It has been a surprising discovery to find that the diet/health research community is in some ways similar to pseudoscientific communities, such as those surrounding UFOs, Bigfoot or ESP.
Maybe those communities aren't as pseudoscientific as you once thought. I think forms of ESP, for example, are part of normal human experience and very real. Many forms of intution, for example, are a form of ESP. Don't want to get too off-topic, but:
Apparently, because actual real-world relationships between diet and health are so difficult to tease out using traditional research methods,
But that is true for a lot of things. However, I think it's less true for nutrition. I can understand difficulties in researching spiritual areas, alien encounters or UFOs (not saying they are alien btw) or even a remote creature like Bigfoot, but nutritional research doesn't pose the same sorts of problems. I think it's more institutional bigotry more than anything else.
Keep in mind almost every alternative nutritional idea and many that are now accepted in the mainstream stemmed from some research at some point. It can and is tested. The testing, imo, isn't the issue. The willingness to properly understand it and test it, and also the misguided dogmatism of "science" to assume if it hasn't or cannot test it, that somehow it isn't correct.
The right approach is that if it hasn't or cannot be tested, then science and scientists should have an openminded attitude towards the idea until that occurs. Btw, I do grant that some ideas weren't or haven't been able to be tested, sometimes due to time and budget contsraints.
Hence you'll find myths being perpetuated that have no scientific support, such as your example that low-carbohydrate diets can cause liver damage. There is no body of research indicating such a risk, not even for no-carbohydrate diets.
I thought there was some evidence of this for very low carb diets such as adkins. If not, I do know of some anecdotal evidence but I think not all people's bodies are the same. One size doesn't fit all when it comes to diet.
In cases where there is already significant liver damage, perhaps due to alcoholism, a low-carbohydrate diet might not be recommended because the damaged liver couldn't handle the higher protein load, but lack of carbohydrates seems a very unlikely cause of liver damage.
That could be true. Some could have preexisting liver damage, especially with the way college life is for many today or rather the past 40-50 years....
But I unexpectedly find that I must agree with your comment that "in some fields, science is better than others." In this case it has created irrational fears that low-carbohydrate diets are not only equivalent to quackery, but dangerous. Certainly until recently I, too, believed this to be the case, and it wasn't until I read Taubes book that the science (as well as what I've experienced personally as I grow older regarding diet and weight loss) began to make sense.
I do think low or lower carb diets are better for most people. I know the less certain kinds of carbs I eat, the better I feel, more energy less weight, etc,... even if eat a lot more fat. That's not a scientific analysis, but the proof is in the pudding.
The difference between eating a fatty meal with low carbs, just veggies, is striking when eating the same meal with carbs. If I eat a lot of fat and simple carbs, I get kind of sleepy....probably fat in the arteries, but don't have any of that if I cut the carbs. That to me suggests the alternative guys arguing the process is more complex and not just a matter of the fat you intake are correct.
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