My reply to a media person when he blamed the scientists for the confusion in the society

It has become a fashion these days to blame scientists and science for every thing. For example read this statement by a media person:
We can blame the billionaires and the corporate lobbies, but part of blame lies with scientists and the related government agencies. Since the 1960s we were told fats were the cause of overweight and lead to heart disease. As recent reports in prestigious publications showed in statistically significant studies people who have a low fat diet put on more weight.
http://wunc.org/post/full-fat-paradox-whole-milk-may-keep-us-lean
A similar story is true for salt we were told cutting salt is good for your health, extensive studies have found the opposite. Here is a quote from a New York Times article. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-k...

"In the years since, the N.I.H. has spent enormous sums of money on studies to test the hypothesis, and those studies have singularly failed to make the evidence any more conclusive. Instead, the organizations advocating salt restriction today — the U.S.D.A., the Institute of Medicine, the C.D.C. and the N.I.H. — all essentially rely on the results from a 30-day trial of salt, the 2001 DASH-Sodium study....... But four years ago, Italian researchers began publishing the results from a series of clinical trials, all of which reported that, among patients with heart failure, reducing salt consumption increased the risk of death.

Those trials have been followed by a slew of studies suggesting that reducing sodium to anything like what government policy refers to as a “safe upper limit” is likely to do more harm than good."

The fact is bad science by REPUTABLE agencies is much of the cause of skepticism that leads people to believe these Climate Deniers. The problem is once the food industry invested invested in low sodium, low fat.. the Government agencies just covered up the bad science. There is one major part of the issue... bad science

My reply:
Mr. X: Now read this:
Scientists Fix Errors in Controversial Paper About Saturated Fats
http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/03/scientists-fix-errors-con...
The meta analyses and studies are usually done by people who are not related to the subject. It is not actual research by scientists in the field. And media jumps to conclusions without thinking even for a single second. The moment I read the meta- analysis, I immediately recognized the flaws and wrote on my net work , that this one was a flawed study and one should take it with a pinch of salt! Your genes will definitely determine whether you are susceptible or not. And the amount of work you do too determines whether you will get effected or not! In earlier times when people used to walk long distances and did everything using their hands, fats might not have effected them as much as they do now. You cannot compare those situations with the present situations! You cannot put all the people in one bracket to come to a conclusion! The results are unclear and flawed and the study was done without taking several things into consideration.
And studies are different from actual research papers published.
And I was proved right! I even wrote to several news papers here about the flaws of the study and reference to the above paper. I have requested the media several times not to jump to conclusions so easily and readily and analyse the work fully before reporting. But would they listen? No, they wouldn't! Can't they understand they are putting the health of people at risk. When people read these reports they think, they are true and throw caution to the winds! Proof of how careless media can get! Media doesn't correct itself! It just ignores the corrections.
Only an expert can tell whether a report is correct or not. Whether it contains any flaws or not, not the media.

If you read my articles -
Why we get dumb and contradictory reports in science
http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/why-we-get-contr...
The importance of being cautious while accepting ' research results'

http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/the-importance-o...
Just studies are different from thorough scientific research!

http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/just-studies-are...
You will understand how to differentiate between real science research papers and just studies

Don't blame science for everything when a complex web is responsible for this confusion.
While experts are trained to come out of this web unscathed, the man on the street will get entangled in it and get confused.
There is no confusion among the majority of the scientific community regarding climate science..
The reply to the same person by another person:
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'bad science" P. There is no "bad science" if the science is being done properly. There is just unfortunate conclusions, which indicate a larger problem for the scientific method than just the quality of the science.

To discredit any result from science, one should initially use a controlled experiment to see if the result is reproducible under the same conditions, and when investigating the same set of parameters. If the result is still not reproducible, it would still be unfair to conclude the study used "bad science"because interactions between a multitude of effecting factors could be responsible.

That different results are obtainable from different studies does not make for 'bad science' per sae. In any multi-factorial study like dietary studies, or climate studies, the effects of some factors cannot be adequately accounted for, so there is naturally going to be discrepancies between some studies.

One responsible way to account for results discrepancy between studies, might be to analyze how many studies are 'for' or 'against' some factor and become resigned to simply call the state of play.. Instead of just comparing two studies to make an invalid point.

But you are right P, it is definitely the multi-factorial studies, like climate and diet, that are most difficult to do controlled experiments, since they lead to disparate results. And in that sense, at the end of the day, belief either one way or the other becomes the safest option, in relation to associated issues. So perhaps the wisest most empirical stance is the agnostic stance of moderation, somewhere in the middle ground.