Offhand I do not know of any examples where it did *not* work out this
way; the dedicated funds displace general funds which then become
political pork.
Yes, I see your point now. It's OK that the dedicated funds are used
correctly, but then the general funds are shifted to pork. They really
should give the general funds back, but government likes to grow.
Compared to the government, the cigarette companies were honest. What
is the difference between government and organized crime? Organized
crime is more honest and the government expects the sanction of its
victims.
Statements like this undercut your argument. The choir might like
it, but it's not going to convince others.
Is that like how government lottery sales increased school funding? It is too bad that money is fungible.
Mine was really a normative claim, but the school example is a
good example of the reality. I have read articles about conservatives
taking "school" money to fund tax cuts leaving the schools budget
essentially unchanged. I guess they would argue that it prevented the
school budget from being decreased, but it's clearly a scam.
I guess the real issue with the school example is that people got
conned. They were motivated to change the law to increase the money
for the schools, and instead it went to tax cuts. For cigarettes, the
government spends money on these health issues, and that fungible
money comes from somewhere, so accounting wise, it makes sense to say
it comes from the tax. Of course, if the tax is greater then the
money spent then it's also a scam. However, a lot of money is spent
on smoking... The cigarette companies are exploiting a big
externality.
in China if you include information that the government doesn't want
you to share, you get broken up for parts and your organs are sold to
the highest bidder.
To continue the contrarian view, so this is a good thing? One person
is sacrificed to save the lives of many and even better they let the
almighty market distribute the salvation. It's a glorious combination
of community and capitalism.
Just kidding; great post. Even so, I'm curious if you read the nature article. I'm guessing that the blurbs are misleading. I looked at the start, but it's pay walled and probably beyond my level of physics. I wondered if they moved it around and saw the compass effect?
The government accomplishes two goals. First they reduce smoking. Second they generate money that can be used to pay for the extra health costs associated with smoking. Taxation is one approach to reducing an externality. However, I'm not sure how well they are doing with the second one...
For most of human history, deception and secrecy have been foundations
of power. Secrecy: If people don't know what's going on, they can't
oppose you. Deception: lying is extraordinarily powerful if you can't
speak back. These two concepts have been used by elites for millennia
to keep and maintain their power over us, and they like it that way.
I guess at some level I agree (it seems logical), but it's hard to
prove since they are so secret. Some evidence would be informative.
Now, the internet is threatening to upset the whole apple cart. People
can view with their own eyes and make their own decisions.
I don't agree with this. The vast majority of the people don't care
about "conspiracy" theories, and the people in power can easily
discredit fringe information. I think the issue is more about how the
people in power are, ironically, discovering that they can use the
Internet to increase their power and control. People thought the
Internet would distribute power, but it looks like it might help to
further centralize it.
I think a large part of the issue is that people mean different
things by capitalism and socialism. Who know what these young
Americans think about these terms.
Personally I found an old 50 page or so Libertarian book very
informative on this topic. (Can't remember the name, but would love a
reference.) This is really a complex, continuous issue and not a
binary choice. How much freedom/market and how much
regulation/government? Since you need regulations to create a market,
we need both; it's just a question of how much of each.
Another important question is what's the goal. For many
libertarians, it's a rights issue. They believe they should have
certain freedoms/rights and the government should not interfere. Even
if someone could prove to them that such a system had horrible
outcomes they wouldn't care as long as long they had certain freedoms.
(This brings up the sticky issue of how to evaluate outcomes...)
Of course, libertarians often try to argue that market outcomes
will be the best, but as soon as they open that door, I think their
arguments are often unconvincing. A major goal of a corporation is to
distort markets and exploit externalities to maximize profits.
Government regulation is needed to control this behavior, but the
government is susceptible to corruption and that is part of the market
distortion. It's a balance between the two and there are problems on
both sides. If the goal is to improve outcomes for a particular
service, one needs to select carefully.
I feel healthcare is clearly more effectively done with government
control even to the point of single payer. You seem to agree, but
think the rights of the doctors outweigh the benefits of the outcome.
While I respect that position, I don't think government healthcare
conflicts with the core values of America. We have teachers who are
hired by the government. That does not prevent someone from setting
up their own school and teaching students (with reasonable
regulations.) The same can be done by doctors. This idealistic
approach is actually against American values. The very reason we
allow amendments to the Constitution is to prevent this type of rigid
idealistic thinking. However, government healthcare does not require
an amendment; it's just a rational choice for a country looking for a
better and more efficient outcome.
