The Pink Salt Trick for Weight Loss is a Scam Work of Art

I regularly keep tabs on a few Youtube channels and have become fascinated by some of the scammy ads that I am forced to watch. I've become particularly enamored by ads for the "pink salt trick" for losing weight. The people featured in the ads (probably partially AI creations) go on, and on, and on, about how a few simple ingredients can cause massive weight loss, without diet, exercise, or using weight loss drugs. Somehow they never get around to explaining what those simple ingredients are.

If you search Youtube for the pink salt trick, you will get lots of videos from supposedly different people telling the same basic story. It's funny to see different women repeating the exact same talking points about their alleged experience. Claiming that they had to eat more burgers just to stop from wasting away is a nice touch. I was particularly amused by the claim that the pink salt trick is more effective than Zepbound and Mounjaro combined, since those two are actually the exact same drug under different names. I assume that the dialogue is carefully crafted to stay just within the bounds of the law (or perhaps Youtube's advertising standards), thus the mispronunciation of drug names or references to "those Lilly pills" (Lilly doesn't have weight loss drugs in pill form yet). If you take a step back, these videos are a masterclass in manipulating human psychology.

Curiosity finally got the better of me and I clicked one of the provided links. I was taken to a website that claimed that the new recipe was causing celebrities to lose 14 pounds in 10 days...which is not at all a healthy rate of loss. I don't know if it's even possible to lose that amount of fat that quickly. In addition to a video, the webpage had the words, "Scientific References" above logos for leading news sources (NY Times, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN). None of these had any clickable links. Below that was a number of testimonials allegedly from Facebook. At the bottom was a disclaimer that began with this sentence: "He [sic] result of this content may vary from person to person, depending on each organism." LOL.

The video player wouldn't allow me to go forward or back so I sat through the whole thing, which lasted probably 45 minutes. The video started off a lot like the ads on Youtube, but it eventually transitioned to (supposedly, more later) The Oprah Podcast with Oprah talking with actual endocrinologist Dr. Ania Jastreboff. Oprah and Dr. Ania talked through Dr. Ania's discovery of the pink salt trick and it's miraculous effects, and how it mimics the weight loss drugs. Obviously, the pharmaceutical companies are furious about this and have threatened to ruin Dr. Ania's career. There was a subtle transition that was interesting to watch. Initially the pink salt trick was so simple that anyone could do it in a few seconds. Much later in the video, Dr. Ania stated the 4 ingredients: pink (Himalayan) salt, green tea extract, berberine, and resveratrol. A little while later she said that the recipe requires ingredients of a purity that can only be obtained from a Chinese supplier, and that it has to be formulated in an precise way.

At last, Oprah revealed that the product you need is LipoVive, and from there the video followed typical infomercial techniques. Although you can order it in packs of 1, 3, or 6, viewers were encouraged to order the 6 pack for several reasons. First, it brings the price per bottle down from $89 to $49. (Incredible savings!) Second, if you bought the 6 pack you would be entered into a drawing for a chance to hang out with Oprah on an all-expenses paid vacation to Greece. Additional incentives included books on how to lose weight easily, which seemed like a weird thing to include if LipoLive actually worked. Finally, it turns out that that Chinese company has a difficult time getting those pure ingredients and only makes them once every 6 months. So if you only get 1 or 3 bottles, you may run out and not be able to replenish your supply in a timely manner. Dr. Ania warned that failure to complete the 6 month regimen could cause you to have to start over, so you don't want to risk running out. Oprah said that the website was the only place to get LipoVive, and she was concerned that stock was running out quickly.

There were hints that the video was not really Oprah and Dr. Ania, I mean aside from the ludicrous notion that pink salt and a few other ingredients could mimic the GLP-1- based weight loss drugs. Whenever the video showed a wide-angle shot of both Oprah and Dr. Ania at the table, their lips were not synced to the audio. However, the close-up shots were quite convincing and a testament to the power of (I assume) deepfake technology.

How do I know it was a deepfake (aside from all the other red flags)? Because the actual conversation between Oprah and Dr. Ania on The Oprah Podcast is also available on Youtube. Their conversation has nothing to do with the pink salt trick, and I recommend it for anyone interested in obesity. The genius of this whole thing is that it uses actual content from the podcast and intermixes it with fake material. The result is an informercial that slickly leverages the authority of Oprah and Dr. Ania to hawk LipoVive (...maybe?).

