The Man Who Convinced Us We Needed Vitamin Supplements 707
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the life and work of the scientist most responsible for moms around the world giving their kids Vitamin C tablets to fight off colds, Linus Pauling. From the article: 'On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News. These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.'"
Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are.
The thing is, even if you have a horrible diet you probably still get all the essential vitamins and minerals. The few that were making people sick got added decades ago (iodine to salt, vitamin D to milk, everything to cereal, etc.)
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The few that were making people sick got added decades ago
Didn't you mean "the few the absence of which was making people sick"? Otherwise it doesn't make too much sense to me.
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Shit, you're going to set the fluoride nutters off now.
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Please see "Nutrition in a nutshell" by Wiliams (1961) to learn about the biochemistry of enzyme absorption in the human diet and an explanation as to why large dosages are required.
If you've read this and have a specific fault with either his logic or premises I'd like to hear it.
Otherwise I'm guessing you literally don't actually know what you're talking about.
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most fault lies with 0 evidence and theories based on arm chair pontification. Those are the issues with megavitamin theories.
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You can be well educated in X while being blindingly ignorant of Y and unaware that Z exists.
When we make this error with others it's called the halo effect. Don't know if there's a name for it when it's applied to oneself.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21430112 [nih.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Nitrosodimethylamine#Properties [wikipedia.org]
This study indicates Vitamin C may lower cancer risk from NDMA. NDMA can be found at dangerous levels in chlorinated water - essentially anyone with 'city water.' And there's currently no EPA regulation on NDMA content of drinking water.
I found the study referenced in this broad examine article on Vitamin C.
http://examine.com/supplements/Vitamin+C/#summary1-1 [examine.com]
So, there's credence to the notion of Vitamin C for cancer prevention. One can argue prevention is better than chemo or radiation.
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Can I be included in his "Nutter Nut" label? People who run off and believe anything they read without any kind of critical thought are an honest-to-goodness threat to democracy. Birthers, truthers, AGW deniers, anti-vaccine nutters, young earthers, homeopaths, intelligent design advocates, etc. should make the "weird news" segment at the end of the night, not have a serious voice in our society. This is what we get for years of neglected science education in this country - a bunch of flat earthers and geoc
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention progressives. Because you know, it takes not knowing anything about 20th century to think that leftist ideas don't lead to mass starvation.
Is it seriously your argument: Working towards social equality causes starvation because Stalin and Mao (and probably Pol Pot)?
There are some serious gaps in your education my friend. I don't have the hours it would take to correct this unfortunately.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Interesting)
"The thing is, even if you have a horrible diet you probably still get all the essential vitamins and minerals."
Not really. You can eat at McDonald's every day, and still get scurvy.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Funny)
* Statement not evaluated by the FDA
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Funny)
Purple is a fruit.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's no good as a preservative when it ceases to be ascorbic acid.
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.
So uhm, yeah. Which one is it? Rare cases or almost all cases?
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
So no... it's not rare at all. Most people don't eat as properly as they should. Cutting out vitamin supplements won't change that... it will just lead to more people with vitamin deficiencies.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
It's not necessarily laziness. Vitamin D, for example, is only created if your skin receives sunlight. Godd luck getting that in the winter when you have to spend all of the daylight inside an office.
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
Sunlight (Score:3)
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
I take four types of supplements, mostly because I'm pretty athletic and active:
1. Omega 3-6-9/fish oil because as a vegetarian with a family history of poor cholesterol, it helps
2. Creatine because you don't get much creatine as a vegetarian, and it's only water weight and significantly improves my lifts
3. Multivitamins twice a week because being athletic means that I don't get all my nutrition from just food -- my annual physicals have consistently shown lower levels of Vitamin D and B12
4. And of course, whey protein because I can't hit my protein numbers as a vegetarian -- I aim for 1.2g/lbm, and whey is a simple and easy way to meet your macros.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Funny)
You need to tenderise leather shoes properly before you eat them. Unfortunately that takes hours and who has the time these days?
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Veganism is more of a political/moral choice and thus vegans don't wear leather shoes or wear woolen clothes.
Fish oil is defintitely not vegetarian (wines are often not vegetarian if they use fish finings to clarify the wine). Myself, I'm a pescatarian - I eat
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> since when did diets have sides
Ha!
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Far from it, not patronizing at all! :-)
No, I don't eat fish, but I do make an exception for fish oil (and for things with gelatin -- e.g. gummy vitamins or Altoids). I am a vegetarian, but not a militant one at that.