Why. Why would "FSB agent Romanov hacked voting machines in Michigan
and Pennsylvania" or whatever need to remain classified.
I agree that the US over classifies for a range of reasons. However,
it's not a strong statement to say that some things need to be
classified. As for your example, much of this information has been
released but often details are left out for the good reason of not
exposing how the data was gathered. Otherwise we would lose a source
of valuable future information. In fact, just releasing the
information is a problem as the adversary will evaluate how the
information was likely gathered.
Not only is the USG applying sanctions to Russia based on a conspiracy
theory, it has a Navy fleet deployed to the Black Sea, is arming
literal neo-Nazis in Ukraine after overthrowing its government, and
has artillery in range of Russia's second largest city. Why would you
be OK with (mostly) unelected officials dragging you towards planetary
annihilation without showing cause?
Can you back any of this up with evidence? Looks like conspiracy
theories which is confirmed by some simple Google searches.
Yes, the Iraq war. Which blew the "just trust us" line all to hell,
but you're willing to believe unsupported claims from the very same
liars who got you into Iraq?
Again, an investigation is not a big commitment. We should wait and
then judge the evidence. With Iraq, we didn't properly evaluate the
evidence for a range of reasons. However, it is a mistake to ignore
the situation and not gather evidence.
Not when the subject is "never Trump Republicans", its not. The
establishment of the Republican Party has no love for Trump as he's
not one of them. If Jeb Bush had won the nomination and then the
presidency, these same Republicans wouldn't GAF about the Chinese
couple who gave his campaign $1.3 million, because the Bush's are the
epitome of the GOP establishment.
These Republicans are generally getting what they want from Trump, but
I do agree many that many of them would be fine if Trump lost his base
and Pence took over. However, if they could stick it to the
Democrats, they would. Again, the investigation is not a significant
commitment and there is more than enough evidence to justify an
investigation.
Then they'd be focused on beating Trump at the ballot box with
something other than "we're not Trump", which they ran on two years
ago to great results. But that's their only game plan, along with
McCarthyite CT and talking impeachment, which would lead directly to
President Pence, who would be far more of a danger to their base's
interests than Trump ever was.
First, I was talking about voters not politicians. Second, I do see a
large group of progressive vying for 2018 with a platform that
focusing on many things besides Trump.
Trying to keep the Putin Puppet storyline going in spite of the facts?
Some of the diehards would keep repeating the puppet mantra if Trump
had ICBM's in the air on their way to Moscow.
Agreed; we need to investigate to get the facts.
As much as it was "worth it" to "thoroughly investigate" the
possibility that Obama's parents planted a fake birth announcement in
a newspaper because they knew he could be president some 45 years in
advance.
While I would like to see more evidence of Russia's involvement, I
believe that some data needs to be classified. The fact that major
Republicans have seen the classified evidence and are not fighting the
investigation does give strong support. Also, unlike the Iraq war, we
are making a minimal commitment based on this intelligence.
It's all the same deranged partisan butthurt for people to
delegitimize a president they don't like instead of, you know,
focusing on events in the real world. At least the Birthers weren't
trying to drag the planet into WWIII, though.
Yes, many people are hopeful that this is a way to get rid of Trump,
but I do think many/most Democrats don't see impeachment as the
solution. They would prefer the ballet box to remove Trump. For that
same reason, many of those same people do realize the importance of
investigating this issue. Voting is fundamental to our democracy.
What they "wanted" was a president vastly more confrontational than
Obama ever was? And Obama overthrew a country on Russia's doorstep and
send the highest number of troops to eastern Europe since WWII.
The story is that Putin really doesn't like Hilary; however, I've
never seen anything to back that up. As for Trump, he acts very
strange with Russia, but then again he acts somewhat strange with lots
of the autocrats and dictators.
This is one of the larger plot holes in Russiagate - but there's
plenty more to choose from.
Plot holes or not, it's worth a thorough investigation. I'm sure lots
of countries try to influence our elections and hopefully this will
lead to improving our security and perhaps understanding the new
issues that social media introduces into politics.
It is a mistake to think that Russia is on their "side". They are interested in conflict, not one side winning over the other.
I disagree. Like any country, they are interested in the side winning that is most likely to give them what they want. Of course, the particular side might change over time, but it's likely that in 2016 that was Trump.
