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Why does ever form of science that goes against the mainstream get classified as psedu science ? ?

January 11th, 2010 5 comments

For example the notion that Cholesterol is a good thing. This article I am about to post is very scientific yet another website called quack calls them stupid and pesduo scientist. They didnt debunk any of their points or any of their science theyt just classified them a pesdo science. Can you debunk their points ?
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ople with high cholesterol live the longest. This statement seems so incredible that it takes a long time to clear one´s brainwashed mind to fully understand its importance. Yet the fact that people with high cholesterol live the longest emerges clearly from many scientific papers. Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol.1 Supporters of the cholesterol campaign consistently ignore his observation, or consider it as a rare exception, produced by chance among a huge number of studies finding the opposite.

But it is not an exception; there are now a large number of findings that contradict the lipid hypothesis. To be more specific, most studies of old people have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease. This was the result of my search in the Medline database for studies addressing that question.2 Eleven studies of old people came up with that result, and a further seven studies found that high cholesterol did not predict all-cause mortality either.

Now consider that more than 90 % of all cardiovascular disease is seen in people above age 60 also and that almost all studies have found that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women.2 This means that high cholesterol is only a risk factor for less than 5 % of those who die from a heart attack.

But there is more comfort for those who have high cholesterol; six of the studies found that total mortality was inversely associated with either total or LDL-cholesterol, or both. This means that it is actually much better to have high than to have low cholesterol if you want to live to be very old.
Many studies have found that low cholesterol is in certain respects worse than high cholesterol. For instance, in 19 large studies of more than 68,000 deaths, reviewed by Professor David R. Jacobs and his co-workers from the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.3

Most gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases have an infectious origin. Therefore, a relevant question is whether it is the infection that lowers cholesterol or the low cholesterol that predisposes to infection? To answer this question Professor Jacobs and his group, together with Dr. Carlos Iribarren, followed more than 100,000 healthy individuals in the San Francisco area for fifteen years. At the end of the study those who had low cholesterol at the start of the study had more often been admitted to the hospital because of an infectious disease.4,5 This finding cannot be explained away with the argument that the infection had caused cholesterol to go down, because how could low cholesterol, recorded when these people were without any evidence of infection, be caused by a disease they had not yet encountered? Isn´t it more likely that low cholesterol in some way made them more vulnerable to infection, or that high cholesterol protected those who did not become infected? Much evidence exists to support that interpretation.Most studies of young and middle-aged men have found high cholesterol to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease, seemingly a contradiction to the idea that high cholesterol is protective. Why is high cholesterol a risk factor in young and middle-aged men? A likely explanation is that men of that age are often in the midst of their professional career. High cholesterol may therefore reflect mental stress, a well-known cause of high cholesterol and also a risk factor for heart disease. Again, high cholesterol is not necessarily the direct cause but may only be a marker. High cholesterol in young and middle-aged men could, for instance, reflect the body’s need for more cholesterol because cholesterol is the building material of many stress hormones. Any possible protective effect of high cholesterol may therefore be counteracted by the negative influence of a stressful life on the vascular system.
English isnt my first language .

This quote is from Ravskov’s article The Benefits of High Cholesterol & his book ‘Cholesterol Myths’ promoting a single persons view point. This is not from a refereed journal so can say what ever the author chooses. Most of the criticism is that the author makes claims and bases the results on partial evidence. The data is cherry picked to support a view point.
Here are some sites rebutting this book.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=80854
http://skepdic.com/refuge/bunk28.html

Cherry picking data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking

Data biases and fallacies
http://info-pollution.com/evidence.htm

All new theories that attempt to explain how the world works must agree with all observed facts and explain how the events produce the known results. Many new theories fly in the face of accepted ideas because they are based on a small body of very new evidence that falsifies the previous explanation of facts. In peer review the evidence is obtainable by others using the same methods so it is verified as repeatable. Then the logic of the new theory is assessed by other scientists that specialize in this area ie they are peers capable of understanding the new evidence compared to the earlier smaller body of evidence. In this way if a single researcher made an error it will be caught by others knowledgeable in the specialty. If there is no error the knowledge is shared pushing others along in their efforts.