I am a vegetarian for mostly moral/ethical and environmental reasons. I do not like the idea of killing an animal that can experience pain when there are vegetarian alternatives. That said, there are times when I absolutely crave a steak or some fish because I've been pushing myself too hard, a
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Interesting)
"In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though."
It isn't just laziness. It's also money. It is difficult to get a balanced diet on a low budget. (Not impossible, but difficult.)
And the cases where vitamins are necessary are not all that rare. For example while as the article says, everyday free radicals may not be as terrible as they have been made out to be, when there is a flood of them they can do severe damage.
Case in point: you get a bad sunburn. A lot of the pain and damage of sunburn is caused by free radicals. If you get a sunburn, a proven method of mitigating the damage is by taking large does of vitamin C and some aspirin, both of which are strong free-radical fighters.
Another case is physical injury. (Granted, sunburn is physical injury too but I mean more like severe bruises or broken bones). Double-blind studies have shown that large doses of vitamin C can dramatically shorten the healing time. In one study done with guinea pigs (obviously, they are not humans but still), carefully controlled injuries to broken limbs healed in half the time of the control group when given large doses of vitamin C.
However, those ARE exceptions, and not everyday occurrences. And they have never been shown to lessen the severity of, much less cure, colds and the like.
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However, those ARE exceptions, and not everyday occurrences. And they have never been shown to lessen the severity of, much less cure, colds and the like.
It seems to help me. I've found that with Vitamin C, I get over a bad cold in 14 days. Without the C, it takes a whole two weeks.
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That's not true at all. It's not about laziness, it's about the foods that we eat not being sufficiently nutrient dense to provide all the vitamins and minerals that we need, while staying within our caloric budget. Even just getting the RDAs in under 2000 calories requires one to use supplements.
What's more, to even get close, you need to be extremely careful about what you eat and require a lot more education than what's normally available.
Vitamins themselves pose no danger whatsoever to ones health, prov
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Funny)
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Food today, even freshly grown food, isn't the same the world over, and it isn't the same as it was 50 years ago. It is almost certainly poorer in quality.
Citation needed. What reason do you have to believe that food quality has diminished in the last 50 years?
I'll offer an opinion that a phrase like "RoundUp Ready" in a seed stock description doesn't sound either tasty or nutritious...
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither does "heirloom", but there is a craze in home gardens to buy those seeds.
"Weed killer resistant" does not necessarily equate to "less nutritious". It might be totally unrelated, a different axis on the chart. I think. Haven't really seen anything to suggest otherwise.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it doesn't translate to "less nutritious", it translates to "covered in pesticides" which may have their own negative effects regardless of the basic nutrition of the plants.
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Neither does "heirloom", but there is a craze in home gardens to buy those seeds.
Heirloom/heritage are the older varieties which were popular in pervious decades. They went out of popularity because growers bred new varieties which produced massive quantities of friut without any particular regard to taste. I grow tomatoes sometimes (normal non heirloom varieties) and they are quite remarkalbe plants. They just churn out the most amazing quantities.
The whole point about the heirloom ones is that they are va
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Informative)
Is there any evidence that roundup ready crops are less nutritious?
Well, they *should* be, so we should expect them to be.
If you're going to go to all that effort to produce a GMO, you should pick the one that's going to be the most marketable. The varieties that are selected for modification are the biggest, most symmetrical, and those having the best shipping characteristics are usually not the best tasting, and their flesh lacks color which means they lack the concentrations of bioflavanoids, at least, and do not have the best flavor, along which usually comes nutrients, so it would be blind dumb luck, therefore very unlikely, for them to contain the most of other nutrients.
The same can also be said for non-GMO supermarket produce that's shipped far distances, but GMO's are probably part of that set.
To be fair, a GMO (e.g. yellow rice) can be made to promote nutrition - that's just not what Monsanto does in the commerical market, and therefore gives GMO's a bad name.
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Roundup isn't a "biohazard". It's not even all that toxic.
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FYI, most of the articles on mercola and naturalnews are propaganda. Sometimes they reference legitimate science before going off on their tirade, and sometimes that science is worth reading. Almost always, those sites twist and distort the actual science though.
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Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&gwh=C55932C623A00AD8AD823E3855A54699 [nytimes.com]
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>> Food today, even freshly grown food, isn't the same ... as it was 50 years ago
> Citation needed.