My favorite is fox news. They have been caught several times "accidentally" switching the R to a D for scandals with politicians. http://buzzflash.com/commentar...
That depends what you mean by "free market". You could choose some
unrealistically idealized definition, just so you can complain that
it's unrealistically idealized, if you were a fool.
I assume one would pick an idealized definition so one could more
easily prove stuff about markets. Whether one captured the right
stuff to actually have anything interesting to say about reality is
the big issue. Kind of like Turing machines. They don't actually
exist, but they do tell us interesting things about real machines.
By any reasonably definition, the US commodities markets are free
markets. The government does not set prices, not choose who's allowed
to participate. Most of the market rules are set by the market itself,
not the government.
Can you give one, or even more interestingly, several of these
reasonable definitions. What you give here allows monopolies which by
any reasonable definition are not free markets.
I picked 2000 years since that is about when it was invented according to https://www.explainthatstuff.c... I guess that's not the most accurate site. I also choose 2000 years since that's a decent bound on the number of years it should have taken to see the temperature change we've seen in the last 100 years. 2500 is also probably correct and might have been close enough to satisfy you nit pickers.
Good thing then that most Americans are wealthy by European standards.
Interesting, but it's hard to evaluate that site since it's
already digested a lot of the data (for good reason.) It does cite a
lot of relevant information, but it's not realistic to expect one to
dig through all that to find problems. Also coming from the Mises
Institute is a bit suspect for some. Economics is full of bad science
and Austrian economics is often the least empirically grounded.
However, it does appear to be based on real data, so I'd love for
someone to explain why the US does so well compared to Finland and how
it relates to people in Finland being much more happy:)
It also brings up the interesting issue of confirmation bias. I'm
guessing a typical conservative would find this story matches their
world view and would dig no further. No bug, so nothing to fix.
Someone leaning to the left is going to think harder and find some
real or potential flaws. Because they don't have enough time to fully
explore those issues, they will write off the result and stick to
their world view.
For example, as already pointed out, it doesn't seem to include
all the ways that more socialist countries subsidize their citizens.
College is a big expense that is probably considered a disposable
income purchase in the US. Therefore, we have lots of people with
massive college loan debt in the US. Also, how is health care cost
normalized. Do they say that a 10 Euro x-ray saves a socialist 10
Euro while some Americans have to pay $200 out of pocket? This will
disproportionately effect the poor as the previous post implied.
Our infrastructure's lifespan is on the order of 50-100
years. Most concrete and steel structures wear out and need to be
refurbished or replaced within that timeframe.
While I think this is an interesting perspective, you ignore the
impact of new technology. Having to move in 100 years versus 2000
years is a big deal in terms of technology. In 2000 years we've gone
from no steel or concrete to skyscrapers and space stations. Who
knows what the next 2000 years will bring.
While that is a valid point, so is his. It's reasonable to have some
type of regulation on inelastic goods with monopoly protection. Do
you really want an economy where a company can sell life and death at
any price. This is part of why healthcare is such a difficult problem.
I didn't RTFA but I hope it is as ridiculous as the summary suggests.
It's not easy to read since it's paywalled. However one of the
authors Judea Pearl, so I assume it's fairly informed on the issue.
Here's a recent article which I assume is related:
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
With reinforcement learning (which is a basic pillar in much of
current AI), Charlie would notice that the price increase and sales
decrease had some correlation in the wrong direction and would try to
adjust for that.
So how would you cast this as a reinforcement learning problem? What
is the state space, set of actions, and reward function?
I worked out the math. (Might be the same function you used.)
Here is the formula where a is the loan interest rate and b is the
payment interest rate. Initial payment = loan*a^n(a-b)/(a^n-b^n).
Notice that the number of payments is n, so interest rates should
reflect that length of time. For example, a 20 year mortgage would
have 240 payments.
Looking at a solar roof that costs 20,000 (with rebates) and lasts
20 years with 3% inflation on electricity and a 10% return on
investment, would need to start paying around $155 a month. It's
plausible. Ideally one would want to use that much electricity every
month. Throw in a ground based heat pump and an electric car, and it
should be doable with a modest house.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. If you went back to 1918, looking for
predictions of global average temperature in 2018, I think you'd find
the vast majority of those models weren't even close - even the ones
with the same central conceit s as those that may have gotten it right
simply by chance.
