"Lame" Norton was the first "expert" I filtered out when I began to study nutrition. His repeated assertion that you can eat whatever you want, just calorie count, was, and still is moronic. Similar to Attia, he first formulates a position and then cherry picks his way to it. Some of the studies he has cited in support of his beliefs are frankly laughable. The problem with the field is good experimental data is scarce so it's not very difficult to argue positions that you want to believe, when the sensible position is to stay open to nuance.
Will - I largely concur with your comment and while I have never heard of Layne Norton, "PhD" I am familiar with Peter Attia, MD, whose ideas on nutrition science and clinical nutrition expertise are pretty naive IMO. And I strongly suscept Layne's "PhD" is not from an accredited university. I wonder if Rav can tell us what kind of vetting he did on Layne's scientific training?
Hi Rav - Yes - I did not watch the interview and mistakenly mistook Will's comments as reliable reflection of Layne's positions. Will has since proven he is not all that interested in seeking truth or grasping what is and is not most likely true. Science is clearly not Mr. Nitschke's forte IMO.
Vast numbers of idiots have Phd's. That's not proof of competence. Norton and Attia's shtick is to identify a consensus on a topic and defend that. The problem with a consensus is that it just means expert opinion. There would be no point appealing to consensus if the evidence was definitive. And expert opinion is typically no more accurate than guesswork. Coming back to Norton, telling people with eating disorders (the obese) to just calorie count is idiotic, as this just won't work. Any sort of restricted diet such as carnivore is likely better than chronic obesity, assuming you can make it work, and assuming your genetics tolerate it. There is just not good evidence in nutrition to make these sweeping generalisations that everyone must eat a certain way. It's just laughable given our state of knowledge.
Well my guess is very few people with PhDs from accredited schools "idiots" with the average IQ being closer to 125. But I certainly agree that there are plenty of PhDs who cling to dubious ideas. You are likely correct calorie restricted dieting is a major factor contributing to eating disorders and rarely leads to long term weight control. And diets that restrict most low satiety/Kcal foods like the carnivore diet can promote weight loss with hunger, but may promote other health problems like artery disease and colo-rectal CA over the long term in a lot of people. Food For Thought
I suspect your guess would be wrong. The COVID debacle is a good example of what happens when you put PhD's in charge; you end up with the worst possible outcomes. A high IQ is better than a low IQ, but temperament is the ultimate determinant of what can be done with it. If you're prone to a false sense of your own genius, it can be counter productive. If you can't deal with admitting to yourself that there is not enough evidence either way to take a firm position (and from my observations almost everyone really struggles with this), then high IQ won't help either. As for cardiovascular disease even granted that ApoB is causal, that doesn't necessity make it significant. Far more important drivers may be insulin resistance and inflammation. For others it may mainly be about their lipids. This is why I keep harping on about nuance. Population statistics tell you about averaged populations, but nobody is a population statistic.
I said nothing wrong or if I did you certainly have not exposed it with credible evidence. The COVID debacle was largely the result of authoritarian bureaucracy and the FAILURE to follow the scientific evidence coupled with the corruption of the legacy news media and the lack of understanding of what the scientific evidence does and does not show is more likely true as far as I can determine. And if you look at the ones getting the science wrong it was far more MDs than PhDs. But we again appear to agree on the bigger picture that COVID and the failure of the scientific, medical, pharmaceutical, and mainstream media and naive [or evil political ideology] . Indeed, I agree 100% it was a debacle and those that do not learn from history [for whatever reason] and/or cannot admit their mistakes [or worse cover them up their blunders like Anthone Fauci, MD] helped make it a debacle. Atherosclerosis and CVD are certainly multi-factorial diseases. Elevated levels of Apo B containing lipoprotein are the primary driver of atherosclerotic disease. So while hypertension and insulin resistance also play a significant role they are not the primary cause of most coronary heart disease and/or strokes but secondary to dyslipidemia. Both are due largely to poor dietary choices that drive most diseases MDs treat with drugs and surgeries that clearly not eliminating CVD, insulin resistance, inflammation, and/or dyslipidemia. FFT
BTW, a reply consisting of “you failed to convince me” is not a serious response. My best guess is I hurt your feelings because you felt I wasn't giving your credentials the deference it deserves. Which reinforces my original point. If you can't argue your case, then best to part ways and we'll agree to disagree. You can continue to blame the media for not taking over the roll of the heads of the scientific institutions, and I'll keep it simpler and continue to blame those tasked with the responsibilities.
MS's were useless but they were not solely in charge. Head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, was a PhD. Marks who approved the experimental gene therapies was also a PhD. However, many involved were MD's only plus holding other credentials. So I should broaden out my claim to that of "the highly credentialed".
As for your claim that ApoB is the primary driver in all people, that claim has been debunked by the LMHR study. It's likely a, or the, primary driver in those who have FH. Again, nuance, not one size fits all, sweeping generalisations.
Anyone who implies people are generally too stupid to parse large amounts of information is an academic elitist, and therefore deserves exactly zero respect.