But Wait, There's More!
As it turns out, LipoVive has its own independent website. The LipoVive website seems legitimate (to the extent that these types of supplements can be called legitimate) and includes the standard disclaimer that "the FDA hasn't evaluated the statements provided on this page." While it claims that the product encourages (whatever that means) the natural production of the GLP-1 and GIP hormones [1], and that it assists in weight loss, it does not make any of the outlandish claims that the pink salt videos do. Also, instead of the 4 ingredients listed by "Dr. Ania", the LipoVive website lists 8 ingredients (none of which are pink salt, if you can believe it). This has me wondering if the pink salt trick website is a double scam: convincing people to buy a product that not only doesn't do what they hope it will do, but also isn't even real LipoVive. (Maybe they just take your money and run.) After all, the fake Oprah podcast is clearly grounds for a lawsuit, and presumably regulatory/legal action. If you were the maker of LipoLive, why would you endanger your business like that?

Through all of this, I feel like I may only be scratching the surface of the scam. I found other Youtube videos on the pink salt trick that led to a different website pushing a different product called Mitolyn, with no mention of pink salt. Other videos give a recipe that consists of pink salt, lemon juice, and honey. And with all of the different videos, I'm starting to wonder if the products are mostly beside the point and that most of the money is being made from video views. The cleverness of scammers shouldn't be underestimated.

Entertaining as this all is, the bottom line is that pink salt will not do anything meaninful to help with weight loss. Heck, it's not even in the products that are marketed at the end of the rabbit hole. And as the science of weight loss and obesity continues to progress and pharmaceutical companies develop drugs that acheive near-miraculous results, there will continue to be scammers that prey upon people by pushing ideas and products with no value.

Notes:
1. The GLP-1 and GIP hormones produced by the body are degraded very rapidly, so boosting their production isn't much help. The success of the drug versions is mainly due to the fact that they are modified to stay in the body for much longer.

---

Continue reading...

Trump May Be Right that the Epstein Files are Just Like the Russia Hoax

After years of the MAGA base stirring themselves up about the Epstein files, with Trump and his allies throwing gas on the associated conspiracies, Trump has done a sudden 180 and wants everyone to leave it alone. He and his administration have rolled out a variety of ridiculous excuses and accusations, including that the files were cooked up by Obama and Hillary Clinton...even though it was under the first Trump administration that Epstein was arrested and later died, and Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with sex crimes for which she was later convicted [1,2].

In an effort to try to get the MAGA base to leave the whole thing alone, Trump has taken to comparing the controversy to the "Russia Hoax." If by that he means that it is something that totally happened that he was complicit in but then lied and lied and lied about it while covering it up, he might be right. After all, I don't know what's in the Epstein files, but we do know some of what happened in the 2016 election. The question is, are you as dumb as Trump thinks you are?

Forget about the Mueller Report for a moment. The Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, under a REPUBLICAN majority, investigated the 2016 election and produced a 5-volume report. Committee members included the following:

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina, Chairman
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
MARCO RUBIO, Florida
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
TOM COTTON, Arkansas
JOHN CORNYN, Texas

MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Vice Chairman
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
RON WYDEN, Oregon
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
KAMALA HARRIS, California

Hey look! Marco Rubio, the current Secretary of State, was on that committee. In fact, he was the committee chairman for the fifth volume because Richard Burr had stepped down while he was under investigation for insider trading (the SEC closed the investigation without taking any action against him). Other nobodys include John Cornyn (Majority Whip 2013-2019) and Tom Cotton (current committe chairman). And how about that--Kamala Harris was also on the committee.

I dare you to browse the reports, even just the first few pages. Or even just the Wikipedia summary. Seriously, I dare you to read what the main findings were, and then compare that to how Republicans talk about the episode.