I was just trying to say that just because weather is chaotic
there are still things one can predict such as a temperature
difference between winter and summer going back hundreds of years.
This just shows that the claim that weather is chaotic is not
sufficient to show that "climate" is impossible to predict.
Yes, most of the time we need to assume scientists are doing a good
job. But we should also simultaneously assume that their good job is
not perfect, and that they're humans, just like us. Either through
honest error, unconscious bias, or conscious bias, they can be wrong -
which is where the scientific method comes in, and the concept of a
necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis keeps them in check.
Most people will not even be able to understand the hypothesis,
let alone evaluate it. Math is an area I know more about, and there
are many mathematical theorems, where I have trouble understanding the
statement let alone the proof. Von Neumann once said that it would be
easy for someone to create a math test he would fail, and this was
around 100 years ago, and he was one of the top mathematicians of his
generation, and he had a photographic memory. Unfortunately, in many
areas, we need the experts to police each other.
As for appealing to the experts to help us make decisions, avoiding
this was the entire *reason* for the scientific method:). Put another
way, why would we assume that we're all experts at picking out the
people who are experts in fields we're not experts in? Why should I
believe that I'm capable of discerning which nutritional expert is the
right one, if I know nothing about nutrition?
I think that this is the interesting question? How do people
choose the right experts especially given all the questionable science
that is out there. If people are given bad and contradictory
information about nutrition, it's natural for them to think this
applies to all science. This can be exploited by people who want to
twist issues to their advantage.
For policing themselves, I'm afraid I'm not nearly as optimistic as
you are - especially since much of science has been utterly
unscientific for a long time. The incestuous peer review system that
has its own internal biases and incentive structures has led to things
like the reproducibility crisis in psychology, nutrition, and other
fields as well. One could argue, of course, that psychology, by its
very nature, is a "soft" science, not really falsifiable, but
interesting and "sciencey", but the track record of scientists,
especially those playing the academia game of "publish or perish",
really isn't that good on the policing side. Which is why data and
code transparency, and falsifiability, mean more than peer review and
being published in a prestigious journal:)
Good science does get a bad name by being lumped with everything
people call science. And it becomes hard for non-experts to tell what
is good versus bad. In principle, perhaps the scientific method helps
by making it easier to repeat these experiments, but in practice there
is not enough money and the experiments themselves have too many
uncontrolled variables causing confounding factors.
And that's the problem with sufficiently complex computer models -
when they fail, we cannot tell why. With a multitude of tunable
parameters, you simply cannot discern the difference between a data
problem, or a problem with any specific parameter of the model.
I have to say it's probably the opposite problem. When the model
works
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I see your point now. It's OK that the dedicated funds are used correctly, but then the general funds are shifted to pork. They really should give the general funds back, but government likes to grow.
Statements like this undercut your argument. The choir might like it, but it's not going to convince others.
Mine was really a normative claim, but the school example is a good example of the reality. I have read articles about conservatives taking "school" money to fund tax cuts leaving the schools budget essentially unchanged. I guess they would argue that it prevented the school budget from being decreased, but it's clearly a scam.
I guess the real issue with the school example is that people got conned. They were motivated to change the law to increase the money for the schools, and instead it went to tax cuts. For cigarettes, the government spends money on these health issues, and that fungible money comes from somewhere, so accounting wise, it makes sense to say it comes from the tax. Of course, if the tax is greater then the money spent then it's also a scam. However, a lot of money is spent on smoking... The cigarette companies are exploiting a big externality.
To continue the contrarian view, so this is a good thing? One person is sacrificed to save the lives of many and even better they let the almighty market distribute the salvation. It's a glorious combination of community and capitalism.
You could have just said it was a compass.
Just kidding; great post. Even so, I'm curious if you read the nature article. I'm guessing that the blurbs are misleading. I looked at the start, but it's pay walled and probably beyond my level of physics. I wondered if they moved it around and saw the compass effect?
The government accomplishes two goals. First they reduce smoking. Second they generate money that can be used to pay for the extra health costs associated with smoking. Taxation is one approach to reducing an externality. However, I'm not sure how well they are doing with the second one...
UPS agrees with you sisters friend. http://theconversation.com/why...
I guess at some level I agree (it seems logical), but it's hard to prove since they are so secret. Some evidence would be informative.
