Comments on: People don’t eat less to compensate for overeating

By: rianjs.net » Science, eBay, and the glass water jar

rianjs.net » Science, eBay, and the glass water jar — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 05:24:14 +0000

[...] I have noticed a disturbing trend while writing about science. Many scientists seem to write in this really narrow range, never thinking about what is outside their little bubble: sociologists that don’t stop to ask if there’re biological reasons for certain behaviors; doctors who don’t think outside their field. I understand that it takes many years to get to the point where one can write scientific papers in one’s chosen field, but not thinking about what ramifications it might have on other fields, or how other fields might have an impact on one’s own field, makes little sense to me. It seems as though some people don’t stop, raise their heads, and look around to see what’s going on in the world, and in other fields. It’s like there’s no information sharing between biologists and sociologists and doctors and chemists. It’s the same problem that law enforcement faces, only the solution to this information sharing problem seems much more complicated than does a system which only deals with criminology. I almost wish someone could come along and build a sophisticated database that would catalog every scientific paper, no matter how trivial, and that some abstract logic engine would come along and hit a sociologist over the head when he submits a paper saying that people don’t eat less to compensate after a slight eating binge with a paper from evolutionary biology that states the obvious: that people used to be hunter-gatherers, and this lack of a compensatory mechanism makes sense in the light of evolution. It’s stupid that that sociologist would merely look to sociology for the answers when the answer might well come from the field of biology. [...]

By: Rian

Rian — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:02:31 +0000

I absolutely agree, and it wasn’t my intention to imply that this shifts any responsibility from the individual involved. That’s one of the joys of being human: being self-aware and congnizant of our shortcomings and working around them. Anyone who thinks that we’re ruled entirely by genetics and biology is sorely mistaken. I don’t know of anyone that actually thinks otherwise.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:43:36 +0000

I just hope this won’t lead to an upsurge of overweight people suddenly blaming their environment, and not their eating habits, on their size. There’s only so much blame for obesity that can be laid at the door of physiological/environmental/situational causes. As someone who struggles with their weight and has to both watch what I eat and regularly exercise, I resent it when people with a pure lack of willpower and/or inability to connect what they’re eating with their size start to go on about environmental and evolutionary factors. They exist, but they don’t rule us.