Who cares about facts or research?

David

Not true. She says at the end of her article " the fat gene identified by researchers needs to be triggered." Fat genes don't make you fat. It's what you eat that makes the difference.

THX1138

"So, whose opinion would you rather trusts on matters scientific? Scientists whose work is peer reviewed and based on objective evidence? Or a newspaper columnist who has written a diet book?". I agree we should trust Scientists whose work is critically reviewed by experts in their field however you tread on dangerous ground on the Spectator website when discussing Science . Many people making comments & other newspaper columnists particularly Melanie Phillips who with no scientific training or real understanding of climatology, epidemiology & evolution state categorically with no possible room for doubt that, man made global warming is not happening, that the MMR jab causes autism & we could not have evolved without an intelligent designer. How do these people hold on to their irrational views in the face of scientific experts who dedicated their lives to understanding these highly complex issues but can be brushed aside at the stoke of a politically motivated keyboard . The sheer arrogance/ignorance of so many columnists always amazes me. Lets trust the scientists to deal with these issues of fact (until disproved by other scientists) & leave newspaper columnists to matters they can understand.

Stephen P

Dear THX1138, I'm not sure why you say I am on dangerous ground. This is my site, and I'm answerable to know one for my views. And on the three things your state: "man made global warming is not happening, that the MMR jab causes autism & we could not have evolved without an intelligent designer" I, of course, practise what I preach. I take heed of what the scientific consensus finds.

Lee Jakeman

Scientists are obsessed with the idea that everything has a physical cause. If I create a programmable robot, programmed to do this, that and the other, a scientist would say that the robot's program was the "cause" of its behaviour. Not true. I wrote the program. So I am the cause of the behaviour, not the program. In the same way, scientists take our genes for granted. It doesn't occur to them that the genes themselves might be the product of some mental "blueprint" buried in the deepest recesses of our minds.

Stephen Pollard

Ouch. I can't believe I actually wrote "know one" in that comment. It just shows what language crimes one can commit when writing on autopilot...

THX1138

Stephen P Of course you can say what you like on your blog that is why I read you, your only on dangerous ground because most people on this blog will disagree with you on this but agree with you on most of the other stuff that you write. I wish you would write more on this subject I'm very glad that one corner of the Spectator website holds true to rational scientific thought. I just read so much twaddle on this site discussing scientific issues like the post that comes before mine & dismissing them particularly AGW based on no idea of the science & for what appears to be for purely ideological reasons. We should take much more seriously the opinions of people who have spent a lifetime working hard to understand these really difficult issue. As Damian Thompson says in his excellent book counterknowledge "There are good reasons to trust scientists when ever a huge majority of them endorse an empirical claim. The tests applied to empirical statements are for the most part , impressively rigorous & they are applied by a scientific community that (unlike creationists (& climate change sceptics- my addition )is made up of individuals from diverse ethnic, religious & cultural background. Climatologists maybe wrong about AGW & lets hope so but how would I know I'm a marketer , but I know for sure they won't be proved wrong by a newspaper columnist, If they are wrong it will be shown by another climatologist who comes up with a better theory that survives a rigorous process of scrutiny by experts. In the meantime I intend to believe them over the likes of , Rod Liddle, Melaine Phillips, Peter Hitchen, Fraser Nelson etc etc. I love reading all your comments on Sharia Law, Gordon Brown, politics etc but on Science forget It's completely worthless. Anyway with delicious irony it would appear that research in the current issue of The New scientist shows that our political leanings all in the genes? So all political columnists are doing is having people agree with them who share a common gene. So all that carefully thought out argument is a waste of time I only agree with because my gene's tell me so. The money quote "According to an emerging idea, political positions are substantially determined by biology and can be stubbornly resistant to reason. "These views are deep-seated and built into our brains. Trying to persuade someone not to be liberal is like trying to persuade someone not to have brown eyes. We have to rethink persuasion," says John Alford, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas." I will try & over come my biology & be persuaded by rational argument unlike so many newspaper columnists.

Umbongo

Er . . wasn't it those same scientists who predicted global freezing in the 70s, and what happened to CJD which was going to sweep the UK, not to mention the brilliant advice by our scientists on the handling of foot and mouth (advice followed slavishly by our rulers). There's enough reasonable sceptical science and respectable sceptical scientists out there to enable an intelligent observer to question the "consensus" on anthropomorphic climate change. BTW "peer review" - the gold standard of scientific truth embraced by THX1138 - is crap if the "peers" who are doing the reviewing are as deeply into the ACC religion as their peers who do the writing/research.

THX1138

Umbongo you prove my point I think some scientists did predict the possibility of a new ice age in the 70's but other scientists subsequently proved them wrong not newspaper columnists I can't comment on CJD or foot & mouth I don't know enough .As I say lets hope that scientists working in the field of climatology are proved wrong about climate change but from my understanding of what real experts say I doubt it. Why do you all hate science & scientists so much ? My theory is that it's hard & difficult to understand ( I recently looked over an A level physics paper & it's really hard & that's basic stuff) & what we we can't understand we tend to rubbish particularly when the conclusion doesn't fit our world view, AGW being the most obvious example of this phenomenon.

HJ

On the contrary - India Knight is entirely correct.

I say this as a scientist (physicist) by training.

There is an "Energy In vs Energy Out" equation. If the former exceeds the latter, the body stores the excess as fat. If the latter exceeds the former it burns fat to make up the shortfall. The key factors are determining the In:Out equation are the amount of physical activity and diet.

Now genes may affect people's behaviour, but it cannot affect the simple physics of the situation (unless, of course, you exist in an alternative universe).

There have been numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies on people who claim to be exceptions to the physics. They have all found (entirely unsurprisingly) that fat people typically consume more calories than they thought and do less exercise.