I know where you're coming from because this line of thinking you're alluding to often follows calls for censorship. But I can assure you Layne is anti-censorship and pro-more information. However, what he is saying is true: we humans do face this modern struggle of a over-inundation with mass information which can be very confusing. It's hard to parse out what's true vs fake. I did an article on the Alex Pretti shooting recently, for example, and I spent over 10 hours consuming information from both sides before feeling slightly qualified enough to opine about it. It was ridiculously challenging because our informational landscape is so fragmented.
It is not possible to prove that any preventative, not just vaccines, prevented any case of disease, much less saved a life. There was no illness, there was no death. Saving lives and preventing disease is hypothetical, not actual. We can generate statistics on "lives saved" but those statistics are entirely hypothetical and should not be judged similar to statistics about actual cases of illness or death. Claims that "lives were saved" require a much higher standard than claims that "deaths were caused." Deaths are real. Saved lives are fiction.
Both of you are raising points worth considering, but the thread keeps drifting away from evidence and into credential‑bashing and assumptions about motives.
Will is right that nutrition science is full of weak data, that individual variability matters, and that consensus isn’t the same as proof. James is right that one short‑term study doesn’t overturn decades of converging evidence on ApoB, and that evidence hierarchies matter.
Where things go off the rails is when valid points get mixed with overgeneralizations.
• Will: skepticism is healthy, but dismissing entire fields or credentialed experts outright weakens otherwise strong arguments about nuance and individual variation.
• James: emphasizing the weight of evidence is important, but leaning on authority or ‘Google it’ instead of directly engaging the LMHR data leaves a gap in your position.
If the goal is clarity rather than winning, the strongest position is acknowledging that:
ApoB is a major causal driver for most people,
LMHR suggests there may be subgroups where the relationship behaves differently,
and nutrition remains a field where overconfidence and oversimplification cause more confusion than the data itself.
Both of you have pieces of the truth — neither of you has the whole picture.
John - Well I am dubious Layne's "PhD" is from an accredited university. If it was and Will is correct that calorie counting allows to eat anything is out of sync with the best research evidence I have seen. I wonder if Layne even knows why suage promotes weight gain when consumed in beverages but does not when consumed as whole fruit?
SAVE us from the Idiocracy Act.
To shovel snow in Mamdani’s NYC, 2 photos, two IDs and copies, and your SocSec card.
But illegals can vote along with dead people, no IDs needed.
That is categorically absurd, I will say.
"Lame" Norton was the first "expert" I filtered out when I began to study nutrition. His repeated assertion that you can eat whatever you want, just calorie count, was, and still is moronic. Similar to Attia, he first formulates a position and then cherry picks his way to it. Some of the studies he has cited in support of his beliefs are frankly laughable. The problem with the field is good experimental data is scarce so it's not very difficult to argue positions that you want to believe, when the sensible position is to stay open to nuance.
Since when did he say eat whatever you want? We talked about the importance of fiber, protein, and vitamins and minerals.
Then you don't know anything about this guru except this one interview presumably?
Will - I largely concur with your comment and while I have never heard of Layne Norton, "PhD" I am familiar with Peter Attia, MD, whose ideas on nutrition science and clinical nutrition expertise are pretty naive IMO. And I strongly suscept Layne's "PhD" is not from an accredited university. I wonder if Rav can tell us what kind of vetting he did on Layne's scientific training?
He has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences (Honors) from the University of Illinois
Is that good enough for you?
Hi Rav - Yes - I did not watch the interview and mistakenly mistook Will's comments as reliable reflection of Layne's positions. Will has since proven he is not all that interested in seeking truth or grasping what is and is not most likely true. Science is clearly not Mr. Nitschke's forte IMO.
Vast numbers of idiots have Phd's. That's not proof of competence. Norton and Attia's shtick is to identify a consensus on a topic and defend that. The problem with a consensus is that it just means expert opinion. There would be no point appealing to consensus if the evidence was definitive. And expert opinion is typically no more accurate than guesswork. Coming back to Norton, telling people with eating disorders (the obese) to just calorie count is idiotic, as this just won't work. Any sort of restricted diet such as carnivore is likely better than chronic obesity, assuming you can make it work, and assuming your genetics tolerate it. There is just not good evidence in nutrition to make these sweeping generalisations that everyone must eat a certain way. It's just laughable given our state of knowledge.
Well my guess is very few people with PhDs from accredited schools "idiots" with the average IQ being closer to 125. But I certainly agree that there are plenty of PhDs who cling to dubious ideas. You are likely correct calorie restricted dieting is a major factor contributing to eating disorders and rarely leads to long term weight control. And diets that restrict most low satiety/Kcal foods like the carnivore diet can promote weight loss with hunger, but may promote other health problems like artery disease and colo-rectal CA over the long term in a lot of people. Food For Thought
I suspect your guess would be wrong. The COVID debacle is a good example of what happens when you put PhD's in charge; you end up with the worst possible outcomes. A high IQ is better than a low IQ, but temperament is the ultimate determinant of what can be done with it. If you're prone to a false sense of your own genius, it can be counter productive. If you can't deal with admitting to yourself that there is not enough evidence either way to take a firm position (and from my observations almost everyone really struggles with this), then high IQ won't help either. As for cardiovascular disease even granted that ApoB is causal, that doesn't necessity make it significant. Far more important drivers may be insulin resistance and inflammation. For others it may mainly be about their lipids. This is why I keep harping on about nuance. Population statistics tell you about averaged populations, but nobody is a population statistic.
