pointers for the argument FOR meat

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

i am wondering if anyone (Micheal, for instance) could give me some

bullet-points for writing a letter to the editor of my local paper in response

to a recent anti-meat ( " pro-study " )letter.

[link to article:

http://www.reformer.com/letters/ci_12043740 ]

If i had more time, i would research this myself, however i don't have much

time... and don't want to miss an opportunity to get a good counter-argument out

there.

as you've pointed out below, , it seems one of the best counters to this

new anti-meat study is simply the poor design of it. i would still like to be

able to point out at the same time, however, the positives of a healthy

meat-eating diet...along with mention of Price's findings, etc.

other than " bullet-points " , i would also be happy with some links pointing

me in the direction of already-written letters, rebuttals and/or responses to

this ridiculous study.

thanks much,

becca

> More about this below, but one thing that can really help is to learn

> how to read a study. That particular study, when examined closely is

> plain bogus, no ifs ands or butts about it. It has been effectively

> critiqued and debunked all over the web. It was a very poorly designed

> study, but of course many who already have an ideological bent in that

> direction will eat it up. So if Mike is one of the people you

> read a lot of, and he couldn't see through that study (which took all

> of about 30 seconds, if that long), then you should probably stop

> reading him :-)

>

....

>

> If you are going to concern yourself with paying attention to

> scientific studies, either directly or as popularly summarized in the

> media, then it is imperative that you learn how to read a study.

> Otherwise you will be tossed to and fro by every new study that comes

> along purporting to settle this or that question. I had a couple of

> web links on reading studies that I seem to have lost due to computer

> dysfunction but here is one link that should help:

>

> http://www.nycclash.com/CaseAgainstBans/HowToReadStudies.html

>

> It is dissecting the " science " behind the implementation of smoking

> bans around the country, but that doesn't matter. Bans are just the

> fodder used to teach how to read a study. In fact the subtitle for the

> article is,

>

> EPIDEMIOLOGY 101

> OR HOW TO READ AND

> UNDERSTAND A STUDY

>

> There are many reasons that something becomes accepted " truth " and it

> very often has little to do with the truth. Just accept the fact that

> if you are going to do any independent thinking, you will often find

> yourself outside the mainstream on many occasions. If you want to sink

> your teeth a little deeper into the subject of why the march of

> scientific truth is not a progressive straight forward line, and that

> it is quite possible for a true paradigm, scientific or otherwise, to

> be replaced with a false paradigm, I would suggest an essay written a

> number of years ago by Murray Rothbard, " Ludwig Von Mises and the

> Paradigm of Our Age, " which can be found here:

>

> http://mises.org/rothbard/paradigm.pdf

>

> excerpt:

>

> " Furthermore...it becomes clear that, since intellectual vested

> interests play a more dominant role than continual open-minded

> testing, it may well happen that a successor paradigm is **less**

> correct than a predecessor. And if that is true, then we must always

> be open to the possibility that, indeed, we often know **less** about

> a given science now than we did decades or even centuries ago. Because

> paradigms become discarded and are never looked at again, the world

> may have **forgotten** scientific truth that was once known, as well

> as added to its stock of knowledge. Reading older scientists now opens

> up the distinct possibility that we may learn something that we

> haven't known---or have collectively forgotten---about the discipline.

> Professor de Grazia states that 'much more is discovered and forgotten

> than is known,' and much that has been forgotten may be more correct

> than theories that are now accepted as true.

>

> " If the Kuhn thesis is correct about the physical sciences, where we

> can obtain empirical and laboratory tests of hypotheses fairly easily,

> how much more must it be true in philosophy and the social sciences,

> where no such laboratory tests are possible! "