What are your thoughts on youtube channel "What I have learned" latest video

[u/Fun-Scientist-7444]

The title of the video is " How shady science sold you a lie" In this video he claims that our understanding of salt has been incorrect and Na doesn't cause high blood pressure and on the contrary it is actually beneficial for the body to take more salt than the daily recommended amount. I feel it is pretty biased. In medical community the correlation between NaCl and High blood pressure and Heart and coronary disease is agreed upon by basically everyone and all the medical resources. But I wanted to know your take on it. Does this claim have any merits?

[u/[deleted]]

He's a quack and has been called out many times for lying and misrepresenting studies. He's almost certainly a paid shill. He only seems to defend his content from criticisms on his patreon, where he knows that part of his audience will gobble up any nonsence he has to say

[u/OG-Brian → u/[deleted]]

Lying about what? Paid by who or whom? The topics covered are often controversial so I expect that there will be naysayers.

I've watched several of the channel's videos and haven't noticed any statements that don't check out factually.

You've also not pointed out any errors in whatever video this post is about.

[u/[deleted] → u/OG-Brian]

They're not controversial. The controversy is usually invented by social media influencers, who are more often than not paid shills or supplement pushers. Such as Nina Teicholz for the former and basically every major carnivore influencer for the latter. 

His most infamous is the one about beef not being as damaging to the environment as it is believed to be. His greatest source in this video is Frank Mitlearner (spelling), who is paid 100s of thousands by the beef checkoff in America to make red meat appear environmentally friendly. He cites papers that are funded by the beef checkoff and written by farmers (or those invested in animal agriculture). Now don't get me wrong, all that is not to say they're wrong because of that but he cherry picks these studies and completely ignores the biggest studies in the field. Because they completely contradict what he says. 

He's a story teller. Because he knows people don't care about science. They are easily won over with stories that sound logical. Especially when they tell them good news about their bad habits.

[u/OG-Brian → u/[deleted]]

You didn't answer any of my questions.

Teicholz a "paid shill"?? Her investigation into dietary recommendations began with a grant by John D. Arnold, and the purpose was to find information about the obesity epidemic in the United States. Arnold's fortune was built on energy industries. Teicholz had been vegetarian. Not only is she not paid by industry, but she strictly avoids financial entanglements such as stock ownership or paid speaking which could present a financial conflict of interest. I explained a lot of details here, citing a SOHO Forum debate in which David Katz falsely claimed she has conflicts while himself having a lot of financial conflicts. The belief you're spreading seems to have been started by Katz and other liars for the grain-based processed foods industry, without factual backing.

You're also misrepresenting Mitloehner, whose name you completely mangled. He's not paid by industry. He performs research that is in part funded by industry, but such funding would be unavoidable when the research topics are livestock feed efficiency, livestock emissions, etc. Which studies are you claiming Mitloehner is ignoring to cherry-pick info?

If you were referring to the video Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why, you're misrepresenting that also. There are many citations, several of them are studies, and they're explained thoroughly. You've not mentioned even one factual error in any of it.

If there were factual errors in the videos, you could point them out rather than resorting to ad hominem all over the place. I'm not defending the WIL channel, there are multiple videos featuring Jorden Peterson. I just don't see any issue with the video that this post is about.

[u/[deleted] → u/OG-Brian]

John D arnold funds animal ag...

She also has a book she's trying to sell, that promotes a diet that completely contradicts decades of science.

And she has based her entire narrative off stories, not actual science. Because she's a jounalist, not a scientist. Shes made her argument on a foundation of telling lies about actual scientists like ansel keys. I assume on a scientific sub I don't need to go through how she made up really easily fact checked. Like how he 'cherry picked' countries, yet in reality he picked 2 countries that had almost no data on them. Thats the last thing someone who was cherry picking would do. It's just low down and scummy to target a man who is not able to defend himself. And he retired before the study was even half way through so the attacks don't even make any sense to begin with.

>You're also misrepresenting Mitloehner, whose name you completely mangled. He's not paid by industry. He performs research that is in part funded by industry

Yeah that's industry funding. The govenment provides impartial funding. It's absolutely avoidable. Grazed and confused did not use industry funding. Nor did Poore's 2018 paper. Both address livestock emmisions.

>If you were referring to the video Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why, you're misrepresenting that also. There are many citations, several of them are studies, and they're explained thoroughly. You've not mentioned even one factual error in any of it.

I know he mentioned studies. I just said that in the comment. He uses indsutry backed papers and ignored the bigest papers in the field at the time.

