Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Another Science Failure, Cont'd

Too many vitamins can give you CANCER, major new study warns the millions who take them
This link gives the "vital" information, but not the complete story. So the facts remain unclear.

Vitamins were declared "vital" nutrients by scientists studying nutrition, and they even declared "minimum daily requirements". But they didn't study the obvious other end of the Bell curve.

The nutrient studies were essential science at the times they were made, starting well over a century ago. Deficiencies were real and nasty. Supplements were welcomed, and for some, they were essential additions. But as far as I know, only the danger of an excess of vitamin D ever made it to the public consciousness, and the benefits of vitamin supplements are still highly promoted and highly profitable. So of course, if some vitamins are good at the minimum level, then more vitamins must be better, right?

If this current study is valid, one has to wonder how many people died from the cancer caused by the failure to study the effect of excessive dosages of supplements. But I'm not sure about the validity, or the location of the data, for this "study". It could be a journalistic twisting of "science", a separate sort of science failure.

1 comment:

Robert Coble said...

Have you ever noticed how "science" flip-flops in so many areas?

At times it feels as if we (the great unwashed majority) are the experimental animals in an enormous lab experiment.

"The science is settled. The debate is over."

Until yet another study of exactly the same subject area occurs, and then everything previously "settled" becomes "settled" in the exact opposite sense.

Give it another 10-20 years of experimentation on the public at large, and I guarantee that there will be another flip-flop. And then, once again:

"The science is settled. The debate is over."

Since history begins the day you are born, it provides endless opportunities for the application of Santayana's dictum:

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."