Memetics and Evolution

Evolve or Die: Survival Value of the Feminine Imperative

Women Against Feminism

This blog is dedicated to finding the truth through science and reasoning. When we’re talking about social issues, the scientific method is hard to apply — most studies can’t have adequate controls and so all we can say is that results are “suggestive” — this correlates with that, and there are plausible reasons why that might be so, and maybe there’s some other evidence pointing in the same direction. It’s easy to get lost and build castles of inference on weak foundations of speculation.

Evolutionary Psychology as a field grew into prominence in the 1980s. Regularities in social and mating behavior noted across human cultures with no contact with each other were deemed likely to have roots in evolved traits; certain customs and behaviors might be more likely to result in survival of an individual’s offspring and with thus be selected for over time, in a particular environment, interacting with genetic programming and resulting in innate preferences. Differences with other species, primates especially, were studied, contrasts drawn, and the coevolution of innately programmed human behavior interacting with cultural memes was debated.

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley, is the best popular book on evolutionary psychology and sexual strategies from that era; though much more research has been done since it was published in 1994, it’s still a good introduction to the field:

Compared to our ape cousins, we, the most common of the great apes, have pulled off a surprising trick. We have somehow reinvented monogamy and paternal care without losing the habit of living in large multimale groups. Like gibbons, men marry women singly and help them to rear their young, confident of paternity, but like chimpanzees, those women live in societies where they have continual contact with other men. There is no parallel for this among apes. It is my contention, however, that there is a close parallel among birds. Many birds live in colonies but mate monogamously within the colony. And the bird parallel brings an altogether different explanation for females to be interested in sexual variety. A female human being does not have to share her sexual favors with many males to prevent infanticide, but she may have a good reason to share them with one well-chosen male apart from her husband. This is because her husband is, almost by definition, usually not the best male there is—else how would he have ended up married to her? His value is that he is monogamous and will therefore not divide his child-rearing effort among several families. But why accept his genes? Why not have his parental care and some other male’s genes? In describing the human mating system; it is hard to be precise. People are immensely flexible in their habits, depending on their racial origin, religion, wealth, and ecology. Nonetheless, some universal features stand out. First, women most commonly seek monogamous marriage—even in societies that allow polygamy. Rare exceptions notwithstanding, they want to choose carefully and then, as long as he remains worthy, monopolize a man for life, gain his assistance in rearing the children, and perhaps even die with him. Second, women do not seek sexual variety per se. There are exceptions, of course, but fictional and real women regularly deny that nymphomania holds any attraction for them, and there is no reason to disbelieve them. The temptress interested in a one-night stand with a man whose name she does not know is a fantasy fed by male pornography. Lesbians, free of constraints imposed by male nature, do not suddenly indulge in sexual promiscuity; on the contrary, they are remarkably monogamous. None of this is surprising: Female animals gain little from sexual opportunism, for their reproductive ability is limited not by how many males they mate with but how long it takes to bear offspring. In this respect men and women are very different. But third, women are sometimes unfaithful. Not all adultery is caused by men. Though she may rarely or never be interested in casual sex with a male prostitute or a stranger, a woman, in life as in soap operas, is perfectly capable of accepting or provoking an offer of an affair with one man whom she knows, even if she is “happily” married at the time. This is a paradox. It can be resolved in one of three ways. We can blame adultery on men, asserting that the persuasive powers of seducers will always win some hearts, even the most reluctant. Call this the “Dangerous Liaisons” explanation. Or we can blame it on modern society and say that the frustrations and complexities of modern life, of unhappy marriages and so on, have upset the natural pattern and introduced an alien habit into human females. Call this the “Dallas” explanation. Or we can suggest that there is some valid biological reason for seeking sex outside marriage without abandoning the marriage—some instinct in women not to deny themselves the option of a sexual “plan B” when plan A does not work out so well. Call this the “Emma Bovary” strategy.

…

Yet Western people conspicuously avoid having as many children as they could. William Irons of Northwestern University in Chicago has tackled this problem. He believes that human beings have always taken into account the need to give a child a “good start in life.” They have never been prepared to sacrifice quality of children for quantity. Thus, when an expensive education became a prerequisite for success and prosperity, around the time of the demographic transition to low birthrates, people were able to readjust and lower the number of children they had in order to be able to afford to send them to school. Exactly this reason is given today by Thai people for why they are having fewer children than their parents. There has been no genetic change since we were hunter-gatherers, but deep in the mind of the modern man is a simple male hunter-gatherer rule: Strive to acquire power and use it to lure women who will bear heirs; strive to acquire wealth and use it to buy other men’s wives who will bear bastards. It began with a man who shared a piece of prized fish or honey with an attractive neighbor’s wife in exchange for a brief affair and continues with a pop star ushering a model into his Mercedes. From fish to Mercedes, the history is unbroken: via skins and beads, plows and cattle, swords and castles. Wealth and power are means to women; women are means to genetic eternity.

