Lack of balls or lack of brains?

In my last post I hinted strongly at the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in a recent editorial. I don’t actually think there is much dissonance out there in the world of science. People aren’t really suffering emotional distress from feelings of holding conflicting ideas. Those who sense something is wrong usually acknowledge it and resolve their confusions. Most often when we find obvious contradictions in the same texts in scientific journals I think there are two main reasons; Lack of balls and lack of brains.

Lack of balls is a naturally occurring phenomenon due to the peer review system. If the editorial mentioned in my last post had concluded that carbohydrate restriction is the solution to all our problems it probably wouldn’t have been published, and we would have missed out on all the good stuff that was also in it. Somewhere along the way the writer possibly swallowed a medium sized camel and experienced the consequent testicular shrinkage.

Lack of brains is also no rare happening. Either as lack of actual thinking power or lack of brains for dinner, the two are closely related. Still, dissonance is rare. Pure stupidity, I believe, more frequent. Many, simply do not know any better.

I finally finished Lindebergs “Food and Western Disease: Health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective." Despite the joy of finally reading this exiting book, at closing the book after reading its last page I felt a strong sense of disappointment. Lean meat! LEAN MEAT! Come on, Staffan.

Here is a book with tons of great science, nearly two thousand references and a great and interesting study to top it off, but when the author seem to miss some of the absolute basics about fat and disease, I find it unlikely this is due to fear of not getting published. It seems his honest opinion. On top of it all, Lindeberg clearly over interprets many studies. Often, the references do not support the statement they accompany and the belittling words that should have been there with the statement, are left out.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Are my standards to high? How can I get so disappointed because of a few blunders in an otherwise great book? Nobody’s perfect, I know, but I just so much want someone to get everything right, or at least all the important stuff. Reading books about diet can be tedious, as I am sure many of you agree with. We're all looking for that one book to make all other books in it's field superfluous.

The one thing I do know is that I can't keep going with my standards at the currant level. It'll only make me an angry, stressed out old man. Right now there is too much non sense out there, and I need to find a way to deal with it. 

So I'm taking a break right now.