway, many paleolithic humans died in their childhoods, and those who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties, therefore it seems pretty natural that they had lower rates of diseases that correlate with old age.
Considering different target lifespans, paleo diets don’t strike me as particularly safe. For instance, eating a lot of meat could have given a paleolithic man an evolutionary edge, even if such diet clogged his arteries and would eventually have killed him by heart attack at the age of 60, because he probably never got to reach the age of 60 anyway.
James said HG, not paleolithic. We can look to modern HG and observe their causes of death. This does become a problem when he wants to make evolutionary arguments. Do they eat the same as in the paleolithic? Do we even know what people ate then? If we can’t compare modern HG to ancient, the causes of death of ancient ones are irrelevant, but we can still consider adopting the diet of modern HG (with less justification).
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
I went by memory. But anyway, if the total life expectancy at 15 was about 55, it would still be the case that they would have been disproportionally less subject to old-age diseases than we are.
(and anyway, modern hunter-gatherers are generally at least neolithic, not paleolithic)
How would that happen in practice?
Even that would screen out most diseases relevant to modern humans.
I wonder if those have been actually tested. You can’t reliably tell why someone died without medical records or autopsy.
But at the same time the vast majority of them die of something unclassified. Dying in your sleep “of old age” is basically unclassified.
The big problem with 1 is assuming evolution will ever select out dietary diseases that show up after your prime reproductive years. Thats not how evolution works.
Which isn’t to say something hasn’t been going wrong in our modern diet (I personally tend to avoid most highly processed foods), just pointing to right-thing-for-wrong-reason.