Basic reasons (coming from US culture):
* Anthropomorphic plant breeding to optimize for sweetness or other "short term" benefit versus mother natures "long term" successful tinkering
* Reduced local farming
* Increased pesticides use
* Increased food transit times and shelf time
* Consumers that are too lazy to go to the market and buy food everyday (ask your grand
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
Michael Pollan makes a similar claim in "In Defense of Food" on page 115:
Since the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has declined substantially, according to figures gathered by the USDA, which has tracked the nutrient content of various crops since then. Some researchers blame this decline on the condition of the soil; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding, which has consistently selected for industrial characteristics such as yield rather than nutritional quality.
More detail is given on page 118.
As mentioned earlier, USDA figures show a decline in the nutrient content of the forty-three crops it has tracked since the 1950s. In one recent analysis, vitamin C declined by 20 percent, iron by 15 percent, riboflavin by 38 percent, calcium by 16 percent. Government figures from England tell a similar story: declines since the fifties of 10 percent or more in levels of iron, zinc, calcium, and selenium across a range of food crops. To put this in more concrete terms, you now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple, and you’d have to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily allowance of zinc than you would have a century ago.
Here are some sources cited for that chapter that sound like they might be relevant to those particular claims:
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more than vegetables (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, a lot of modern vegetables are grown as fast as possible, so they contain less fibre and "nutrients" and more water than when we were satisfied with one harvest per year.
Second of all, it's not just about vegetables. We need to get some "rare" vitamins from nuts, meat and such. With the current diet as we have it, meat is grown way faster too, containing arguably less of these rare vitamins than before. We eat a lot less unprocessed food than we used to, especially nuts tend to be roasted and
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Then how do you explain the decline in the amount of nutrients that has been observed in many US crops since 1950, according to the USDA? Citations for this are given in this comment [slashdot.org].
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
For nutrients to find their way into vegetables, they have to be in the ground first, and if they aren't there, then you don't get to eat them.
If this was remotely true then eating dirt would allow starving people to cut out the agricultural middleman. A dessert of manure would complement the main course perfectly.
In reality plants are cellular tissue mostly made from water and atmospheric CO2 with a dash of colouring and flavours. Their growth depends on having enough but not too much water, enough sunlight to power the process, the presence of alkaline or acid soils and the ability to deter pests. Some of the proteins and other cellular constituents of plants and such happen to be good for us, but not all of them -- see belladonna and potato greens for counterexamples.
Amino acids in plants don't lurk around in the soil to be picked up by the root system, they are constructed by nanotech factories in the plant's cells, same with the nutrients and some vitamins in muscle tissue and other constituent parts of the animals we eat.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there are food deserts, places where getting actual real grown food is not practically possible, and fabricated food is the only type available. The concept is well known in the US.
Yes, well known, and totally wrong. It's a myth, and you could have found dozens of articles in about .01 seconds, like this one:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/food-desert-myth-article-1.1065165 [nydailynews.com]
Why do people just toss off completely wrong "facts" that they can disabuse themselves of in a couple of seconds? Like "more people are killed by baseball bats than guns", when it's actually more killed by baseball bats than LONG GUNS, but if you compare all guns to all blunt objects, it's overwhelmingly guns we have to thank for making homicide and suicide so easy.
I guess people prefer their preconceptions to the truth.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence to support that view point?
Seriously, put together a 2000 calorie diet that gets 100% of the RDA for all those vitamins and minerals, then come back and tell us about how dangerous and unecessary multivitamins are. Bottom line is that apart from A, D, E and K, pretty much all the other ones just wash out of your system before becoming dangerous. B6 and the minerals can also cause some problems if you're taking in too much, but you'd have to work on that.
There's a very good reason why multivitamins exist, and that's because it's non-trivial to get enough nutrients in even healthy foods. And that's assuming that you have the time and energy to properly select and prepare your foods. It also assumes that your body needs the same amount of nutrients as the information suggests. Which may or may not apply.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a very good reason why multivitamins exist, and that's because it's non-trivial to get enough nutrients in even healthy foods. And that's assuming that you have the time and energy to properly select and prepare your foods. It also assumes that your body needs the same amount of nutrients as the information suggests. Which may or may not apply.
"Properly select and prepare" being key here.
I grow my own tomatoes in organic soil with known mineral content. They taste significantly different than hothouse tomatoes bought from the grocery store or produce stand. Why? Because the mineral content is significantly different, and they haven't been force-watered.
So it's important to know what's in the food you're actually buying, not just the type of food you're buying.
That's selection. Then there's preparation.
If you buy roasted salted almonds that have been sitting on the store shelf for a year prior to you bringing them home, they're going to have very different nutritional content than if you sourced the same almonds but got them fresh from the producer, brought them home and refrigerated them, and then roasted them (without salting) immediately prior to use. Even roasting vs. not roasting makes different vitamins and minerals accessible to your body; which is the really important thing here.
