[IRTalk] Scientists aren’t gods. They deserve the same scrutiny as anyone else | Simon Jenkins | Opinion | The Guardian

[Hilton Gibson]

​I ​
am not obese or dying of cancer. Nor am I a hypochondriac. But not a day
passes without my absorbing news of imminent salvation or disaster from
some branch of science. And whereas the panjandrums of big science used to
maintain an aura of lofty objectivity as they demand our attention and
cash, they now seem all over the shop, fighting like rats in a sack.

Take obesity. I am reeling from last month’s BBC knuckle fight between the
dietician Aseem Malhotra and the government obesity tsar, Susan Jebb, over
whether fat makes you fat. As they hurled accusations of deceit and
corruption back and forth, there seemed only one fact. *Whatever we had
been told on this subject before no longer applied. I was left with a nasty
sense that the phrase “the science” should now read “the money”. *The
following week a television programme advised me to avoid “healthy
breakfasts” and tuck into bacon and eggs instead. *I buried my head in a
pillow.*

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/scientists-not-gods-scrutiny-healthy-eating-cancer-murky-politics-commerce
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