Comments

1. #1 Hume's Ghost

   July 8, 2010

   Well, I have six pack abs, too, and I agree with those who think this is a terrible decision. See john Rennie’s post on this

   http://johnrennie.net/2010/07/07/teetering-chinese-wall-falls-on-scienceblogs/

2. #2 dewey

   July 8, 2010

   Hank – If I were a Pepsi employee, would I respond to your libelous accusation by telling you to go screw yourself? Go screw yourself. It so happens that I agree with you 100% on the Pepsi issue; however, I also think that someone who sees any nutrition blog as a suitable forum to express his hatred of Muslims is probably someone who has gone off his psychiatric meds.

   daedalus2u – Ah, the ol’ “don’t seem to understand” rebuttal. Prior plausibility is not and cannot be a totally objective measure, and no matter what they may say on SBM, it’s pretty obvious that most people who heavily employ the concept do downgrade the plausibility of hypotheses they personally dislike. For me, assuming that there were no prior research on, say, the etiology of colon cancer, it would be MUCH more plausible that diet is relevant than that skin bacteria are. What one eats actually contacts the colon on a daily basis, after all. Of course, if there were solid peer-reviewed research supporting the skin-bacteria hypothesis, I would have to start taking it seriously no matter how surprising I found it. Feel free to give a few citations if such research has actually been published.

3. #3 daeddalus2u

   July 8, 2010

   Dewey, you do realize you are not talking about prior plausibility of a new idea, you are talking about something generally recognized as a well developed mainstream idea. I assume you do realize those are two very different things?

   If you read the SBM post, it is clear that every correct idea can never actually have a low prior plausibility. If a new idea that is shown to be correct was thought to have a low prior plausibility, the problem is in the way that the incorrect prior plausibility was calculated. The problem is not with the new idea.

   That you don’t understand how prior plausibility works is your issue not mine. That most scientists don’t understand how it works is unfortunate and greatly slows the pace of scientific progress because good ideas can’t get funding because of the subjective misjudgments of grant reviewers.

4. #4 Marichi

   July 8, 2010

   Pepsi’s blog is gone. SB took notice of the protests and pulled it down. Good.

5. #5 Darrell E

   July 8, 2010

   daeddalus2u,

   Okay, I think you have spent sufficient time and words on how well you understand prior plausibility. But, instead of taking off on another irrelevant (to the main topic)tangent, how about answering the fucking question that dewey asked? Which is directly related to the argument you two are having.

   Are you trying to hide something? Is it so important to you to be seen as the winner that it doesn’t matter to you whether your claims are reasonably well supported? Don’t worry, only a twit would think bad of you if there are currently no published papers supporting your hypothesis.

6. #6 daedalu2u

   July 8, 2010

   Whitlock DR, Feelisch M. Soil Bacteria, Nitrite, and the Skin. In: The Hygiene Hypothesis and Darwinian
   Medicine (Rook GAW, ed.), Birkhaeuser Publishing, Basel, 2009

   http://www.springer.com/birkhauser/biosciences/book/978-3-7643-8902-4?detailsPage=toc

7. #7 stogoe

   July 8, 2010

   Screw you guys, I want to talk about the awfulness of every new Dew Flavor (except Black)!

8. #8 dewey

   July 8, 2010

   “every correct idea can never actually have a low prior plausibility” – Well, that’s just ridiculous. You seem to envision plausibility as a black-and-white issue where “low prior plausibility” means “impossible to be true” and hence really “no prior plausibility.” If you treat small and zero values as identical in practice, any claim that you are “calculating” is problematic. And how many hypotheses that we now think are true or possibly true would have been evaluated by reputable scholars, at some point in the past, as being extremely unlikely given the available knowledge at that time? Probably quite a few. Apparently the error in the the way in which they would have “calculated” plausibility would have been to base their judgements on the actual state of knowledge at the time, rather than paying attention to future knowledge.

   Besides – you do realize that I was asking, IF certain ideas (diet causes colon cancer; mysterious skin bacteria cause colon cancer) WERE newly proposed hypotheses without research support, not well developed mainstream ideas, THEN which would we consider to be more likely just based on our general knowledge of human biology? That you don’t understand a hypothetical question is your issue, not mine. (I trust you will not be offended by this phrasing, since it’s yours.)

   I take it, also, that as Darrell implies, there is actually no published research to support the skin-bacteria hypothesis. I am not asking you to write an essay on it if there is, just cite, say, two papers so that I can go and look them up.

9. #9 dewey

   July 8, 2010

   Thanks for the citation; however, it is to a chapter in a book with a non-negligible cost. Any peer-reviewed publications in the primary literature, for which at least abstracts are available online?

10. #10 Ichthyic

    July 8, 2010

    The knee-jerk response of snooty assholes who think that they look more educated or forward-thinking or refined because “they dont drink ‘soda’ or eat Doritos” is unimpressive.

    a little late, but I would say:

    Good thing the serious objections had nothing to do with that.

11. #11 daedalus2u

    July 8, 2010

    try this link

    http://books.google.com/books?id=a3mwmXzpsjkC&lpg=PA103&ots=Elc3X4YAXn&dq=%22soil%20bacteria%20nitrite%20and%20the%20skin%22&pg=PA103#v=onepage&q=%22soil%20bacteria%20nitrite%20and%20the%20skin%22&f=false

12. #12 dewey

    July 8, 2010

    That is interesting. However, the authors of this chapter only propose a hypothesis that skin bacteria are related to immune and inflammatory conditions (they don’t mention cancer), which they acknowledge to be based on “numerous assumptions” that have not yet been tested – including the assumptions that skin nitrate levels vary with hygiene and that nitrate is absorbable through the skin. So this is somewhat less impressive than if they were able to review a list of studies that demonstrated that their hypothesis was at least possible.