It doesn't matter how much iron, for example, you consume if it's in a form your body can't actually use for anything.
And these days, if you actually consume enough force-grown produce to give you traditionally healthy vitamin and mineral levels, you're likely getting a huge dose of hormones, pesticides, herbicides, and various other chemical cocktails. It gets even worse with meat.
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There's a very good reason why multivitamins exist, and that's because it's non-trivial to get enough nutrients in even healthy foods.
That's like saying there's a good reason McDonald's exists... we really needed crappy burgers and nature wasn't giving us any
The only reason multivitamins exists is because some people saw a market there and started selling them. Whether helped by a crazy chemist or not. It doesn't mean we need them. Hell, we've been in this planet for long and we never had the need for added doses of vitamins. What's with the 20th century, apart from crap food, that suddenly makes us need more vitamins? And if the problem
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Doesn't TFA link to some of that evidence?
Well, here [nih.gov]'s some more.
Re:Diet and laziness (Score:4, Interesting)
Compared to before that, when people lived in rural settings? not much.
When I was living in West Africa (ten years ago?) the biggest causes of death were:
Accidents caused by reckless behaviour: Driving cars with no brakes, repairing buldings with no scaffolding, handling dangerous animals/goods with inadequate protection, dangerous machinery with no training etc (25%)
Diseases cause by lack of basic hygene: drinking polluted waeter. not washing hands before meals/after toilet (or doing so with poluted water).(25%)
Bad medical treatment: wrong or inappropriate medical procedure, or drugs, expired drugs, fake drugs (20%).
Removing these, life expectancy would be better than the UK. (which is far better than the US). Interestingly, all of these are issues which are addressed most effectively by more government regulation!!!)
What about D? (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't dosing on 2000 IU of D per day stave off cancer according to 100's of studies?
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Re:What about D? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dr. Dean Edell used to run down the latest research on his radio show. The terrible and ongoing failure of vitamins to offer any benefit as giant study after study started coming in became almost a running joke.
"We were in the 'Vitamin C' decade, then the 'Vitamin E' decade, and now the 'Vitamin D' decade", where that vitamin was the darling." Then the 10 year study with 100,000 nurses and doctors would come in, and it would offer zero benefits, and in some cases like Vitamin C with cancer, actually make things worse.
C did nothing for colds or cancer. E did nothing for hearts. I am taking D for heart reasons the past 2 years per doctor instruction. Will it help?
Dr. Dean Edell was uniquely positioned to criticize vitamins as he came from a family who were giant vitamin manufacturers. When he started his career he was big time into all that crap and other alternative stuff.
But the science inexorably crawled forward, slaying one thing after another, and he saw the light. He was an enormous friend to science and rationality and medical skepticism.
And he loses his radio show because nobody listens. Meanwhile a quack like Dr. Oz who promotes gigatons of nonsense that dopes go glassy-eyed over and tune in, has multiples hows on radio and TV.
Re:What about D? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I think is easily overlooked is the term "routine" in the following sentence: "Nutrition experts contend that all we need is what's typically found in a routine diet." Because routine is often defined as: "A prescribed, detailed course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure."
I suppose if we are all trained dietitians/nutritionists that should be easy-peasy, but for the vast majority of us?
Let us not forget simple facts like salt is iodized because most people would be deficient otherwise. Foods are often fortified and enriched because we would become nutrient deficient otherwise.
It also ignores niches within groups, such as this tidbit from WebMD: "... researchers found the most effect on people who were in extreme conditions, such as marathon runners. In this group, taking vitamin C cut their risk of catching a cold in half." Perhaps stressing the importance of exercise to achieve more optimal well-being. The NLM suggests people living in very cold temperatures also stand to benefit from vitamin C supplements, and I imagine that marathon running in a cold environment... better take some C!
Unfortunately, the studies, in general, are far from conclusive and in many cases present conflicting conclusions. Many studies also appear to ignore synergies between vitamins/minerals -- that groups often aid proper absorption and misgroupings can cause malabsorption or even leeching. For instance, I'd be interested in a study that compares EmergenC to 1 gram 'plain' vitamin C, because I'd imagine EmergenC is going to be more effective. Or maybe eating an orange or some fruit/veg with a certain amount of C VS just that amount of C by itself.
Like my momma always said, "where you going to find [insert practically any single vitamin/mineral] all by itself in nature that we actually eat?!" Even sea salt has lots of trace minerals! She was all about eating right FIRST and using supplements sparingly as backup (like Vit D in the winter months, to compensate for less sun on the skin). That's a great plan, IMO, but I doubt most people routinely do that.
