From RealClearScience: No, we can’t trust government data on diet and nutrition

In a world where some researchers earnestly study the question of why so many people don’t ”trust science,” we learn from Michael Marlow & Edward Archer at RealClearScience:

In contrast [to confidence in politicians], public confidence in the ‘scientific community’ runs at 40% and has remained stable since the 1970s. This trust, however, turns out to be seriously misplaced when it comes to the government’s data on what we eat and drink. The nutrition research methods of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are based on the naïve but politically expedient notion that a person’s usual diet can be measured simply by asking what he or she remembered eating and drinking. Only the most gullible citizens would believe the answers yield anything close to the truth, but government agencies selectively slice-and-dice these anecdotal data to support political agendas, control the U.S. food economy, and indirectly determine what you can and cannot eat and drink.

…

In short, the Federal Government manipulates dietary data to scare Americans and then nag us into buying “acceptable” foods and beverages from politically-favored companies. This is a classic example of ‘policy-based evidence-making’ in which the political agenda determines the data ‘fed’ to the public. This unscientific process explains a large part of the apathy, skepticism, and scorn that meet each rendition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. More.

The authors offer some remarkable examples of the government fudge factor. Maybe the 40% who still “the scientific community” have got it wrong.

We’ve said this before: If, as Sabine Hossenfelder says, things are going wrong in particle physics, who but Hossenfelder and a few other people are likely to know much about it?

But when the science around food is wrong for decades, well, we all must eat, right?

These kinds of problems are not usefully addressed by huffing about the value and importance of “science.”

See also: Censored researchers: Nutrition is a “degenerating” research paradigm. Also: The skinny on salt, veggie oil, skim milk, whole foods. Nutrition science is nearly baseless but it rules.

Study of causes of science skepticism sails right by the most obvious cause

and

Sabina Hossenfelder: Particle physics now belly up. As it happens, her book is a solid string of 1’s at Amazon. The criticisms sound justified but if the particle phyicists are seeking a universe (multiverse ?) that does not exist, “repeating the same mistake” is all they can do.