I said nothing wrong or if I did you certainly have not exposed it with credible evidence. The COVID debacle was largely the result of authoritarian bureaucracy and the FAILURE to follow the scientific evidence coupled with the corruption of the legacy news media and the lack of understanding of what the scientific evidence does and does not show is more likely true as far as I can determine. And if you look at the ones getting the science wrong it was far more MDs than PhDs. But we again appear to agree on the bigger picture that COVID and the failure of the scientific, medical, pharmaceutical, and mainstream media and naive [or evil political ideology] . Indeed, I agree 100% it was a debacle and those that do not learn from history [for whatever reason] and/or cannot admit their mistakes [or worse cover them up their blunders like Anthone Fauci, MD] helped make it a debacle. Atherosclerosis and CVD are certainly multi-factorial diseases. Elevated levels of Apo B containing lipoprotein are the primary driver of atherosclerotic disease. So while hypertension and insulin resistance also play a significant role they are not the primary cause of most coronary heart disease and/or strokes but secondary to dyslipidemia. Both are due largely to poor dietary choices that drive most diseases MDs treat with drugs and surgeries that clearly not eliminating CVD, insulin resistance, inflammation, and/or dyslipidemia. FFT
BTW, a reply consisting of “you failed to convince me” is not a serious response. My best guess is I hurt your feelings because you felt I wasn't giving your credentials the deference it deserves. Which reinforces my original point. If you can't argue your case, then best to part ways and we'll agree to disagree. You can continue to blame the media for not taking over the roll of the heads of the scientific institutions, and I'll keep it simpler and continue to blame those tasked with the responsibilities.
MS's were useless but they were not solely in charge. Head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, was a PhD. Marks who approved the experimental gene therapies was also a PhD. However, many involved were MD's only plus holding other credentials. So I should broaden out my claim to that of "the highly credentialed".
As for your claim that ApoB is the primary driver in all people, that claim has been debunked by the LMHR study. It's likely a, or the, primary driver in those who have FH. Again, nuance, not one size fits all, sweeping generalisations.
Anyone who implies people are generally too stupid to parse large amounts of information is an academic elitist, and therefore deserves exactly zero respect.
I know where you're coming from because this line of thinking you're alluding to often follows calls for censorship. But I can assure you Layne is anti-censorship and pro-more information. However, what he is saying is true: we humans do face this modern struggle of a over-inundation with mass information which can be very confusing. It's hard to parse out what's true vs fake. I did an article on the Alex Pretti shooting recently, for example, and I spent over 10 hours consuming information from both sides before feeling slightly qualified enough to opine about it. It was ridiculously challenging because our informational landscape is so fragmented.
I quit listening and will never listen again to what Lane has to say once he stated authoritatively that the covid jab "saved millions of lives "...
ProfRod
It is not possible to prove that any preventative, not just vaccines, prevented any case of disease, much less saved a life. There was no illness, there was no death. Saving lives and preventing disease is hypothetical, not actual. We can generate statistics on "lives saved" but those statistics are entirely hypothetical and should not be judged similar to statistics about actual cases of illness or death. Claims that "lives were saved" require a much higher standard than claims that "deaths were caused." Deaths are real. Saved lives are fiction.
Both of you are raising points worth considering, but the thread keeps drifting away from evidence and into credential‑bashing and assumptions about motives.
Will is right that nutrition science is full of weak data, that individual variability matters, and that consensus isn’t the same as proof. James is right that one short‑term study doesn’t overturn decades of converging evidence on ApoB, and that evidence hierarchies matter.
Where things go off the rails is when valid points get mixed with overgeneralizations.
• Will: skepticism is healthy, but dismissing entire fields or credentialed experts outright weakens otherwise strong arguments about nuance and individual variation.
• James: emphasizing the weight of evidence is important, but leaning on authority or ‘Google it’ instead of directly engaging the LMHR data leaves a gap in your position.
If the goal is clarity rather than winning, the strongest position is acknowledging that:
ApoB is a major causal driver for most people,
LMHR suggests there may be subgroups where the relationship behaves differently,
and nutrition remains a field where overconfidence and oversimplification cause more confusion than the data itself.
Both of you have pieces of the truth — neither of you has the whole picture.
He’s not a radiation expert but he still going to say it “should not be a problem”. Really? Stick to nutrition if that’s what phd is in.
John - Well I am dubious Layne's "PhD" is from an accredited university. If it was and Will is correct that calorie counting allows to eat anything is out of sync with the best research evidence I have seen. I wonder if Layne even knows why suage promotes weight gain when consumed in beverages but does not when consumed as whole fruit?