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You do know there is no such thing as "vitamin B," right? Lots of B12 probably does give you energy, and is probably harmless, but too much B6 can give you nerve toxicity. Too much B3 can cause problems too. B2 at high dosages interacts with many medications.
Re:What about D? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a citation:
Garland CF, French CB, Baggerly LL, Heaney RP. Vitamin D supplement doses and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the range associated with cancer prevention. Anticancer Res. February 2011;31:607-11.
Cancer prevention is correlated most closely with serum levels of 40 ng/mL or above (as is alleviation of depression), and to reach this level in 97.5% of the population, 9,600 IU/day was necessary. This is almost double the current UL. Of course, current recommendations for daily dosage is based off 20 ng/mL being 'sufficient', while most experts in the field now believe that 30 ng/mL should be the baseline for 'sufficient' and that most positive effects will be found at serum levels of 40 - 50 ng/mL.
Vitamin D toxicity is rare, and only occurs when serum 25(OH)D levels exceed 150 ng/mL. It has never been demonstrated at doses of less than 20,000 IU/d and generally requires greater than 40,000 IU/d. Most incidents have been due to accidental ingestion, such as from a milk supply that was accidentally fortified with vast amounts of D3.
In the end, supplementation needs to be based off serum 25(OH)D levels, which can be measured by a doctor. You may need more or less to reach 'ideal' levels, and it's impossible to say exactly how much without testing. The test is cheap and hopefully will become a standard part of a routine examination, considering that vitamin D affects at least 35 different systems in the body. Without the test, 2,000 IU/d will keep you under the UL (even though it should really be changed to reflect the science behind the toxicity), and will likely keep your levels above 30 ng/mL. Remember that most dairy products are fortified with D3 which should be considered a part of the total.
History is full of such. (Score:2, Interesting)
Genius that strikes out and proves how stupid the person is. e.g. Shockley, Pauling, Chomsky...
Re:History is full of such. (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably 'cause no one is perfect. Everyone messes up at some point in their life. His reluctance to refuse the vitamin C sham doesn't discredit his other accomplishments. Sure, the reluctance doesn't put him in a good light, but his other accomplishments still stand.
Re:History is full of such. (Score:4, Insightful)
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From what I recall Pauling thought there was a connection between very large doses of vitamin C and a boost of the immune system. There's a very large distance between that and what he's being blamed for in the article here. The two examples are Vitamin E problems and multivitamin issues. It's easy to think Pauling had daft ideas if you believe he proselytized about vitamin supplements.
I think Pauling is being blamed for things he's got nothing to do with.
Peer review (Score:4, Insightful)
A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.
Being wrong doesn't make you a quack, slashdot. You can follow the scientific method perfectly and arrive at the wrong result. In fact, you can be fairly certain that most of what we think we know today will later be proven wrong. Even Einstein said he hoped people would one day prove him wrong -- being proven wrong means progress. It means a better understanding of the universe. Scientists, real ones, don't mind being wrong, or mistaken. Sure, there's pride in one's work, and yes, that can make it hard for people to accept a new truth. But by and far, scientists do get around to doing it.
A quack is someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong. They aren't true scientists. This man won two nobel prizes because he followed the scientific process. And, today, that process is still being followed, and that man's original assertions are now wrong. Taking vitamins is something tens of thousands of doctors and medical professionals have advised. Researchers the world over have endorsed it. That doesn't happen with, say, magnetically vortexed water that some people believe has a "higher energy level" and is thus more beneficial to drink, or that crystals or magnets will somehow improve our health.
It's wrong to put him in the same category as those people. Slashdot, you fail, and you should be ashamed. You should issue a retraction immediately -- you're using words and making accusations that you don't really understand. Your editors are stating opinions that are overall harmful to the scientific and medical community.
People who search for the truth should never be called names, or subjected to ridicule. That is the ultimate goal of all science. The fact that people get it wrong is inconsequential, as long as they did their best to get it right. Shame, slashdot. Shame on you.
Re:Peer review (Score:5, Informative)
No, but deliberately shouting from your soapbox (and selling millions of books) in the absence of solid evidence does make you a quack. Pauling was effectively giving medical advice to the millions to his own benefit, without adequately answering his critics.
I find it interesting that the Paulings advocated megadoses of vitamin C to prevent/fight cancer, and then they both died of cancer. "It seems fate is not without a sense of irony."
Re:Peer review (Score:4, Informative)
Linus Pauling was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his 60s and given a few months to live, then went on living to the age of 93. So either the megadoses of vitamin C really did help him live another 30 years, or he had a rare spontaneous remission. You can't really blame him for reaching the conclusion that he did.
