50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
I took Intro to Psychology in my mid to late twenties. We were required to participate in a study as part of the class. IIRC, the study was being performed by a grad student in pursuit of their degree.<p>So, really, both the &quot;scientist&quot; and subjects of the study were kind of compelled to participate. No one was there of their free will. We were all trying to tick off an educational checkbox on our way to a sheepskin in hopes of a better paycheck someday.<p>So they played some audio tape of a black person and white person talking. The theory was that they would switch the labels around and see if the same words were interpreted differently depending on whether you thought they were said by a black person or a white person.<p>The problem is that this was about as effective as switching the labels as to who was male and who was female on an audio recording of a discussion. None of us were fooled by labeling the black speaker &quot;white.&quot; We could tell by the sound of their voice.<p>I participate regularly in unpaid surveys to get points for a reward program. They are often stupid questions like &quot;Which pet would you prefer? A kitten? Or a puppy?&quot; And I randomly click one when the real answer is &quot;I&#x27;m not a pet person. I&#x27;m not likely to ever own either.&quot; But &quot;None of the above&quot; is never an option.<p>It&#x27;s rare for me to see a survey that I feel is well designed and well executed. I think most of them are pretty sucktastic even before getting into questions of &quot;Was this some Machiavellian plot?&quot;<p>In many cases, it makes more sense to attribute it to unconscious bias or conflict of interest, not Machivellian plot. I rarely feel that the people involved are talented enough to successfully pull off some Machivellian plot. The grad student thought she was all clever at telling us the black guy was really white, as evidenced by how she behaved at the big reveal, while we looked at her like &quot;I can&#x27;t believe you think we were really fooled by this.&quot;<p>(I am not simply inferring this. Another student, coincidentally a black guy, outright told her &quot;We weren&#x27;t fooled. You can tell he&#x27;s black when he speaks.&quot;)<p>Food interactions with the body are quite complex and there are myriad other factors involved. We really need to move past the fat vs sugar debate entirely. It&#x27;s overly simplistic.