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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Here's an older bit (2018) from Slate that's still relevant, as I know I've talked about this topic on numerous occasions. Here’s Why It’s So Impossible to Get Reliable Diet Advice From the News  What’s good for you seems to change every week. Maybe we should stop blaming the media and look at the studies underneath the stories, too. Oh, no. I'm not going to stop blaming the media. Or at least particular outlets and/or individual reports. Science reporting is all over the place, and it's important to hold them accountable. For example, anyone who reported breathlessly and credulously about the recent false claim of de-extincting the dire wolf? Yeah, don't trust them. That has nothing to do with nutrition science, of course, but it's the first example of bad science reporting I could come up with off the top of my noggin. So, no, large media site, I will not "stop blaming the media." Fat might be good for you this week, and coffee is bad. Or maybe, fat is bad, and coffee is good. If you are a connoisseur of such articles—say, someone like me who would like to make “evidence-based choices” about health—the ping-ponging of studies and coverage will not have escaped your notice. My favorite example of that is eggs, the beginning of the discussion of which predated the internet. Good. Bad. Kinda good. Kinda bad. Good. Bad. Good, but only the whites. Bad, but okay in moderation. Good. Bad. Good, but too expensive. I think we're back to good now; I don't eat eggs that much, so I don't pay as much attention. It occurred to me at some point that one way to control people is through their diet (and also their sexual practices, but that's irrelevant to this). Religions have been doing this for probably as long as there's been religions. Hell, the Pythagoras cult in ancient Greece practiced vegetarianism, and reportedly wouldn't even eat beans (how their brains functioned enough to figure out basic math is an open question). Even secularists have gotten into the act with plant-forward diets, the fat-free craze of the 90s, the carb-free craze of the noughties, and gluten scares and whatever. It is, intentionally or not, another way to divide people, since eating is, in humans, a communal activity. While I trust science in most things, nutrition science is notoriously all over the place, so I pretty much just eat what I want, when I want. It is easy, especially as someone who is on the research side of things most of the time, to fault the media for sensational coverage of individual studies that fails to consider the broader context. And certainly there is a healthy dose of that all around us (for example, why write a headline like “Do Tomatoes Cause Heart Attacks?” when the answer is “no”?). Oh, the answer to that question is easy: it's clickbait. But I don’t think this is the main problem, and at the very least, it’s not the only one. Instead, I would argue the main problem is that the studies that underlie this reporting are themselves subject to significant bias. I tend to agree with that assessment, but mostly just in the realm of nutrition science. Everyone has bias, and while scientists are trained to minimize it, it exists, even unconsciously. Science is largely self-correcting; that's why replication and peer review are necessary. The unfortunate truth is that people latch on to the first thing they hear, which is why we're still having arguments about the completely and thoroughly debunked idea, promulgated by someone with an Agenda, that vaccines cause autism (there's a lot more to that false claim, but I have another article queued up to talk about it). When you look at one particular food in the data and try to understand its impact, it’s impossible to zero in on the impact of just that food—you’re also seeing the impact of all of the other features that go into determining what food you eat. I'm pretty sure I've noted something like this before. At any rate, the article goes on to explain this sort of thing better than I ever have, so I'd suggest reading it. They also mention some variables that I don't think I've spent much time discussing, including education and wealth. There are even helpful graphs. But I think the bulk of the change must fall to how we do research, and how seriously we take these problems. Okay, I could argue on proportionality (studies / reporting on studies) here, but I won't. What I will do is point out that "we" don't "do research." (Watching videos on the internet doesn't count as "doing research"). The author there is apparently using "we" to mean "us scientists," which may not be apparent from just my cherry-picked quotes. This is one of the limitations of the English language, but a simple "we researchers" could have clarified. "We," as in average ordinary non-scientists, if we're going to be subjected to these potentially biased studies, have the responsibility to ourselves and others to spot questionable studies and reports thereof. Yes, like I've done in here in the past and will probably do again in the future. I know this may sound hypocritical, because I've railed before against putting certain responsibilities on us, but I think in this case, it's warranted. At the very least, though, let's not forget the ultimate confounding variable: personal taste. If you're forced to eat something you don't like, you'll eat less of it, and less means lower calories overall, which could lead to better health by some measures. I've suspected this for many years; one of the earliest stories in my portfolio was based on this idea. If I had to eat kale all the damn time, for instance, I'd get thin—but at what cost? At some point, you realize you're maybe going to live longer, but only by giving up some of the few things that make life worth living, so how is that better? Especially since you could get hit by a bus or a falling Russian satellite at any moment. |
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