Re:Peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't really blame him for reaching the conclusion that he did.
Well, we could, but it's silly. Science is a self-correcting mechanism. But just like an airplane in flight, it's almost always flying in the wrong direction. Somehow, you still manage to get where you're going, because of minute course corrections. I take great offense to this editor posting such drivel on the front page of a website that caters to the scientific and technical communities, and nothing short of a front page retraction is satisfactory. The sooner -- the better. I can understand getting one's facts wrong, but this is just plain slanderous! This kind of crap should never have made it past even the most mediocre editorial staff.
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Re:Peer review (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are you such a troll? First, the quote is from the article. So it's the writers fault, not slashdot's.
Second, you should try reading TFA. You say, "A quack is someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong.".
Guess what? If you read the fucking article, you would know that he did exactly that.
He tried to publish articles in a journal he had input into that would not scientifically valid just because they pushed his pro-vitamin agenda. He refused to believe studies that were published proving him wrong, and said they were personal attacks against him.
So please, STFU. You clearly didn't read the article. You go off on some rant that literally makes no sense at all,
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Mod up please. This guy is true and TFA is very clear. Anyone attempting to discuss and advocate for Pauling on this case should start by reading TFA in full.
Once I am at it, since we know that the brillant Linus Pauling winner of two Nobel prize was fully wrong on this subject (and maybe others undocumented), I believe it is a good time to ask all of those out there which are experts in Albert Einstein's false and true quotes to move on and try to write something by their own and stop citing the poor Alb
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Which pretty much describes his behavior on the vitamin issue - He used dodgy medical trials, shoddy statistics, and anecdotal evidence to build his case. Don't assume that because he was a competent and careful scientist in one area (the one where he he earned the Nobel Prize), that he couldn't or didn't have a bee in his bonnet in another (in which he had no formal training or qualifications).
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Even Einstein said he hoped people would one day prove him wrong -- being proven wrong means progress. It means a better understanding of the universe. Scientists, real ones, don't mind being wrong, or mistaken.
It's often worthwhile to point out that Einstein didn't "prove Newton wrong", and the progress that Einstein was hoping for will probably also not prove him wrong. Rather, he showed that Newton's equations were approximations, good to 10 or 15 decimal places in "ordinary" situations here on Earth, but not good enough to explain some of the boundary cases that had already been observed by 1900. So far, all attempts to find exceptions to Einstein's equations have failed; i.e., observed results agree with
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Wrong is a bit strong, but you can follow the scientific method perfectly and produce undesirable results.
Example: If I have a flat tire on my bicycle and go to a repair shop. They can then sell me a pump and tell me to fill up the tire three times a day with air. Assuming the hole is not too large that will work. And they can proof that filling up with air for small holes will work by randomized double blind tests.
It is still stupid advice. You ought to fix the hole.
Effectively western medicine often acts
The truth is (Score:3, Informative)
that almost everything you know about nutrition is wrong, often started up by one person or a group of people who failed to prove even loose correlation, yet people take up their suggestions and after a while they become 'common knowledge'.
Most multivitamins contain ingredients that pass through your digestive tract without even being absorbed. What does get absorbed is excessive and the system is unfamiliar with these huge doses of bioavailable vitamins and your system works overtime to eliminate it. Puts a real beating on the kidneys.
To extend the ridiculousness, nobody has ever proved that fat or meat are bad for you, yet people avoid them both and suffer nutritionally. In the 50's, Ancel Keys wrote a paper on his lipid theory where he 'proved' that fat was bad for you by eliminating the data from 17 of 23 countries he studied. The 17 he threw out were large consumers of fats with no problems with heart disease or cancer, such as the Innuit and Masai. He also noted in his study that there was no connection between dietary cholesterol and cholesterol levels in blood, but everyone seems to have skipped that part.
50 years of studies showed that salt was also not at all harmful to the average person, but doctors couldn't shake the idea of salt raising blood pressure temporarily so they gamed a study called Intersalt, where...you guessed it...they deleted around 40% of the data that included people who ate plenty of salt and led perfectly healthy lives. The excuse? "We already know that salt is bad for you, so if people say they ate it and were healthy, then they were lying". Hmm. It should be interesting to note at this point that all these studies do go on what people say they did and didn't eat and did or didn't do. Faulty data in the first place.