I don't agree with this. The vast majority of the people don't care about "conspiracy" theories, and the people in power can easily discredit fringe information. I think the issue is more about how the people in power are, ironically, discovering that they can use the Internet to increase their power and control. People thought the Internet would distribute power, but it looks like it might help to further centralize it.
I think a large part of the issue is that people mean different things by capitalism and socialism. Who know what these young Americans think about these terms.
Personally I found an old 50 page or so Libertarian book very informative on this topic. (Can't remember the name, but would love a reference.) This is really a complex, continuous issue and not a binary choice. How much freedom/market and how much regulation/government? Since you need regulations to create a market, we need both; it's just a question of how much of each.
Another important question is what's the goal. For many libertarians, it's a rights issue. They believe they should have certain freedoms/rights and the government should not interfere. Even if someone could prove to them that such a system had horrible outcomes they wouldn't care as long as long they had certain freedoms. (This brings up the sticky issue of how to evaluate outcomes...)
Of course, libertarians often try to argue that market outcomes will be the best, but as soon as they open that door, I think their arguments are often unconvincing. A major goal of a corporation is to distort markets and exploit externalities to maximize profits. Government regulation is needed to control this behavior, but the government is susceptible to corruption and that is part of the market distortion. It's a balance between the two and there are problems on both sides. If the goal is to improve outcomes for a particular service, one needs to select carefully.
I feel healthcare is clearly more effectively done with government control even to the point of single payer. You seem to agree, but think the rights of the doctors outweigh the benefits of the outcome. While I respect that position, I don't think government healthcare conflicts with the core values of America. We have teachers who are hired by the government. That does not prevent someone from setting up their own school and teaching students (with reasonable regulations.) The same can be done by doctors. This idealistic approach is actually against American values. The very reason we allow amendments to the Constitution is to prevent this type of rigid idealistic thinking. However, government healthcare does not require an amendment; it's just a rational choice for a country looking for a better and more efficient outcome.
I agree that the US over classifies for a range of reasons. However, it's not a strong statement to say that some things need to be classified. As for your example, much of this information has been released but often details are left out for the good reason of not exposing how the data was gathered. Otherwise we would lose a source of valuable future information. In fact, just releasing the information is a problem as the adversary will evaluate how the information was likely gathered.
Can you back any of this up with evidence? Looks like conspiracy theories which is confirmed by some simple Google searches.
Again, an investigation is not a big commitment. We should wait and then judge the evidence. With Iraq, we didn't properly evaluate the evidence for a range of reasons. However, it is a mistake to ignore the situation and not gather evidence.
These Republicans are generally getting what they want from Trump, but I do agree many that many of them would be fine if Trump lost his base and Pence took over. However, if they could stick it to the Democrats, they would. Again, the investigation is not a significant commitment and there is more than enough evidence to justify an investigation.
First, I was talking about voters not politicians. Second, I do see a large group of progressive vying for 2018 with a platform that focusing on many things besides Trump.
Agreed; we need to investigate to get the facts.
While I would like to see more evidence of Russia's involvement, I believe that some data needs to be classified. The fact that major Republicans have seen the classified evidence and are not fighting the investigation does give strong support. Also, unlike the Iraq war, we are making a minimal commitment based on this intelligence.
Yes, many people are hopeful that this is a way to get rid of Trump, but I do think many/most Democrats don't see impeachment as the solution. They would prefer the ballet box to remove Trump. For that same reason, many of those same people do realize the importance of investigating this issue. Voting is fundamental to our democracy.
The story is that Putin really doesn't like Hilary; however, I've never seen anything to back that up. As for Trump, he acts very strange with Russia, but then again he acts somewhat strange with lots of the autocrats and dictators.
Plot holes or not, it's worth a thorough investigation. I'm sure lots of countries try to influence our elections and hopefully this will lead to improving our security and perhaps understanding the new issues that social media introduces into politics.
I disagree. Like any country, they are interested in the side winning that is most likely to give them what they want. Of course, the particular side might change over time, but it's likely that in 2016 that was Trump.
My favorite is fox news. They have been caught several times "accidentally" switching the R to a D for scandals with politicians. http://buzzflash.com/commentar...
Everyone should move to Alaska; they must have great Internet.
I assume one would pick an idealized definition so one could more easily prove stuff about markets. Whether one captured the right stuff to actually have anything interesting to say about reality is the big issue. Kind of like Turing machines. They don't actually exist, but they do tell us interesting things about real machines.