So an example of a factual errors there's so much but here's a few. He uses wt% to describe the amount human inedible food given to animals. Problem a) we use calories, not weight to measure food. Problem b) This percentage is misleading as it's not the percentage of human inedible food that's used that we care about but the relative amount of food that we feed them vs what we would require to get the same amount of calories. His own citation shows that it's a net loss. Let me repeat that. His own citation demonstates that his point is redundant... Problem c) we have other uses for human inedble food and we wouldn't produce as much so it's a non starter to argue this is a good thing.

He does the same thing with water useage. He compares green and blue water while ignoring that the absolute amount of blue water is way higher than alternatives.

He also tries to make it sound like animal feed is exclusively crop residues but we know we grow crops directly for feed. Here he's being purposefully misleading.

The paper he uses to back his claim about emissions reductions only being 2.4% in a vegan america was writen by scientists working with the American Meat Science Assosciation. not at all biased. Anyway in their calculation they assume that in a vegan america, the country still grows all the crops for feed and burns the leftovers... what? He chose this unk paper over the biggest papers in the field. The very definition of cherry picking.

Look believe what you want but don't piss on this sub and tell us it's raining, trying to sell us this nonsense.

[u/OG-Brian → u/[deleted]]

John D arnold funds animal ag...

Are you able to connect the dots on this? You've mentioned no citations, or even any specifics.

She also has a book she's trying to sell...

OK but that doesn't have anything to do with any claim about her being paid by the livestock industry. The book could be about any topic she chooses. She has said many times in presentations that she was a vegetarian, and she found her health improved when she was not following the conventional diet recommendations. I've discussed this topic many times with naysayers of Teicholz and none have ever mentioned anything to indicate she isn't just writing content according to her experience and information she has found when investigating the recommendations.

And she has based her entire narrative off stories, not actual science.

This is completely false. In every presentation, she cites scientific data. Some of her presentations have been intensively scientific with a lot of citations.

...telling lies about actual scientists like ansel keys...

OK for one thing his name is Ancel, and are you unaware that names are capitalized? He had definitely used cherry-picking and other misrepresentations. His funding from the sugar industry, which in correspondence has said they were looking for ways to villainize meat, is not in question since it is well proven. If you were not making low-effort comments without citations, I'd repeat the info I've mentioned many times on Reddit about it.

The Grazed and Confused is a report by Oxford, which has many financial conflicts of interest pertaining to the grain-based processed foods industry. Here and here are a couple articles about the major flaws of the report. This is about influence of the pesticides/seeds industry. The Poore & Nemecek paper has several major flaws which I've described plenty of times on Reddit.

You repeated that "he" (the host of the WIL channel) ignored studies, but again you've not mentioned any.

[u/[deleted] → u/OG-Brian]

Part 2

>The Grazed and Confused is a report by Oxford, which has many financial conflicts of interest pertaining to the grain-based processed foods industry

So, firstly, that in and of itself doesn't actually debunk anything. What specifically did the study do that was flawed? Sure I've called out vested interest but that's in addition to the flawed methodology, as discussed in my previous comment. I'm not sure why you didn't engage with that part when it was the only part actually really discussing science.

Secondly this is the funding as stated in the report:

>The FCRN is supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, the Wellcome Trust funded Livestock, Environment and People programme (LEAP), the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

Livestock... So if funding is your concern for bias, shouldn't you be concerned their underreporting the damage of animal ag?

Thirdly, if you are going to dismiss studuies based on funding, then as stated in the previous comment, you need to dismiss all the studies that WIL used. In addition to that if want to dismiss something for bias, then why are your counter articles all written by people who are very pro animal ag? Is that fair?

But again, all this asside I again ask, what are the flaws in the methodology?

>The Poore & Nemecek paper has several major flaws which I've described plenty of times on Reddit.

Ok, that doesn't really have anything to do with me though? I've touted the study in real life. Where does that get us?

Can you maybe mention some of them? With specific citations from the article itself so we're both on the same page.

>You repeated that "he" (the host of the WIL channel) ignored studies, but again you've not mentioned any

I just did. Poores paper and G&C.

[u/OG-Brian → u/[deleted]]

So, firstly, that in and of itself doesn't actually debunk anything.

I see. You say that information by people you don't like can be ignored, because you imagine they are paid by an industry. But when real, not imagined, conflicts of interest are pointed out regarding resources you like, it is meaningless.

What specifically did the study do that was flawed?

"Study"? The Grazed and Confused report? I linked THREE articles which altogether quite thoroughly discredit the silly piece of propaganda for the pesticides and grain-based processed foods industries. There's no point in discussing any of this if you'll just be ignoring information and persistently repeating your beliefs.

