On 5/22/2012 11:49 AM, Doug Freyburger wrote:
James Warren wrote:

Actually I've been working in medical science (electrocardiology) for
40 years doing programming and statistics. I know a little about
science and how it's done.

Then you know Atkins was a cardiologist and it was his clinical
experiences with the failure of the low fat suggestions that led him to
pursue low carb. And that when he tried to publish his tabular data it
was refused because it wasn't double blind.

I did not come to LC through Atkins but Gary Taubes. I have not looked into
any of Atkin's work. Once something has become established then contradicting
evidence needs to be of a somewhat higher standard than that for establishing
the thing in the first place, even if the established thing became established
on dubious grounds. That is because it is assumed that contradictory studies
are more likely to contain errors than the set of confirming studies.

It is hard to see how diet can be double blind by eating normally acquired
foods. It can only be done, it seems to me, be creating special foods that
look and taste the same but have different compositions. I don't even know
if that is possible. I wonder if Atkin's work was not published for other
reasons like small sample sizes and low power or non random assignment to
groups.


As you are now also insisting on double blind I'll agree with Dogman
that you are indeed a part of the problem. Statistical tabular evidence
is valid in science. Read (again) Gregor Mendell's original study on
inheritance in pea plants. I suggest this time you go for the audio
version on librivox.org.

Double blind is not likely possible. But long duration random assignment
studies with high compliance rates can be done. These would be very
convincing.


He never did publish that data and now that he's dead it's gone. Rather
like the story of Nikoli Tesla in that particular. I think he should
have published it posthumously but he didn't and there's little evidence
that he continued gathering tabular data once he switched from trying to
publish in journals to successfully publishing in the popular press.

Enough hints were there to have justified a study even if his original
works were not published.