Based on everything we know about what happened, the sad fact of the matter is that:
- Russia attempted to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump
- The Trump campaign welcomed this interference
- Not only did they welcome it, by claiming that the election was rigged, Trump prevented the Obama administration from warning the public for fear that they would be seen as...rigging the election
- People like Paul Manafort (who served for a time as the campaign manager) and Roger Stone were in contact with Russian proxies and, in the case of Manafort, shared internal polling data with those proxies
- At the same time that Trump was denying that he had business with Russia during the campaign, he was in fact lying and pursuing a deal for a tower in Moscow
- After Trump won the election, he did what he could to stifle the investigation into what had happened and went on to pardon people like Manafort and Stone who were convicted of lying to the FBI on his behalf
- Trump has continued to deny even the mere fact that Russia attempted to interfere with the election, including publicly siding with Putin over our own intelligence agencies
- Republican voters took this all in and somehow came to the conclusion that it was all cooked up by Democrats and the media

Actually, that last point is understandable from the fact that a significant number of Republican politicians and commentators did their best to run interference, obscure the main story, and turn Trump into the victim (as he always is). And now the latest doozy: Accusations from the Trump administration that Obama committed treason by interfering in the 2016 election! (The next thing you know, he'll be saying the he and Jeffrey Epstein were the victims of sex-crazed girls.)

I didn't come into this year thinking that anything more damning about Trump and Epstein's relationship would be discovered apart from what we (or at least, those of us who don't get our news from Fox) already knew. Did Trump have sex with underaged girls? I still am inclined to doubt it, although I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he did [3]. But it seems clear based on his defensiveness that there is very embarrassing information in those files. Will voters buy Trump's obvious attempt to discredit the Epstein files by linking them with the Russia investigation? Are they that dumb? I would like to think not, but if I'm being honest, history isn't reassuring. After all, if you can read the Mueller and Senate reports and think that the whole Russia interference thing was a hoax, then anything is possible.

At any rate, YOU, dear reader, don't have to be as dumb as Trump thinks you are.

Notes:
1. Republicans seem to have a really hard time remembering who was president from 2017-2020.
2. Having been convicted, she has every incentive to now lie for Trump in hopes for a pardon or reduced sentence. When asked about it, Trump said that he hadn't thought about it, but made sure to assert that he is "allowed" to pardon her. What a weird thing to say for totally innocent reasons.
3. If Trump had gotten his original pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz(!) would be handling the Epstein files. Birds of a feather...

---

Continue reading...

National (Slippery) Treasure, Part 2

In Part 1 on this topic, I gave a brief overview of why the stock market is a wonderful democratizer of wealth. In this post I will contrast stocks with cryptocurrencies.

At the outset I should state that inasmuch as cryptocurrencies continue to exist, I can respect someone incorporating them into a diversified portfolio. I can also respect someone knowingly engaging in speculation (i.e. essentially gambling on the price going up), as long as they are honest with themselves about what they are doing. I can also respect that for people who live in countries with volatile economies or oppresive governments, it might make sense to use cryptocurrencies for specific purposes. However, I am very concerned about the way that cryptocurrencies are being marketed to average people and for their potential deleterious effects on the nation's financial system.

Stocks and cryptocurrencies are similar in that both are traded and subject to the forces of supply and demand, and both can be quite volitile. But when you dig deeper there are important differences. With stocks there is an actual economic engine (i.e. a company that sells products and/or services) behind that supply and demand. As the company generates wealth over time, it shares that wealth with its shareholders. Especially when we think of large companies represented in the S&P 500, you don't have to get in early in order to benefit. You can invest in a company that was founded before you were born and still have a reasonable expectation that you will be rewarded over time.

Cryptocurrencies, in contrast, do not have an economic engine and therefore do not generate wealth. They are an empty vessel that simply reflect the price that people are willing to pay for them [1]. Certainly there are people who have become rich by buying and selling cryptocurrencies, but it is important to understand that this reflects a transfer of wealth rather than creation of wealth. And those who become the most rich are usually those who got in early.

This fundamental difference leads to different incentive structures. Imagine that you own stock in a company that makes good products and generates reliable profit, but for some reason has not come to the attention of other investors or isn't a popular investment and so the stock price is low [2]. This is fantastic for you because the low price enables you to purchase additional shares knowing that even if the stock price never takes off due to increased demand, you are getting a great deal on the dividends paid by the company [3]. You don't need additional investors in order to reap rewards. In fact, a long-term investor would probably prefer that the company's stock remain overlooked by additional investors [4].

Contrast the above with cryptocurrencies. In order for your money to grow in cryptocurrencies you REQUIRE additional investors to buy at a higher price. And those investors will REQUIRE additional investors to buy at a higher price, because there are no underlying dividends or interest payments to drive the value. Suppose, like the stock example above, you purchase a cyrptocurrency that is generally overlooked by others and continues to be overlooked. This is a terrible scenario because the value of your investment is tied exclusively to the trading price. So as long as the investment remains undiscovered, your money is dead in the water.