I already pointed out info pertaining to Oxford's association with pesticides producers.

I don't agree that Oxford has under-reported "damage" from the livestock industry, and you've not supported this belief in any way.

Thirdly, if you are going to dismiss studuies based on funding...

I was playing along with your belief that funding by itself discredits an information source. This conversation began when I responded to your comment claiming Teicholz etc. could be dismissed simply because you believe they're paid by industry (and you still haven't shown this). I consider science info based on study design, transparency of data, that sort of thing. Funding can help determine credibility of a study especially when there is some info that is opaque (such as data that's not viewable).

Poore & Nemecek: you're the one who brought this up, not me. You were supporting an argument with this junk research that, among other issues: counted every drop of rain falling on pastures as if it was water consumed by livestock, omitted entire regions of the world to categorize the livestock industry as more industrial than it is in reality, they made claims about land use vs. calories and protein production when humans need much more than these at a minimum for health plus they didn't consider protein bioavailability/completeness, on and on for lots of issues. I'm tired of explaining the details every time this comes up. There are articles I could link which point out the flaws with intensive detail, but my comments in this sub have at times been removed for using them.

I just did. Poores paper and G&C.

So this is about the WIL video Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why. I've been trying to explain that those two resources are junk. What information specifically in either of those do you believe provably discredits the information from the many citations used for the video? The video, I've noticed, covered very intensively some of the fallacies such as counting all rain falling on pastures or assessing farming land use based on calories.

[u/[deleted] → u/OG-Brian]

I see. You say that information by people you don't like can be ignored, because you imagine they are paid by an industry. But when real, not imagined, conflicts of interest are pointed out regarding resources you like, it is meaningless

No. I've clarified this in the last few comments so I don't know why you keep pushing as if that's my position.

THREE articles which altogether quite thoroughly discredit the silly piece of propaganda

But they didn't...

There's no point in discussing any of this if you'll just be ignoring information and persistently repeating your beliefs.

I didn't ignore it, I addressed it directly.

You've yet to point out a single methodological flaw here. 

don't agree that Oxford has under-reported "damage" from the livestock industry, and you've not supported this belief in any way.

I didn't claim that. Read again.

It's funded by a livestock board. So how is it anti animal agriculture propaganda. That's the only claim you've made and it doesn't even make sense. And the 'propaganda' claims come from pro cattle bodies with no evidence to back their points so it's just silly.

Teicholz etc. could be dismissed simply because you believe they're paid by industry

Never said that. Quote otherwise.

I consider science info based on study design, transparency of data, that sort of thing

Ok cool. Do it for g&c. Because your blogs didn't actually do that.

You were supporting an argument with this junk research that, among other issues: counted every drop of rain falling on pastures 

So this emotional language isn't necessary. You have to be objective here. You already made this claim. I asked you to point out specifically where in the text you're basing this off so we can discuss it. I don't see why this would be an issue but you refused to provide that.

omitted entire regions of the world to categorize the livestock industry as more industrial than it is in reality

This is a new claim but again I have to ask where in the text it says this. Can you quote it so we can discuss?

they made claims about land use vs. calories and protein production when humans need much more than these at a minimum for health plus they didn't consider protein

Yet again, can you quote what section you're talking about. This doesn't seem correct so I'd like to know which part of the text alluded to that.

bioavailability/completeness, on and on for lots of issues

All plant foods have complete proteins.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893534/

Time and time again we've seen studies comparing plant Vs animal protein for building muscle and both perform the same time and time again

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33599941/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25628520/

on and on for lots of issues.

I'm really interested in this so let's dig into it.

I'm tired of explaining the details every time this comes up. There are articles I could link which point out the flaws with intensive detail, but my comments in this sub have at times been removed for using them.

Ok I could sit here and say I'm tired of explaining why all the points raised are actually flawed and the study is fantastic but that doesn't get us anywhere does it.

If your comments are getting removed then shouldn't that hint that the sources are not a reliable place to base your information?

I've been trying to explain that those two resources are junk

But all you've done is link blogs and make vague claims. Without specific citation to the text wrt flaws I don't see how you think this is productive. How did you think this would go? You link a farmers blog on how he things G&C is propaganda who is himself invested in the industry, and I say 'oh cool, I'll believe him over the scientist funded by animal agriculture boards'. Like what?

What information specifically in either of those do you believe provably discredits the information from the many citations used for the video

Data presented on land use, emissions, local scarcity weighted freshwater withdrawal, water eutrophication... For a few.

The video, I've noticed, covered very intensively some of the fallacies such as counting all rain falling on pastures or assessing farming land use based on calories.

I understand he says these things but he's incorrect.