I don’t understand why this is not against the law:
“Misleading journalism … is becoming a public health problem.
“Healthy living advice hasn’t changed at all for at least a decade – don’t smoke, exercise, eat more fruit and veg. [Yet] a quarter of all respondents said that because scientists keep changing their minds, you might as well eat whatever you want, because it won’t make any difference anyway.”
I’m certainly not opposed to experimentation on the general public – in fact, I think it’s a good idea.
But this is just crazy.
Here’s a brilliant idea: Test social policies through the use of RCTs.
I knew there was a good reason why I didn’t carry on and get a PhD.
So, looks like I’m finally back into research mode at work. Of course, almost immediately, that lead me into reviewing Kalman Filters and Hidden Markov Models. As a result, I realised that I should put my Honours dissertation back on-line, not least because I find that there are links to it!
Monbiot has a good post, pointing out what is, if you think about it, a basically obvious link between food and crime.
Nevertheless, it still scares me sometimes that what we think, how we act – in essence, who we are – is dependent to a certain degree on the balance of chemicals sloshing about in our bodies, and that this balance can be changed simply by altering what we eat.
That’s not something that I like to think about, especially when it concerns what happens in my head.