Looked at from this perspective, it is no wonder that people who own Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies want other people to use them. That's the only way their money grows [5,6]. This dynamic is the key to understanding why cryptocurrency enthusiasts have switched from selling the idea that cyrptocurrencies are free from government manipulation to cheering on government "strategic reserves" and other taxpayer-funded methods of propping up cryptocurrency value.

The steady drumbeat over cryptocurrencies as the way of the future needs to be viewed extremely skeptically in light of the financial incentives of the drummers (not to mention its failure to find a solid use outside of rampant speculation, fraud, money laundering, organized crime, etc). Moreover, the idea that Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency is the key for underprivledged people to get ahead requires magical thinking (bolstered by unrepresentative anectdotes) and should be seen for the crass exploitation that it is. Most worrying to me, however, is the potential financial disaster that awaits us if cryptocurrencies continue to become intertwined with our financial system. Just like the junk mortgage-backed securities that brought on the great financial crisis of 2008, cyrptocurrencies could bring on disaster even to people who don't own any, while at the same time necessitating taxpayer-funded bailouts to those who pushed these slippery treasures onto our society in the first place.

For a skeptical look at cryptocurrencies, I recommend the writings of Stephen Diehl and Molly White.

Notes:
1. There are definitely areas of the stock market--usually small companies--where the same dynamic is at play because the fundamental business is weak or outright fraudulent. It is harder for large companies to disguise a poor economic engine, though it does happen sometimes. And obviously, circumstances can change such that a solid business becomes weak due to shifts in competition or consumer demand.
2. This is an unlikely scenario for a public company of any substantial size because thousands of stock analysts armed with computers are constantly looking for good deals.
3. Not all companies pay dividends. Those that do not tend to fall into one of three camps: they are unprofitable and can't afford to return capital to investors, they are re-investing profits into the business and aren't ready to return capital back to the shareholders, or they return the capital in the form of stock buybacks instead. From an accounting perspective, dividends and stock buybacks are mathematically equivalent.
4. Sharp-eyed readers will remember that in my last post I recommended that everyone own stocks. The difference, again, is the economic engine behind them. Although the stock market doesn't need your participation in order succeed (apart from enough people to keep trading liquid), in a democratic system of government I think it is good for voters to have a direct financial incentive to uphold government that enacts wise economic policies. Also, holding a diversified stock portfolio as part of long-term savings is generic personal-finance best practice.
5. It is not the only way to make money in cryptocurrencies, however. Another way is to own a company that provides some kind of service to owners/traders of cyrptocurrencies for a fee--just like you can get rich off of gambling without actually gambling by owning a casino.
6. My central critique of cryptocurrencies could also be applied to gold, and in fact I'm not a big fan of gold (putting me in company with Warren Buffett). However, at least gold has a long history, use cases outside of pure financialization, and can't be created or destroyed on a whim (no Fed rants, please).

---

Continue reading...

How to Not Be the Bad Guy in a Future Museum

I was recently at a museum that had displays dedicated to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. You've probably seen similar displays, with pictures or videos of black people being beaten, arrested, or sprayed with fire hoses. Such displays also give voice to politicians of the time who vowed not to allow black students to go to school with white children, and so on. Even while maintaining a sense of charity that it was a different time and that people are shaped by their prevailing culture, it's hard not to wonder what the hell was wrong with people, including many who considered themselves devout Christians, who fought so hard to maintain Jim Crow laws and that thought that cruelty toward black people was acceptable [1].

I would like to suggest that the probability that you will end up being the bad guy in a museum for having supported Stephen Miller's return to power via the Trump administration is much, much higher than the probablility that you will be the bad guy for having opposed him. Sure, you may not personally be featured in a museum display, but several decades in the future you will walk through a museum where the sins of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and the effects of their cruelty will be on full display and you will either have to break out your supply of excuses to explain, if only to yourself, why you helped them into power, or you can be grateful that you saw them for what they were--even though you may wonder if in retrospect you could have done more to try to stop them.

The reason I can predict this is that intentional and performative cruelty usually marks the bad guy, while opposing cruelty rarely makes you the bad guy [2]. By their fruits, you shall know them.

