Frustrated with the tainting of what are otherwise excellent suggestions from great yet biased scientists, and the resulting gratitude for you
Jeff,
I've recently delved into a lot of the work of Valter Longo. Excellent research of course, much of which you highlight on these boards.
What I find unfortunate is that Valter, like many excellent and perhaps groundbreaking scientists, provides what seems to be such excellent information, but then I cringe when I hear them then go on to promote fish consumption, generous amounts of "healthy fats", and other things that it seems they ought to know better about.
At first I thought that these allowed indulgences might have been included to make his recommendations overall more palatable to the general public, since he found that up to 95% of people seem to be willing to try his fasting-mimicking protocol, and he is of course a fan of compliance. But after hearing the sorts of things he says, Valter doesn't seem to mince words or shy away from telling the hard truth.
I have always appreciated your reminder that despite any disagreements between prominent people in this industry, the common ground is what should be the focus, rather than blowing up the differences.
Having said that, I just wanted to thank you for what I believe is your greatest strength. You more than anyone else I have come across really dive into the details, and seemingly go to great lengths to avoid harboring bias yourself. Mostly, again, by great attention to typically not-considered details or context that in many cases can change the entire meaning of a study or group of studies.
In a book I read in my youth, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, the gifted boy knows about almost everything and even to great depth. His friend, the more typical boy has less breadth of knowledge, but for the topics he has studied, he has studied them to the same depth as the gifted boy.
The way I came to trust you is by taking the time in several instances to really study papers on controversial topics that you had formed your own conclusions from. I spent the necessary time to consider the statistical methods fully, the context, the authors themselves, the availability of the data, etc. And after all that I was able to see that I could fully agree with your own conclusions (which in some cases were unique or contrary to typically respected scientists or individuals). Once I could do this several times enough to get a minimum sample size of your analysis, it was easy to trust the bulk of your analyses. I think this is what everyone needs to do if they really want to find someone they can really trust. I don't know of any shortcut to this. I'm grateful that I had training in statistics and scientific analysis. I don't know what I would do if I did not have those skills to some degree.
Thank you for the countless hours you have spent and spend to clarify the muddy waters of healthy lifestyle suggestions that most of us do not have the time to dive through.