Can you give one, or even more interestingly, several of these reasonable definitions. What you give here allows monopolies which by any reasonable definition are not free markets.
I didn't realize the origins of whataboutism . I guess it's a fitting technique for Trump supports.
I picked 2000 years since that is about when it was invented according to https://www.explainthatstuff.c... I guess that's not the most accurate site. I also choose 2000 years since that's a decent bound on the number of years it should have taken to see the temperature change we've seen in the last 100 years. 2500 is also probably correct and might have been close enough to satisfy you nit pickers.
Interesting, but it's hard to evaluate that site since it's already digested a lot of the data (for good reason.) It does cite a lot of relevant information, but it's not realistic to expect one to dig through all that to find problems. Also coming from the Mises Institute is a bit suspect for some. Economics is full of bad science and Austrian economics is often the least empirically grounded. However, it does appear to be based on real data, so I'd love for someone to explain why the US does so well compared to Finland and how it relates to people in Finland being much more happy :)
It also brings up the interesting issue of confirmation bias. I'm guessing a typical conservative would find this story matches their world view and would dig no further. No bug, so nothing to fix. Someone leaning to the left is going to think harder and find some real or potential flaws. Because they don't have enough time to fully explore those issues, they will write off the result and stick to their world view.
For example, as already pointed out, it doesn't seem to include all the ways that more socialist countries subsidize their citizens. College is a big expense that is probably considered a disposable income purchase in the US. Therefore, we have lots of people with massive college loan debt in the US. Also, how is health care cost normalized. Do they say that a 10 Euro x-ray saves a socialist 10 Euro while some Americans have to pay $200 out of pocket? This will disproportionately effect the poor as the previous post implied.
While I think this is an interesting perspective, you ignore the impact of new technology. Having to move in 100 years versus 2000 years is a big deal in terms of technology. In 2000 years we've gone from no steel or concrete to skyscrapers and space stations. Who knows what the next 2000 years will bring.
Oops. Set the moderation wrong. I guess this is the only way to undo.
Turn off your wifi and you'll be fine. It's might be enough to just move your routers. Machine learning can be very fragile.
While that is a valid point, so is his. It's reasonable to have some type of regulation on inelastic goods with monopoly protection. Do you really want an economy where a company can sell life and death at any price. This is part of why healthcare is such a difficult problem.
It's not easy to read since it's paywalled. However one of the authors Judea Pearl, so I assume it's fairly informed on the issue. Here's a recent article which I assume is related: https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
So how would you cast this as a reinforcement learning problem? What is the state space, set of actions, and reward function?
I worked out the math. (Might be the same function you used.) Here is the formula where a is the loan interest rate and b is the payment interest rate. Initial payment = loan*a^n(a-b)/(a^n-b^n). Notice that the number of payments is n, so interest rates should reflect that length of time. For example, a 20 year mortgage would have 240 payments.
Looking at a solar roof that costs 20,000 (with rebates) and lasts 20 years with 3% inflation on electricity and a 10% return on investment, would need to start paying around $155 a month. It's plausible. Ideally one would want to use that much electricity every month. Throw in a ground based heat pump and an electric car, and it should be doable with a modest house.
I was just trying to say that just because weather is chaotic there are still things one can predict such as a temperature difference between winter and summer going back hundreds of years. This just shows that the claim that weather is chaotic is not sufficient to show that "climate" is impossible to predict.
Most people will not even be able to understand the hypothesis, let alone evaluate it. Math is an area I know more about, and there are many mathematical theorems, where I have trouble understanding the statement let alone the proof. Von Neumann once said that it would be easy for someone to create a math test he would fail, and this was around 100 years ago, and he was one of the top mathematicians of his generation, and he had a photographic memory. Unfortunately, in many areas, we need the experts to police each other.
I think that this is the interesting question? How do people choose the right experts especially given all the questionable science that is out there. If people are given bad and contradictory information about nutrition, it's natural for them to think this applies to all science. This can be exploited by people who want to twist issues to their advantage.
Good science does get a bad name by being lumped with everything people call science. And it becomes hard for non-experts to tell what is good versus bad. In principle, perhaps the scientific method helps by making it easier to repeat these experiments, but in practice there is not enough money and the experiments themselves have too many uncontrolled variables causing confounding factors.
I have to say it's probably the opposite problem. When the model works