#167 - Gary Taubes: Bad science and challenging the conventional wisdom of obesity

Gary Taubes is an investigative science and health journalist and a best-selling author. In this podcast, Gary explains how he developed a healthy skepticism for science as he was transitioning from being a physics major to beginning as a science journalist. He talks about how he was particularly drawn to sussing out “pathologic science,” telling the stories behind his books on the discovery of the W and Z bosons and cold fusion, emphasizing the need for researchers to perform a thorough background analysis. Gary then describes how his work came to focus on public health, nutrition, and obesity. He provides a great historic overview of obesity research and provides his explanation for why the conventional wisdom today is incorrect.We discuss:

• Gary’s background in science and journalism, and developing a healthy skepticism for science [2:20];
• Gary’s boxing experience, and the challenge of appreciating behavioral risk [8:40];
• How Gary developed his writing skills, and what the best science writers do well [16:45];
• Example of how science can go wrong, and the story behind Gary’s first book, Nobel Dreams [25:15];
• Theoretical vs. experimental physicists: The important differentiation and the relationship between the two [36:00];
• Pathological science: research tainted by unconscious bias or subjective effects [40:30];
• Reflecting on the aftermath of writing Nobel Dreams and the legacy of Carlo Rubbia [49:45];
• Scientific fraud: The story of the cold fusion experiments at Georgia Tech and the subject of Gary’s book, Bad Science [53:45];
• Problems with epidemiology, history of the scientific method, and the conflict of public health science [1:09:00];
• Gary’s first foray into the bad science of nutrition [1:26:45];
• Research implicating insulin’s role in obesity, and the story behind what led to Gary’s book, Good Calories, Bad Calories [1:36:15]
• The history of obesity research, dietary fat, and fat metabolism [1:46:00]
• The evolving understanding of the role of fat metabolism in obesity and weight gain [1:55:15]
• Mutant mice experiments giving way to competing theories about obesity [2:04:00]
• How Gary thinks about the findings that do not support his alternative hypothesis about obesity [2:08:00]
• Challenges with addressing the obesity and diabetes epidemics, palatability and convenience of food, and other hypotheses [2:14:45];
• Challenging the energy balance hypothesis, and the difficulty of doing good nutrition studies [2:25:00]; and
• More.

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