Thanks Debbie.
Well, I would argue in result that the critique is both missing the point and at least as biased as the show could possibly be. For example:
Quote:
|
> panel of experts... includes a supergroup of charlatans and cranks.
|
Already we're off to a biased start: the point here is supposed to be the science, which may be at various levels of development; not the personal opinion about personal qualities of persons who happen to be talking about the science.
We instantly shifted from looking at evidence or objective review to judging the entire topic on the name-calling about the people instead of the subject matter. This is a common way of discrediting a topic without ever having to argue for the evidence of anything.
Quote:
|
> But these are couched amid disquisitions from members of the sugar-fearing fringe.
|
More name-calling. And does disliking sugar put someone on the fringe? And what difference does it make what the people are like if the points made in the film have validity?
Quote:
|
> Kathleen DesMaisons, author of Potatoes Not Prozac
|
Well it's easy to see already she wouldn't be popular with the status quo mainstream...
Shifting references to imply religion and extremes is another common scoffer technique.
There is a whole box of these, like saying someone "claims" vs. "says" etc.
Quote:
|
> for the poorly substantiated notion of "sugar sensitivity."
|
Poorly according to....? The same people who insist gluten-sensitivity is a fashion fad and we need grains?
And how does this relate to whatever she actually said?
Quote:
|
> ...an Albuquerque-based program that makes sugar reduction a centerpiece of drug rehab.
|
Mentioned as if it is somehow incriminating. A different writer might observe that both sugar and drugs are chemicals affecting the human body and brain, and...
Quote:
|
> Her credentials include a Ph.D. in the made-up discipline of “addictive nutrition,” received from an obscure, distance-learning university.
|
OK, that is a fair insult to leverage if the point of the film was whether or not DesMaisons is "legitimately credentialed according to current academic standards."
The fact that current academic standards treat poor health as if it fell out of the sky on someone, don't educate well or at all on nutrition (or actually educate so badly it's nearly the opposite of even "legit" science, and I know -- I see the official textbooks as part of my job) mean that a good portion of the people advocating a non-mainstream perspective on anything are likely to NOT be from official academia.
And it is perfectly fair to insult them for that if desired -- because by that standard it's a legit complaint -- however the point probably ought to be THE POINT, not whether or not we personally support that woman's credentials.
In her defense of sorts, she does very openly and directly describe her edu source, as well as her reason for "going back to school" for it and her dissertation topic. That doesn't really prove anything but it's not like she bought it from the back of a magazine and is pretending otherwise.
Quote:
|
> Casual viewers of the film won’t know that DesMaisons’ ideas might be somewhat less reliable than Popkin’s, since her credentials are presented as being on a par with his.
|
OK. Fair point. But perhaps the goal was merely to provide a variety of ideas on the same general topic and (gasp!) let people make up their own minds, or follow up on their own interests sparked by that.
Quote:
|
> the floppy-haired nutrition guru David Wolfe.
|
Because if your PhD source does not allow insult, your hairstyle is definitely next.
Mind you I am not supporting Wolfe (don't know jack about him), I am un-supporting the journalist's overt bias is all.
Quote:
|
> deer antler spray (a “levitational,” “androgenic force”),
|
LOL! Well that may have nothing to do with sugar, it's fair to point out, but that's definitely fringe enough to not be surprised people are going to mention it...
Which part is the shocking part of that, reflexology (a functional collection of theory that posits massaging one part of the body, such as hands or feet, may have an effect on another part of the body, such as to cure a headache for example) or babies? Anyway it's not about sugar...
Quote:
|
> and “earthing” (in which people plug themselves into the ground wire of an electrical outlet so as to “naturally discharge electrical stress from our bodies”).
|
Yes, imagining that human bodies, which are a bio-electric construct, might actually be affected by our massive exposure to electronics and our surreal non-exposure to the grounding humans had for millions of years, is probably pretty radical. Earthing is about grounding, which can be done in many ways, but I do like that he included the electrical outlet reference, since that makes it sound way more fun in the telling.
Also not about sugar...
Quote:
|
> Seen outside the context of That Sugar Film, the man appears to be a lunatic.
|
Ha! Maybe he is. But the sugar film was about sugar unless I'm mistaken... not about every possible OTHER interest that any person in the film might have.
