JedRothwell Verified User
  • Member since Oct 11th 2014
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Posts by JedRothwell

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    It would be useful if Jed would recognize how much his arguments resemble those of pseudoskeptics.


    My arguments do not even being to resemble those of the pseudoskeptics. Not in 1 ppb. Taubes makes a claim. There are a billion counterexamples -- people who eat a lot of refined rice, that is -- proving that his claim is bullshit. And you have the effrontery to tell me that this is not valid disproof of his claim! Don't be ridiculous.


    Biology and medical science are not like electrochemistry. They are statistical in nature. You can always find people who cannot eat white rice. You can find people who become morbidly obese eating it. However, when you find a billion people who are not adversely affected by it, that proves it has no serious, widespread adverse effects on most humans. There is no other way to test the Taubes hypothesis. You cannot point to a billion failed cold fusion experiments to show that the effect does not exist. If there is even a single positive experiment, that would overrule the others and prove it does exist. Biology does not work that way.

  • Robert V Duncan at TTU: 5Mn$ for hydride research in "Seashore research LLC"

    Quote from zeus46

    Though try fixing a Tesla yourself.


    No can do. I have not seen a Tesla but I own a Prius. It is like a digital watch. It is not the product of human hands. Only a robot can make make such a thing. All is modular.


    Quote from zeus46

    With a cheap OBD reader and access to eBay, you could fix 95% of problems in your 'Suzuki Swift'...


    True. I leave it up to a gang of 70-something mechanics at Georgetown Auto, which is located next door to the high school in the year 1965. When they retire, the car will have to go. One of them told me, "I've seen riding mowers with engines bigger than that."

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    He asserts facts, from research studies . . .


    Oh, I am sure he does. Like he did in his book. "Facts" such as the notion that factories are closed on weekends so there is more electricity winging around, which causes excess heat artifacts. You can open that book to just about any page and find an outrageous error or deliberate character assassination. "Facts" like in Japan in the 1960s most people ate brown rice. I can just imagine the "research study" that came from! Something written by a high school kid whose knowledge of Japan begins and ends with Pokemon and manga -- which is probably more than Taubes knows.


    Yeah, with facts like that, who needs ignorance?


    As I said, that kind of nonsense will invade your brain. Stay away from people who publish books with garbage like that. A stopped clock may be right twice a day but most of the time it will mislead you. When someone demonstrates a reckless disregard for facts, and when he tells researchers such as Ed Storms that he would gladly destroy their careers if he could make a buck doing it, that person is a psychopath, and you should not believe anything he says. Ever. In any context.

  • Robert V Duncan at TTU: 5Mn$ for hydride research in "Seashore research LLC"

    Quote from Shane D.

    If they had bought that equipment used, Duncan would have had a lot more reserve cash at his disposal.


    I strongly recommend buying new laboratory equipment. I have had many unfortunate experiences with used laboratory equipment, and used and old computer equipment. Researchers such as Mizuno use a lot of equipment from the 1970s and 80s and in some cases from the 1950s. They end up doing a lot of extra work keeping these machines working. Mizuno does not mind it because as he says, "I am an analog human in a digital world." But I think younger researchers would mind.


    If you need a high-tech gadget for any purpose, I recommend buying the latest model. Analytical equipment such as SEM have made vast strides in recent years. It is much more capable, and easier to use. The difference is as great as the difference between my manual shift 1994 Geo Metro (which has zero computers and no electronic or electric anything except the fuel injection and the cigarette lighter), and a Tesla with the latest automatic driving features.

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    The arguments you have presented are a dime a dozen on the blogs and fora about Taubes.


    Be that as it may, my statements regarding Asian diets are accurate. There is no doubt that millions of people eat refined white rice as a staple food without developing the problems Taubes describes. There is no doubt that Taubes knows nothing about the Japanese diet because he said that 50 years ago people there ate brown rice. I know a great deal more about this particular aspect of food than Taubes does. That is not surprising, since I studied Japanese and Chinese anthropology, sociology, history and Japanese literature, and attended a Japanese university. While I cannot critique the rest of his assertions, since I have discovered gross errors in his statements about Asia, and since I know that his previous technical statements about cold fusion were appalling nonsense, it seems likely to me the rest of his ideas are also wrong. As I said, you have to watch out with people like that, because the stupid will rub off on you. That is to say, you may not realize you are reading nonsense, and you might think it is true.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    It is, again, similar to cold fusion pseudoskepticism, in that the actual claims are not understood and details are attacked, often with severe misinformation.