Inasmuch as Trump, Miller, and gang are already in power, there's not much that we can directly do about it now. But what we can do is quit supporting any politician that supports them. We can vote for Republicans that oppose them in primary races, and if they don't win we can quit making excuses for why we can't vote for a Democrat in a general election. And in the future we can avoid voting for politicians who advocate for cruelty as part of their campaign. It's one thing to be surprised when an otherwise acceptable politician turns cruel. But if they campaign on cruelty, saying that you didn't think they really meant it is a weak excuse and won't save you from the future museum.

By the way, it's in your best interest beyond your sense of self-respect in a museum. Normalized cruelty will eventually make its way to you and your loved ones.

Notes:
1. Not that it's entirely a problem of the past, of course.
2. And if it does, then maybe it's worth being the bad guy.

---

Continue reading...

National (Slippery) Treasure, Part 1

You may have never heard of Jack Bogle, but he arguably did more for the financial well-being of society than any other individual since the New Deal of the 1930s. His major contribution was to pioneer the concept and implementation of a low-cost index fund, thereby making a diversified stock portfolio accessible to the average person. If you have any kind of retirement account, some of your money is almost certainly invested in a stock index fund.

Although they can be volatile and ruinous if not managed wisely, stocks are an elegant democratizer of wealth. The basic concept is quite simple. Stock ownership gives you a small piece of ownership in a company. The company hires workers and builds infrastructure to offer goods or services for sale. Customers who value those goods and services purchase them. If everything goes well, the company takes in more money from customers than it uses to pay its own bills and eventually returns some of that excess money to its owners--the shareholders. Stock prices fluctuate constantly as buyers and sellers estimate what that future financial return is worth. Sometimes prices become disconnected from financial reality, but in an efficient market (i.e. where accurate information flows rapidly) reality eventually reasserts itself.

Different companies have varying success at being profitable over time, which is why it is important to own a large selection of stocks and thereby reduce the risk that company failures will wipe out your investment. (That's what Jack Bogle made easy, through index funds.) And since the stock market is such a potent method of wealth generation, and since wealth so easily corrupts people, the government plays an important role to maintain the health of the system by enforcing rules designed to keep things as honest and safe as reasonably possible. Many of these rules were born from the Great Depression as part of the New Deal.

One of the beautiful aspects of stock ownership is that the wealth creation that occurs is repeatable. I don't mean that everyone gets the same return, since risk and reward will vary by company and over time. Rather, anyone who consistently invests in a diversified stock portfolio over the long term is likely (but not guaranteed) to be rewarded with (variable) growth in their wealth. You don't have to get in at the right time or be lucky enough to have picked the right stock to benefit. The companies behind the stocks are economic engines that keep churning and generating wealth. Therefore, our children and grandchildren can expect to generate wealth through stock investment just as we have. The companies and industries might change, but as long as conditions remain fertile for companies to grow, we can expect stock ownership to continue to deliver wealth over the long term.

While there may be valid criticisms to be made in how the stock market operates and is regulated, when you take in the big picture it is a marvelous system that embodies and facilitates capitalism (i.e. individual judgments about how capital should be allocated), and I am a beliver that virtually everyone should have some level of investment in stocks. Doing so gives you a piece of ownership in the national and international economy and makes you a beneficiary of the success of companies you otherwise have no financial ties to [1].

In a forthcoming post I will contrast stocks with cyrptocurrencies and explain why I think we should be skeptical of cyrptocurrencies in spite of the hype around them.

Notes:
1. The stock market, as most people interact with it, is a secondary market where stock owners buy and sell stock. Purchasing stock in this market does not directly provide any funding to the company behind the stock. Different people will have different views on the ethics of this matter, but it's important to understand that owning stock in, say, a beer company simply means that you are entitled to benefit from the company's profits and to vote in coproprate elections. You aren't providing the company any additional working capital, and selling the stock doesn't financially punish the company.

---

Continue reading...

BYU Publishes Significant Book on Evolution and the Gospel

The BYU College of Life Sciences recently published a book (free online) titled The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution. I think it is arguably the most significant church-related publication on the topic since Joseph Fielding Smith's Man, His Origin and Destiny, especially when paired with the near simultaneous entry in the Gospel Library on Religion and Science.