No study has ever proven that MSG is bad for you, in fact its approved by each and every equivalent of the FDA worldwide with zero dissenters, and its been eaten by billions of people for a century with no ill health effects. All it does is make healthy food taste better so you're more likely to eat it. In fact, the studies that were run showed more false positives as a placebo effect than actual reactions. Fun part is the whole thing goes back to one doctor who wasn't a nutritional expert writing a letter noting a possible 'chinese food syndrome' that he suggested at random might be MSG related. Its an amino acid derived from boiling kombu seaweed.
Meat is bad? The studies that say so point out that most of the people who eat meat, bacon and so forth also smoke, drink, don't exercise and live a lousy lifestyle. Of course they do, we've been telling people that meat is bad for them for 60 years, so anyone that eats it doesn't care about their health. Yet there is no study whatsoever that ever tested perfectly healthy people with a good lifestyle whose health suffered when they ate meat.
What IS bad for you are most pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and high energy/low nutrition foods that make up the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, whole fruits and veg and steer clear of the high profit, easy to produce items made from grains and processed starches.
If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands. We were also moved from relatively healthy animal fats/butter to transfats, partially hydrogenated fats and so forth. That recommendation probably killed millions. Eggs are bad/good/bad/good/bad/good. By the way, they're just fine and a great source of B vitamins and protein.
Re:The truth is (Score:5, Insightful)
What IS bad for you are la mayoría de pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and alta energy/low nutrition foods que conforman the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, las frutas enteras and veg and steer clear of the alta rentabilidad, easy to produce artículos hechos de grains and processed starches.
You're kidding, right? Five very insightful paragraphs showing how hard research into nutrition is and how most 'nutritional facts' have no proper basis in science followed by a ridiculous list of different largely unsupported nutritional claims?
'[Processed foods are bad]'? Really?? What the fuck is 'processed food' even?
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
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Five very insightful paragraphs showing how hard research into nutrition is and how most 'nutritional facts' have no proper basis in science followed by a ridiculous list of different largely unsupported nutritional claims?
This is extremely common among quacks and well-meaning individuals. It's relatively easy to show why something is wrong, and so many people do it (politicians, etc). But coming up with a solution to a problem, or finding something that is right, that's significantly harder.
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Ah, so your response to my implied criticism that 'processed foods' is a ridiculously broad term that could be applied to the majority of food you buy in the supermarket is condescendingly linking to another term referring to the specific set of tertiary processed food, which is still ridiculously broad enough to render any claim on nutritional value or health effects of the class as a whole instantly false.
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
Ah, you are being ironic. Or trolling. Or both.
No. Don't be an idiot. Show me the research that proves that 'additives' or 'chemicals' are 'bad for
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If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands.
No sir, we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, and that cigarettes were bad for us [wikipedia.org]. The message varied depending who you were listening to, the difference stemming from the source's particular agenda.
People choose to selectively listen to the advice they wanted to hear, and this includes doctors. But, note from the wiki-link above that the first pieces of hard evidence against smoking was compiled by doctors.
Vitamins aren't the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives.
It shouldn't take a microbiologist or an organic chemist to figure out that vitamins aren't the problem; saturating ourselves with vitamins in a form we're not adapted to utilize are obviously the issue. Translation: stay away from the pills and and supplments section of that so-called "healthfood store" and go to the farmers' market, dumbasses!
He did live for 93 years though (Score:3)
Coincidence?
Ironically... (Score:2)
all of this seems to be true only for people who take vitamin pills. People who get their vitamins by eating lots of fruits and vegetables STILL live longer and are healthier. May have other reasons than vitamins though.
I've decided quite a while ago that eating meat, fish, vegetables and fruit is fine. I also add as much salt as I like and have no fear of fat and oils. What I try to avoid is sugar and basically anything ready-made. Which often means I can walk right through a supermarket and out at the oth
science writing at its worst (Score:2)
Whacko Fringe View (Score:4, Informative)
Mainstream and accepted view is that vitamin supplements in proper dosage are a good insurance for health. AMA, AAP, etc.
There are always studies supporting an opposing view of anything and everything.
He and Ancel Keys should be put in a special club (Score:2)
Between the two of them they've caused the biggest changes in Western health and diet, and yet were both so wrong. They honestly both thought what they were doing was the Right Thing, but by cherry picking evidence that supported their theories (especially in Keys' case) and ignoring data that pointed otherwise, they committed the cardinal sin of science: Don't make your data fit your hypothesis.
