Comments by "Arthur Mosel" (@arthurmosel808) on "How Big Government Backed Bad Science Made Americans Fat" video.

An example of selective science was cigarettes. My statistics professor used the original Surgeon General's Report on cigerettes to demonstrate the misuse of statistics. First, I am not supporting cigerettes. Second I am talking about the fact the report minimized bigger questions. There were countries that were studied with a higher per capita cigerette use, the stats showed that heavy smokers there had 1 lung cancer; while non-smokers had 1000, in other words, 10 to the 3rd fewer cancers than non-smokers here. What was a common factor in both cases much lower air pollution. The report also looked at population centers, and found Denver (at the time) had a lower lung cancer rate than other population centers, and a again a lower air pollution level. As Denver's air pollution increased so did the lung cancer. The final ignored piece of the study looked at if how the cigarette was lit mattered; guess what, it did. People using matches had a lower lung cancer rate than those using lighters. The report should have concluded that something in air pollution was a bigger lung cancer factor than tobacco and its burning products. Working on that issue would have done more for public health, but potentionally cost more. So the great anti-cigerette war began.
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Besides the questions of the quality of the science, the levels that are bad keep being changed. This increases the number people who have a problem. At one point sugar levels were supposed to be an A1C of 100 or under, the lasted claims that I have seen is a range between 90 and 110. Perhaps it was because at 70 people are approaching hypoglycemia and below that you begin seeing extremely negative issues. In fact hypoglycemia will injure or kill you far faster than hyperglycemia (that isn't saying hyperglycemia isn't bad). So her points are valid in a much wider arena.
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