In order to understand why I think the book is so significant, a little history is in order. During the mid-twentieth century the views of President Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Bruce R. McConkie (his son-in-law) on this topic dominated within the Church. Both men were prolific writers and their books were widely read, widely quoted, and widely considered authoritative. LDS scientists and students really had to swim upstream in that kind of atmosphere. For example, in 1980 Elder McConkie gave a talk at BYU titled, "The Seven Deadly Heresies," where evolution was the second of the seven heresies. In the meantime, LDS historians were uncovering information from the early twentieth century showing that church leaders had not been as unified on the issue as it seemed. Publication of this information was not necessarily warmly received, with then-apostle Ezra Taft Benson, for example, viewing it as an attack on the integrity of Joseph Fielding Smith. In 1992 the BYU Board of Trustees authorized publication of a packet on the topic that consisted of First Presidency statements and the entry on evolution from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. This packet provided LDS scientists and students some cover by emphasizing that only First Presidency statements represented the official Church position, thus implicitly providing a way to faithfully disagree with President Smith and Elder McConkie. However, the packet had limited circulation (especially prior to the Internet), and was never referenced in Church publications so it remained largely hidden from general church membership.

So the state of play in the late 1990s and early 2000s was basically this: General church membership was still influenced by the legacy of Smith and McConkie (dovetailing with conservative strains of Protestantism). Meanwhile, people "in the know" could eke out a contrary position using the BYU packet combined with a sort of mournful harkening back to the views expressed by leaders such as Elders James E. Talmage and John A. Widtsoe, as well as prominent members like Henry Eyring.

While there have been a few minor developments in the last decade, this new book is a big leap forward. Here are some of the reasons I think it is significant.

1. It is published by BYU, thus giving it a halo of Church-sanctioned acceptability.
2. It will be a standard resource distributed to all freshman biology students. As the years pass it will influence tens of thousands of BYU students.
3. It is bold and forthright in declaring that evolution has been demonstrated and can be accepted with joy (a reference to the 1910 First Presidency statement that has been the tagline of this blog since its beginning), and brags a bit about how successful BYU has been in its scientific research related to evolution.
4. It dissects some of the assumptions that have undergird certain scriptural interpretations, providing a deeper understanding that goes beyond simply pitting two interpretations against each other.
5. It uses modern scholarship to help provide some cultural context to the Genesis creation account, even going so far as to adopt the scholarly recognition that the first two chapters of Genesis contain two different creation accounts spliced together (something that would further horrify Joseph Fielding Smith).
6. It does all of this without picking a fight and emphasizes a model of seeking reconciliation while maintaining comfort with leaving unknowns open.

The book was not intended to be comprehensive on every topic. For example, while some of the science supporting evolution is briefly discussed, it is pretty high-level and is unlikely to satisfy readers who are familiar with young-earth creationist arguments. Similarly, while there is some introduction to the cultural context of Genesis and issues with English translation, there is much, much, more that could be said. In both cases, readers should consult additional resources. Similarly, the book does not attempt to grapple with every scriptural objection or solve every doctrinal problem. What the book does more than anything is model a broad-minded orientation of faithful inquiry and acceptance while expanding the boundaries of inquiry beyond fundamentalism [1].

Perhaps a day will come when we will see another era of retrenchment and a renewal of Joseph Fielding Smith's fundamentalist approach (vestiges of which can still be found in Church publications such as the Institute manual for the Old Testament). But for the time being it looks like Church leaders are willing to let the science play out and leave the resulting religious incongruities open to personal study and interpretation. This book is a great resource to help in that effort.

Notes:
1. Lots of people did similar work in the past, but they tended to be published in venues that lacked the halo of Church approval or broad distribution among the rank-and-file.

---

Continue reading...

Vitamins Are Only Useful in their Sphere of Physiology

I don't know exactly why vitamins have such a hold on people's imagination as the key to good health [1], but they are really overrated when it comes to infectious diseases. They are kind of like motor oil--needed for engine function, but otherwise pretty useless when a car is stuck in the mud or snow. If your engine seizes up while trying to escape, sure, that's a problem. But pouring more and more oil into the engine just isn't going to address the fundamental problem.

I can't think of a single infectious disease that is solved by vitamins. Vitamins may help at the margins and contribute to an effective immune response, and certainly you are better off than if you had a vitamin deficiency, but they do not fundamentally protect you from infectious disease. Consider how smallpox was erradicated from the earth in the 1970s. Hint: it wasn't because of vitamins. In the early 2000's measles was virtually eliminated from the United States. It wasn't because we were in the zenith of healthy living and vitamin consumption. And if we look beyond humans to livestock, where every dollar counts, they all receive multiple vaccinations to help protect from various infectious diseases. If it was simply a matter of vitamins, I can assure you that producers wouldn't bother with vaccination.