    These authors seem to think of nitrate and nitrite as good for you, period, and fret that the relative lack of nitrate in processed foods is bad for us. They state directly that all swallowed nitrite (after conversion from nitrate in saliva) is either absorbed or used to generate NO. Now, the mainstream view is that swallowed nitrites are also used to generate nitrosamines, which are generally thought to be carcinogens. For this reason, there has been a deliberate effort to reduce the formerly very high nitrate content in processed meats. Telling people that they ought to consume a lot of nitrate may not be very good advice. If I had edited this book I would have objected to these authors’ conclusions, as they turn around and state as fact things for which they previously admitted they had little or no evidence.

13. #13 daedallus2u

    July 8, 2010

    They do offer citations as to the fate of swallowed nitrite.

    The mainstream view in the NO research community is that the idea that nitrate in food and drinking water is bad is not supported by good science. The foods that are highest in nitrate (green leafy vegetables have a few thousand ppm nitrate) are the foods that correlate most strongly with good health.

    The idea that nitrite in the gut causes nitrosoamine formation has not been verified experimentally. People with the highest nitrate consumption (vegetarians) tend to have low cancer rates (for some cancers).

    If you conclude an idea has a low prior plausibility, you should be able to provide positive support for implausibility; support that derives from something other than ignorance.

    If you can’t, you should concede that you don’t know enough to know if an idea is implausible or not. That should be your default in the face of ignorance. It is unfortunate that so many people are unwilling to say “I don’t know” when they should.

    That was the whole basis of the Pepsicopocolypse. People thought they knew what Pepsico was going to write and so Pepsico got expelled before they wrote anything.

14. #14 David Utidjian

    July 8, 2010

    Main objection I have to Mountain Dew is that it resembles the anti-freeze coolant that is used in cars. Many children, thinking the stuff is their favorite soft drink, die every year from drinking the stuff.

    Personally, I don’t like any ingestible product that is colored blue. I can’t think of any food, in nature, that is blue. Blueberries don’t count because they are more deep purple in color. Perhaps anti-freeze should be colored blue instead and other blue drinks be discouraged.

    Think of the children!

15. #15 dewey

    July 8, 2010

    Well, maybe the downsides of nitrate have been exaggerated; that doesn’t mean we should turn around and start exaggerating the benefits either. As for prior plausibility, if everyone would agree to use “low plausibility” strictly to mean “impossible if currently well-accepted theories are true,” I’d be fine with that. However, it has to be consistently applied. One can certainly say that homeopathy is of low plausibility. One can’t say that herbal remedies are, just because one doesn’t like them, as some of the SBM crowd have been known to do.

    I don’t think anyone who opposed the Pepsi blog claimed to know what its contents would be. They only claimed to know that it would not be independent science written by a blogger who was free to speak his mind. No blogger is really objective – there’s no such person – but someone who is acting as a paid spokesman for a corporation with financial interests in a subject is less objective than most. I for one am glad to hear that Pepsi is getting the boot.

16. #16 Aj

    July 8, 2010

    This post made me go look up when I last had a Mountain Dew.

    Not been sold in the UK for twelve years.

    http://www.hodgson.trelader.btinternet.co.uk/

    Damn that makes me feel old.

17. #17 Hank Fox

    July 8, 2010

    “dewey” said:

    I also think that someone who sees any nutrition blog as a suitable forum to express his hatred of Muslims is probably someone who has gone off his psychiatric meds.

    I’m guessing dewey mixed my name up with some other commenter. Either that, or his irrational rage has overcome his ability to read.

    Nothing I’ve posted on this site, or on any “nutrition blog,” could even remotely be construed as an expression of hatred of Muslims. (And technically, the comment to which he’s referring didn’t even appear on a nutrition blog; it was on Pharyngula.)

    It’s true I don’t like the religion of Islam very much, and I gladly participated in Everybody Draw Mohammad Day as an expression of solidarity with the cartoonists and publishers who suffered death threats for publishing cartoons of Mohammad.

    But I also don’t like the religion of Christianity very much. Hey, I’m an atheist. It’s what we do. I poke fun at Christianity often and joyfully – MUCH more than I poke fun at Islam.

    Neither of those things is “hatred” for the individual humans who express belief in one or the other of those religions. It’s simple disagreement, and freedom of expression, which – despite what dewey seems to believe – is the right of every human.

    Dewdrop, you’re welcome to believe in your own private mind, what you have of it, that my poking fun at Mohammad (or Jesus) is somehow an expression of hatred. But, damn, kid, get a grip: You don’t have to spit such NASTY accusations out in public.

    In addition to betraying what appears to be an unexamined opposition to freedom of speech, it literally makes you look insane.

18. #18 Hume's Ghost

    July 8, 2010

    Forgot to mention: Canfield’s diet chocolate fudge and diet cherry chocolate fudge are the greatest soda’s ever.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canfield's_Diet_Chocolate_Fudge

19. #19 Steve Caldwell

    July 10, 2010

    For folks on a budget, the Kroger store brand “Citrus Drop Extreme” is a good replacement for Mountain Dew.

    My daughter laughed at the “extreme” name and I responded that it was an “extreme” value.

20. #20 Kevin

    January 31, 2011

    Mountain dew enema is the best experience ive ever had. loved every second of it, only classic green, dont mess with that livewire. one time i drank 30 dews in one day and had a dew-fueled boner for 6 hours.

    get a life, guys. blogging online about soda?