> At the time (20+ years ago) it didn't occur to me that anybody would intentionally modify images of gels to promote the results they claimed
Fraud I suspect is only tip of the iceberg, worse still is delusion that what is taught is factually correct. A large portion of mainstream knowledge that we call 'science' is incorrect.
While fraudulent claims are relatively easy to detect, claims that are backed up by ignorance/delusion are harder to detect and challenge because often there is collective ignorance.
Quote 1: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
Quote 2:"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts"
Side note: I will not offer to back up my above statements, since these are things that an individual has to learn it on their own, through healthy skepticism, intellectual integrity and inquiry.
> How do you know that? Can you prove it scientifically?
We know it as a point of meta-analysis. If you go read a 30-year-old biology textbook, a lot of what it says will have been proven false by now. 30 years before that, the textbook says a lot of other wrong things that were disproven 30 years later.
There is no fundamental reason other than hubris to think that the current understanding of the thing is perfect. There is a huge body of evidence that we are inclined to promulgate imperfect understandings of scientific subjects, though. So in the absence of clear, definitive evidence that something is fundamentally different now, the best assumption is to assume that a lot of current "scientific knowledge" is wrong.
owenpalmer, as I stated in my side note I will not be explaining myself, my sincere apologies for this.
You see there are some things that cannot be taught, or it cannot be easily taught more so for adults i.e healthy skepticism and questioning of statements/facts that come from authority figures ( example:science/religion etc). A person will have to make his or her own effort. External influences especially debates from the heretics will generally only delay that progress.
Now, if you're already open to the possibility that mainstream science could be very wrong, I can possibly nudge you in the correct direction. I have explored certain areas of biology (especially nutrition) but not all, each sub area of biology (or any of the sciences really) is vast, I have to rely on heretics who are 'experts' in their areas of specialization.
Nutrition is one place where you can start, because it is possible to do some practical experiments.
But, be warned, you will easily spend a decade investigating it.
I picked the subject, because I'm sure that in the end you will have achieved something of great value: your own relatively better health.
(I said relatively, because diet is only one of the factors that influences health, although I say it's an important one)
Expanding on the sibling comment by 'mistercheph':
1) Start on a blank slate. have no notion about the subject. This is easier said than done . Un-learning is way more difficult than learning , even for the simplest of topics.
2) Read really old literature on the subject, the likes of Aristotle, the alternative is to listen to people on the internet who have read old literature. Initially do some cross checking to make sure that these people are indeed saying the truth by actually checking the sources they cite. Progressively read the literature to relatively modern times, say up until 100 years back. Many research papers that are over 100 years old are very readable compared to the current ones even for lay people.
3) Experiment on yourself. Come up with your own observations on what is good and bad.
4) now explore the conventional knowledge on the subject. For x amount of time spend on gleaning conventional knowledge, listen to the (1)heretic who takes the opposite stand for x amount of time who says otherwise.
5) do several iterations of steps 1 to 4.
6) Form your own opinion after a decade.
(1)= the older credentialed heretic is a good bet. By speaking against the guild that he/she is affiliated with he/she has got a lot to lose : his/her livelihood.
After a decade, differences in your body will mostly be because you are 10 years older.
Such experiments are largely pointless because the only people doing them are people who care about their health. You are more likely to be healthy because of the totality of your life choices, not the specific things you do in the diet experiment.
Nope. Start simple. ( if you can do a full blown experiment with multiple people, by all means go for it)
>After a decade, differences in your body will mostly be because you are 10 years older.
Correct. (did, you think I did not know that?)
>Such experiments are largely pointless
I leave you to decide that, given there are no well controlled experiments in mainstream nutrition, we are left with imperfect choices. (There are small experiments that are conducted by either small groups or individuals, that are pretty high quality IMO).
Let me guess. All of this is to say that you leaned into eating saturated fat, got high cholesterol, and because nothing happened in 10 years, the converging lines of evidence that constantly replicate over a half century are wrong.
Or maybe you started smoking and because there were no RCTs on smoking, then nobody can actually know if it's bad for you, but your N=1 has more epistemic value because you feel okay.
Just getting flashbacks from those hokey "carnivore diet" videos that Youtube keeps wanting me to watch.
Pick one phenomenon in the world that you observe and don't have an account for, and try to come up with an account, assuming nothing except for your own observation and experimentation, of the causes of the phenomenon. Once you're done, follow the trail, reading only original or translated original documents, of the history of human descriptions of the phenomenon, do the "science" of "science" by observing the phenomena of observing and describing phenomena.
Go in the woods and read Plato and Aristotle and Sophocles for a year.
No quite, It really depend on what you mean by 'research'. For most people 'research' is just consensus of the experts. On the other hand if by research you mean "test it out yourself" I agree with you. ( not always practical though, so you have to choose a middle ground)
"Science" didn't send anyone to the moon. The science of getting to the moon was centuries old when it was applied. Engineers, working from alloys to computers, sent people to the moon.
Fraud I suspect is only tip of the iceberg, worse still is delusion that what is taught is factually correct. A large portion of mainstream knowledge that we call 'science' is incorrect.
While fraudulent claims are relatively easy to detect, claims that are backed up by ignorance/delusion are harder to detect and challenge because often there is collective ignorance.
Quote 1: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
Quote 2:"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts"
Side note: I will not offer to back up my above statements, since these are things that an individual has to learn it on their own, through healthy skepticism, intellectual integrity and inquiry.