So embracing vitamin A (or any vitamin) as the answer to measles (or any infectious disease) is health malpractice, pure and simple.

But this reminds me of a story: Early in my career a lady who worked in the same lab as me said that before traveling she had taken a popular vitamin supplement that claimed to protect from colds, but that it didn't work and she got sick anyway. I was appalled. Not because she took a bogus disease preventative, but because she concluded it didn't work. Not that I thought it would, because of course it wouldn't. But her conclusion was not scientific in the least. She had no idea when she got infected vs when she started taking the supplement, what she got infected with, or any sense for how long and at what dose she would need to take it to supposedly be protected. So how could she draw any conclusions about its efficacy? (Again, not that I thought for a second it would actually prevent sickness.) The point is that these kinds of loosey-goosey anectdotes drive most people's decision making...even people who ought to know better.

Notes:
1. Well, maybe I do: marketing

---

Continue reading...

The Church Accepts an Old Earth and is Neutral on Evolution

The Church recently added a new entry to its Topics and Questions section of the Gospel Library titled, Religion and Science. It is significant in that it is the most positive collection of statements for general membership about science that I have seen in a long time. Mostly, it just tries to keep the peace by remaining neutral and giving people room to sort through scientific and religious truths on their own. This paragraph is typical of the tone and content:

The Church does not take a position on most scientific matters. Instead, the Church focuses on teaching revealed, spiritual truths and helping God’s children live by those truths. At the same time, many Latter-day Saints seek to understand and contribute to scientific knowledge, following the Lord’s invitation to Joseph Smith to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

However, the following statement caught my eye. Not so much because of its implicit acceptance of an old earth (which has generally not been a major sticking point for Church members), but because of what it says about how we know the earth is old.

Using reliable methods of measurement, such as radiometric dating, scientists currently estimate the age of the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion years.

To understand the significance of this, you need to know that rejection of scientific chronology is a cornerstone of fundamentalist young-earth creationism and they have invented a number of excuses for disbelieving radiometric dating. To the extent that Church members align with creationism, they import (sometimes without knowing) the arguments of fundamentalist creationism into their own thinking. Moreover, an LDS twist on this comes in the form of the so-called "Heartland Model" of Book of Mormon geography, which relies on a young-earth creationist paradigm. Although Book of Mormon geography would seem to have nothing to do with the age of the earth, the connection comes from trying to torture DNA data into showing that Native Americans are decendants of ancient Israel. The problem is that the particular DNA marker in question was present in native populations thousands of years before the Book of Mormon events took place. Thus, the need to deny scientific chronology.

For the Church to call radiometric dating a "reliable method of measurement" breaks a lot of brackets, so to speak [1].

Then there is the section on evolution: "Over the years, Church leaders have expressed differing views about evolution. However, the Church takes no position on the topic."

This also breaks brackets. I can't remember the number of online arguments I have seen (or occassionally participated in) where LDS critics of evolution would insist that the Church DID in fact have a position on evolution. They would lay out a variety of Church teachings about the Fall and so forth, including the 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man", and then conclude that whether or not the Church said so explicitly, its teachings clearly excluded evolution. If you pointed to the First Presidency's instructions to General Authorities in 1931 that struck a neutral balance, they would counter that the statement had never been published to the general Church membership. Well, now it has been (in at least three separate places within the Gosepl Library), and the Church here explicitly says that it takes no position on evolution.

Perhaps the best thing about this new topical entry is that it can be used to defuse attacks based on General Authority quotes. As I previously wrote,

Although pronouncements by authorities do not determine the truth or falsity of a proposition (hence the logical fallacy), we look to the prophets and apostles as a source of truth, and their thoughts deserve consideration. This style of argumentation, where one is made to feel like s/he is rejecting the prophets, can therefore be quite difficult and frustrating to grapple with because, in its strongest form, there can be no counter-argument. Attempting to do so only validates the perception that you reject the prophets. And yet, we who defend science cannot remain silent or else the authoritarian bullies will be the only ones heard. So what can we do when confronted with such material?

Well, now you can just point to this entry in the Gospel Library.

Notes:
1. I'm using predicted March Madness college basketball tournament brackets as a metaphor.

---

Continue reading...