The author's ref to Tom Campbell's presence in the film is fair: he has no background or even present participation that I know of, outside the film, with sugar. Campbell is mostly known for lecturing about theoretical physics-slash-metaphysics. Which as interesting or uninteresting as it may be (it's cerebrally fascinating but impressively sleep inducing, his youtube lectures, and I speak from experience) is not about sugar.
Which makes it odd for him to be in the sugar film perhaps, unless he had some point nobody else was making and I didn't see the film, but then again makes it equally odd for critique to be valid since it wouldn't even be about the topic at hand. Ah, I see: "...Campbell’s claim that sugar makes us dumb, moody, and ineffective." The author responds to that in general with:
Quote:
> there’s some science to suggest that sugar affects behavior and cognition in rodents, but less support for Gameau’s theory of carbohydrate grumpiness.
and
> Still, the idea that sugar makes us hyperactive, and then lethargic, has been around for decades ... in the 1970s and 1980s, when large-scale surveys showed an association between children’s sugar intake and behavior problems ... But in the end, the science went the other way.
|
And thank god for corporate funded or influenced "modern science," because anybody who has ever raised a child would surely be woefully misled by the experience of "reality."
Raise a child. Then tell me that sugar has no effect on their hyper-energy, their attention span, or their later lethargy or depression. Perhaps there are some children who either don't seem affected or just have better diets than mine did, but that was an N=1 experiment repeated often enough, and often with others increasing that N value, for years, to give it more power in my world.
Moving on:
The author says that the movie's lead using ALT scores to reflect liver health is problematic, as (which should go without saying) this proxy measure of health can be affected by more than one thing -- not just sugar. But there is no measure of health that exists which would not be affected by more than one thing; the human body is profoundly complex and interconnected that way.
Pretty sure there is no test you could make on the liver, pancreas, kidneys, brain, etc. that would not ALSO be affected by whether you have exercised or taken harmful drugs in a given period of time -- his example of why ALT is unreliable.
Also, his comment that two weeks can shift 30% of ALT scores (doesn't say but I'm guessing those at borderline numbers) into the 'normal' range seems reasonable given the liver is so famously (even in science I think) self-healing.
This could be used to diss using ALT as a proxy measure, I suppose, but he doesn't suggest any alternative at all -- not good, not bad, just none -- that could have been used for some kind of biological (not behavioral et al.) study on the short-term effect of sugar on human physiology.
So if you remove the only source of measure someone could use for an objective, third-party, laboratory measurement of sugar's effects, are you just saying they aren't allowed to test it or talk about the testing at all? I mean there is moving the goal posts and then there is RE-moving the goal posts entirely, which is even worse.
Quote:
|
> Isn't it the job of these reviewers to appraise the message of a scientific film in scientific terms?
|
Well no because it was not a scientific film. A scientific film would be a completely different film. In fact the author compares the film to "Supersize Me" and "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead" which are both basically the same model as this film: "A guy who did something different, did what he could to test the effects of it, and featured a variety of other people, some with credentials, with opinions correlating with his alleged experience."
Whether each experience, or its testing, or its experts, is worthy are separate questions for each of the films of course, but this author himself points out that basically this film is in that genre but then elsewhere insults other-reviewers for not treating it as a "scientific film."
Quote:
|
> they treat propaganda as a form of self-expression, rated for its rhetoric. How entertaining is the film, and how persuasive? These are measures of a movie’s craft, not of its truth.
|
I agree with him entirely on this point. This could be leveled at nearly every movie ever made about nutrition though, not just the one in question. And the reality is it's a matter of what we're measuring:
His complaint is specifically at the sources of review, and he names three newspapers as sources. Movie reviews in newspapers? Seriously?? Their dominant audience are not scientists. Their audiences ARE, in fact, the very people who care more about a movie's "craft, not of its truth" -- who measure "how entertaining is the film" because, as you may note, movie reviews in newspapers are found in the ENTERTAINMENT section, and there is a reason for this.
So of course a movie's review is going to reflect the overall interest-demographics of the audience the reviewers are speaking to. That he seems shocked and disappointed by this is more an oddity of his own misguided expectations than of the other reviewers, I would think. (Even though his point about their review perspective is valid on the whole, the fact that it's "reasonable within context" makes it less shocking, you'd think.)
On the bright side, the author does not insult Gary Taubes. I am learning to be grateful for small favors.
PJ
Don't Believe the Shoddy Science in that Stupid Sugar Film
Linear Mode