    As far as I know, there is no misinformation in what I posted. I cited two books by actual, accredited academic experts on the human diet:


    "Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture" by Marvin Harris (deceased), U. Florida, Chair, General Anthropology Div., American Anthropology Association


    "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" by R. W. Wrngham, prof. of Biological Anthropology, Harvard U.


    I am confident that these two authors know more about food than Taubes and everyone on Planet Taubes tied together.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    However, he began a long-overdue conversation,


    On the contrary, obesity is a serious public health problem. People like Taubes have flooded the discussion with ignorance and misinformation, drowning out the valid science published by the CDC, Johns Hopkins and other organizations.

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    I also object, though I would say "the credibility of Taubes," not his "lack of credibility." Taubes is highly controversial . . .


    I think you have over-analyzed the discussion and lost sight of the point. Taubes makes specific assertions about the effects of eating refined white rice. There are roughly a billion people in Asia who eat mainly white rice as the staple in their diet. * These people are generally healthy and thin. A billion counterexamples is proof that Taubes is wrong. That is all there is to it. He is not "controversial," he is flat-out, demonstrably wrong.


    His assertion that 50 years ago people in Japan ate mainly brown rice is not just wrong, it is absurd. It is grotesquely ignorant about something that anyone can easily check. The Japanese traditional diet is not an obscure subject. Even if that were true, the present generation of 50-year-old rural people who eat traditional diets do not suffer from the problems he describes.



    * When I say "staple" I mean it is the main item to an extent that modern Americans would not imagine. They eat the equivalent of a loaf of white refined bread every day, and not much else. Actually, I often do that, and traditional Europeans and Americans did. This causes malnutrition but not obesity or the other problems Taubes describes. Needless to say, it causes problems with some people, as Mary Yugo pointed out.

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    We see people commenting with strong opinions where the do not know the literature and history.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Taubes as a debunker of "mainstream popular wisdom" is supremely ironic.


    You still claim that Taubes knows about diets, even after reading that nonsense about rice. Beware! Any undergraduate in anthropology knows more than he does about diet and foodways. His statement about the Japanese diet is astoundingly ignorant, off the wall, and totally without foundation, evidence or any knowledge of Japan:


    "In the case of Japan, for instance, the bulk of the population consumed brown rice rather than white until only recently, say the last 50 years."


    Brown rice?!? Really? Japan has been an industrial nation since 1890, with fully modern mills. I lived there nearly 50 years ago. I assure you, only health food fans ate brown rice. And even if it had been true that 50 years ago that people ate brown rice, there have been two generations of rural people since then who ate large amounts of refined white rice. They are seldom fat. They seldom suffer from the diseases ascribed to this diet by Mary Yugo and others. (Although some are obese and some suffer from these diseases no doubt -- I am not suggesting this never happens.)


    The point is, Taubes still makes shit up. He invents nonsense and proclaims it in public, just as he did when he claimed that cold fusion experiments produces excess heat on week-ends because factories use less electricity then, so more goes into the experiment. He said that on National Public Radio and elsewhere. That's total nonsense. He never even realized that the power going into a cell is measured. His statements about the Japanese diet and rice are as absurd as that. If anything else he says about diet happens to have a scientific basis, I suppose that is because a stopped clock is right twice a day.


    He has zero credibility. He knows nothing about electricity, nothing about anthropology, sociology, Asia or Asian diets. If you listen to him the stupid will rub off on you. For every valid idea you learn he will infect you with a dozen idiotic notions. Some people permanently lose credibility. When someone who claims to be an expert in diets tells you with a straight face that 50 years ago, people in Japan ate mostly brown rice, you should permanently ignore everything else he says. This is like someone who claims to be an expert in aviation asserting Boeing 747s run on regular grade lead-free automobile gasoline.

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    You can define "moderate" so that your claim is true. However, calorie restricted diets generally don't work, outside of careful clinical control. And the idea simply ignores most of what is actually going on.


    Calorie restricted diets always work. People who do not get enough to eat always grow thin, and if the diet continues long enough, they always starve to death. You can see this in photographs of concentration camp victims, and photos of people and animals who die from famine. The victims are always thin.


    There is no doubt whatever that modern-day obesity in the US is caused by overeating. In countries such as Italy, France and Japan people do not eat as much food as Americans do, so they are thinner. It is not difficult to measure overall consumption. You can observe individuals or have them keep food diaries, or you can just look at food production and sales and divide by population. You can measure overall food consumption and metabolism in an individual accurately with double-labeled water. That is, water with some of the hydrogen and oxygen replaced with rare isotopes (deuterium and oxygen-18).

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    This is a variation on the thermodynamic argument. This is precisely what Taubes is expert on.


    The only thing Taubes is an expert in is lying through his teeth. making idiotic assertions, and disrupting scientific research.


