Anyone else notice a similarity between this and the global warming consensus? :)
> He introduced his report with these words: "The depth of the science base > underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and > health in 1964." > It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, > wasn't it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the > problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. > ... groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken > conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, > The magazine devoted four pages to the topic — > and just one paragraph noting that Dr. Keys's diet advice was "still > questioned by some researchers." > The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias > because some of them had done research financed by the food industry. And so > the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls > a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to > question the popular wisdom. > With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda > became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Venky.
