Yesterday's New York Times...

[R. A. Jacobs]

With respect to Taubes' account of epidemiology, my epidemiologist 
son comments that his article covers almost exactly the same topics 
as one he wrote a few years back. The points are reasonable but 
overblown and highly selective.  Some things are twisted.

My son comments: For example, when Richard Peto talked about all the 
rubbish published, he almostly certainly didn't mean ALL 
observational studies, as Taubes said he did.  Peto is probably very 
unhappy about this right now.  Note that Taubes also implies that 
epidemiology hasn't figured anything out about why Japanese have 
lower rates of breast cancer - in fact it's almost certain that 
obesity has a lot to do with it.  And it's not as if we have no clue 
about what causes obesity, as Taubes later implies.  Few if any 
working in obesity doubt that it's a combination of eating too much 
and not having enough physical activity.

When Taubes did this a few years ago, my son vaguely remembers a lot 
of quoted senior epidemiologists being unhappy about having their 
statements quoted out of context and strung put together with a bunch 
of other selected self-critical statements from epidemiologists, to 
form an overly damning picture of the field as a whole.

Even given the natural desire to defend one's own field, the above 
points surely indicate the dangers of using material in a field in 
which one lacks expertise to score points about one's own field.

Best,

Roderick A. Jacobs

-- 
Roderick A. Jacobs, Author/Linguistic Consultant 	Recent Articles:
[Georgia State University] 			Review of  'Handbook 
of English Linguistics
Em.Prof. Linguistics & 2nd Language Studies		in JOURNAL OF 
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS,	,
Past Dean, College of Languages, Linguistics, 		35:2 (June 
2007), 188-193.
& Literature, University of Hawai'i
Books recent or in process:			Review of 'Mental 
Spaces in Grammar:
English Syntax (Oxford University Press)		Conditional 
Constructions' in COGNITIVE
Valhalla's Daughter (with agent)			LINGUISTICS, 
17-4 (2006), pp.567-574.
Hands Across Time (in process)
Tel: 404-378-7365				"Apih, the little 
dragon", in OKI NIRMALA,
					Jakarta, Indonesia: 12/2006