    Of course this is the thermodynamic argument. It was proved in 1783 by Lavoisier and Laplace, with the first effective modern calorimeter. An ice calorimeter. They measured the metabolic heat and carbon dioxide production of a guinea pig, and determined that the ratio of heat to carbon dioxide is the same as it is with fire.


    The caloric content of food is a little complicated. It is measured with the Atwater system, not strictly from calorimetry, although the results with calorimetry are similar for most foods. Some foods take more energy to digest than others. Extremely lean meat takes more energy to digest then you get out of the meat, which is why you starve to death eating only lean meat. Several grains and some plant foods when eaten raw also take more energy to digest then you get out of them. You have to cook them to avoid starving to death. This also killed several European explorers lost in Australia, who did not heed advice from the aborigines. Homo sapiens cannot survive without cooked food. Other species prefer cooked food. See the book, "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" for details.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    However, metabolism is variable, and so is behavior, and they are all interrelated with diet.


    Variations in human metabolism are small. For people of the same weight and size, they amount a difference of eating about 100 calories per day (1 slice of bread). Variations in digestion are larger, but among healthy people the difference is less than 10% as I recall. See:


    http://dietuni.com/diet/the-myth-of-slow-metabolism


    A small number of people are genetically unable to digest certain foods, as noted by Mary Yugo:


    Quote from Mary Yugo

    This is really not the place to discuss this so all I will say is look up: -metabolic syndrome -insulin resistance -appetite control . In susceptible individuals, eating carbohydrates (especially but not necessarily refined carbs), starts a cascade of unfortunate results.


    Yes. This is common knowledge. However, most people do not suffer from this problem. Most people are fine eating refined white rice. If everyone in Japan had been afflicted with this problem, the whole nation would have died out in the 19th century when refined white rice became the staple food. Granted, they did have a lot of malnutrition. People grew much taller and larger after WWII with more widespread consumption of milk, meat and other Western foods. The generational difference is dramatic and easily observed in photographs.

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Mary Yugo

    It's very OT so I won't say much about it but Jed's anti-Atkins rants, wrong as usual, neglect the fact that genetics determines a significant part of an individual's internal handling of food.


    There may be genetic differences, but that cannot explain the recent increase in obesity that Taubes attempted to explain. There has been no change in the genetics of the US and European populations that have grown obese since the 1970s. There has been no decrease in exercise. Only the type and quantity of food have changed. See:


    "Increased Food Intake Alone Explains Rise In Obesity In United States, Study Finds"


    https://www.sciencedaily.com/r…/2009/05/090508045321.htm


    Quote from Mary Yugo

    Many people of Asian descent handle all sorts of carbohydrates very well while a significant portion of people of European ancestry do not.


    Europeans who eat East Asian diets of mainly white rice do not get fat.


    As long as you eat moderate caloric quantities of food you will not gain weight. You can even eat nothing but sugary junk food and lose weight. Your teeth might rot, but you will not grow fat. See:


    "Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds"


    http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/

  • Can we talk about Holmlid?

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    It is far from that simple.
    proteinpower.com/drmike/2008/11/17/gary-taubes-responds/ (on Asian diet)


    Taubes wrote: "In the case of Japan, for instance, the bulk of the population consumed brown rice rather than white until only recently, say the last 50 years."


    That's wrong. They consumed white rice, not brown rice. The only time in the last 150 years people ate brown rice was toward the end of WWII when the government ordered them to.


    More to the point, rural people eat gobs of refined white rice now, and yet they are thin. As I said, I know many people who eat large portions of refined white rice three meals a day. They are thin and healthy all their lives, and they tend to live a long time. I know several who eat lots of sweets such as chocolate and pastry, as do I. My diet is mainly rice, bread and pastry -- probably unhealthy in many ways -- but I am thin.


    Taubes is a certified idiot who does not understand elementary facts such as how electricity works, as you see in the quotes here on p. 4. He thinks there is extra electricity on weekends because factories do not use it:


    http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf


    His book and his interview was crammed full of stupid nonsense such as this. He is also a liar and a psychopath who told Storms and others that he was happy to destroy people's lives and ruin careers if he could make money doing it.

  • Daily Caller on US Defense Threat Reduction Agency Cold Fusion Report

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    Article updated. Dailycaller obtains confirmation of document's authenticity:


    It was real after all. How do ya' like that?


    I complained there that the issue arose in the first place. They asked why it bothers me, and started psychoanalyzing me. Along the lines of: "You have some deep animosity here, blah, blah." Oh, yeah? said I. You people accuse me of uploading fake documents and then you ask why I am pissed off?


    Those people are not the sharpest tacks in the box.