Unconventional Approaches (Score:4, Interesting)
My great uncle Gene and Pauling were classmates at Oregon Agricultural College (which later became Oregon State University), they graduated the same year with degrees in Chemical Engineering. When he began classes Gene couldn't hack the math at all, he hadn't taken the requisite courses or something; coming from a small farm town in eastern Oregon perhaps they weren't on the curriculum. Then, after breaking his leg and being laid up in a cast for a while, he devised his own approach to problem solving, a more roundabout method to things like long division that obtained the same answer as the conventional approach, but not as streamlined as what was usually taught. Armed with these methods he obtained his degree and went on to a respectable engineering career, overseeing projects like renovating the Mission at San Juan Capistrano and devising various formulas for asphalt used in road building.
I always wondered if Gene's crackerjack approach to problem solving didn't rub off on Pauling in some fashion.
Maybe sick people take more vitamins? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vitamin takers ignore absorption pathways (Score:5, Informative)
Take zinc. It was found that zinc can denature viruses, so a viral sore throat can have its symptoms somewhat alleviated by zinc lozenges. But zinc is absorbed through the same pathway as copper, and the sort of large doses of zinc that people are taking for cold remedies is probably crowding out reasonable levels of copper absorption. And guess what copper's critical for? White blood cells and your immune system, the functions that can really do something about colds. Usually there's some bit of news, that the media gets wrong, then the general public gets even more wrong, and what the average consumer does in respect to a new scientific development ends up being completely counter-productive. Thus the news that zinc can denature viruses on contact turned into people taking zinc supplement pills with ads on the side of the bottle about taking them for colds. But pillsâ"as opposed to lozengesâ"do not result in significant concentrations of zinc where the virus is, and then they end up weakening the immune system by crowding out copper absorption.
Vitamin E is another excellent example. "Vitamin E" is 8 different vitamins that serve very different roles in the body. But they are absorbed through the same pathway and are highly subject to crowding-out. Basically, due to a terminology problem that the 8 distinct vitamins got lumped together as "Vitamin E," people who take vitamin E supplements end up deficient in 7 essential vitamins, unless they're taking reasonable doses of multitocopherol supplements, which isn't what much of anybody takes.
This tendancy to lump things together has lead to another super popular modern marketing disaster, Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is not a type of fatty acid, it's a class of fatty acids encompassing many different molecules. It turns out that only the fish-derived versions demonstrate any of the health benefits, but basically every food in the grocery store touting "Omega 3" all over the label is using plant sources, where they might as well be adding a gram of canola oil or corn oil for all the health benefits you'll be getting. Everything touting the helath benefits of flax seeds have no scientific basis, the the science is quite clear that the Omega 3 fatty acids in flax do not exhibit any of the hormone-like beneficial properties such as reducing inflammation that the fish Omega 3 fatty acids have.
I strongly suspect that in the long-term it will turn out that taking appropriate supplements is a very good idea for health, but right now, the science hasn't explored the area thoroughly enough to make solid recommendations given the complexity of the subject, and what little we do know has very little effect on what manufactures make and advertise and what consumers actually take. Which probably leads to the negative outcomes.
If you want to try to figure out, based on what we know, what the best guesses might be about what supplements to actually take, try reading up on the work of Bruce Ames and Andrew Weil. They don't have easy answers, but Bruce Ames did brilliant research, and Andrew Weil makes practical best-guess recommendations based upon the current state of the science.
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ha? (Score:4, Insightful)
Utter rubbish (Score:4, Interesting)
Article is an excerpt from a book written by a guy that sold vaccines for big pharma. I'm not against vaccines, they're a good thing (although there is still plenty of room to be nervous without believing in autism/mercury).
But you have to keep in mind the vaccine industry has been at war with Pauling since he showed a IV drop of C will cure Polio. If you actually look it up you can find where he did that, and unlike everybody else here will have verified something in the article.
Because every claim made by the author in that article is probably wrong.
Shame on The Atlantic for this puff piece. They usually have good science.
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I have eaten very low-carb, typically under 20 g/day and essentially always under 50 g/day, for over a year. Lost a bunch of weight, no difficulty keeping it off. I'm going to eat (unbreaded) chicken wings for dinner tonight, had a nice salad with bacon and homemade ranch dressin
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I am on Atkins diet. Basically I am eating only meat. (Almost) No vegetable, no fruits, no bread, no rice, no sweets. YES YES I know this diet will horrify some people and yes I know it is not very healthy. ...
A few years back, Consumer Reports published a study of diets (complete with their usual ratings table ;-). One of their conclusions was that the Atkins diet was the one with the best long-term results, but they did say that this was mostly because people were generally able to follow it longer than other diets. They also recommended talking to a nutritionist about it, to make sure you get the vitamins and other micro-nutrients that you need, some of which aren't plentiful in most meat.
The "not very he