Likewise, deep in the mind of a modern woman is the same basic hunter-gatherer calculator, too recently evolved to have changed much: Strive to acquire a provider husband who will invest food and care in your children; strive to find a lover who can give those children first-class genes. Only if she is very lucky will they be the same man. It began with a woman who married the best unmarried hunter in the tribe and had an affair with the best married hunter, thus ensuring her children a rich supply of meat. It continues with a rich tycoon’s wife bearing a baby that grows up to resemble her beefy bodyguard. Men are to be exploited as providers of parental care, wealth, and genes.

Now we know no human being is literally programmed to behave in a particular way; people make decisions based on a complex mix of rational calculation, emotional heuristics, cultural models, and innate preferences. But those innate preferences are a constant if usually unconscious influence, always pushing to promote the propagation of the individual’s genes. Men and women will tend to use their sex-specific strategies — often secretly, as when a woman mated to a less genetically-advantaged male has an affair with a more powerful older male to capture his apparently fitter genes for her offspring, or when men try to have additional offspring at other men’s expense by tomcatting around.

Feminism started as a cultural movement to question the narrow roles women were expected to fill in pre-industrial societies where the primary goal was survival — just getting the next generation born, fed, and brought up before disease, death, or warrior bands killed them. The new prosperity brought by the Industrial Age in the West brought a more sophisticated kind of striving: work became more cerebral than manual, lifespans lengthened, children survived more often but required greater investment in education, so family sizes shrank, and careers for women before and after childrearing years made more sense. Mass production and domestic labor-saving appliances made homemaking and domestic crafts less economically valuable and freed women to seek more resources for their families by working outside the home.

But after the revolution of Women’s Liberation (as we used to call it), the feminist movement, having achieved most of its goals in legal equality, respect, and professional opportunities, degenerated into a grievance bubble, a self-contained, exclusionary support group requiring villains and victims to propagate to a new generation. There are many women who can think for themselves and see that much of the effort of the modern feminist cult is reducing women to victims and demonizing masculinity and men; this reduces the number of strong, competent, and willing men a young woman might find to partner up with, and the spreading decline in marriage among millennials, especially in what used to be a robust population of blue-collar young men, is becoming obvious. Many women now notice the lack of successful, strong young men and don’t necessarily appreciate having to bear and raise children without a supportive father in the house.

Most women (and many fair-minded men) supported the goals of equity feminism — after all, it was a waste to have highly competent women kept out of the workplace when they could do more to support their families there than at home, or sentenced to church and charity work in between stints babysitting the grandkids. It was never fair to force young women to marry and have a family if they wanted to choose a different path, and there was no longer any survival imperative requiring every one of them to do so. But it’s still true that many young women — and young men — want children and a family, and where modern feminism has gone off track is where it denigrates this desire and pushes to cripple young men who are the other necessary ingredient needed to start a successful family.

Ciaran has this good piece up on Just Four Guys has “Women Against Feminism: Feminism Betrays the Feminine Imperative” on this awakening:

The Feminine Imperative

The feminine imperative, as I understand it, is the force bending the social order to the female mating goals: obtaining a high quality mate, followed by provision and protection for herself and her children. Since the feminine imperative deals with the essential task of propagating the species, it is of great importance, and all successful societies have accommodated it in one way or another. But all successful societies have also maintained a balance with the male imperative: to have sex with attractive, receptive females and to sire children with confident paternity. Despite its importance, the concept of “feminine imperative” has become laden with scorn because many men feel that the balance between these sometimes conflicting imperatives has become unacceptably tilted in favor of the feminine. Examples of the feminine imperative in action are legal policies that permit an unfaithful woman to cuckold her husband, compelling him to assume full financial responsibility for the child until adulthood with little legal recourse, or divorce laws that allow women to evict their husbands from their children’s lives, while forcing him to maintain the burden of provisioning through alimony and child support payments.

The Masculine Response

The elevation of the feminine imperative at the expense of men can be considered a type of defection in the cooperation between the sexes – women are availing themselves of the benefits provided by men while freeing themselves of the responsibilities those benefits used to entail. But mating is a game with repeated interactions, and one group’s exploitative tactics will eventually be countered by the other. In addition, market forces will result in a change in supply in result to the demands and incentives placed by one group upon the other. Together, these effects have produced a significant change in male behavior over the last few decades. Fewer men are getting married, and fewer men are participating in the workforce. A society that celebrates female achievement while disparaging male assertiveness has resulted in stagnant or falling achievement of boys and men in education and the workplace. Some men are consciously going their own way, while others follow that path either through an unconscious response to incentives or through a lack of opportunity.

The consequences of these changes is that young women are finding that good husbands are hard to find. And contrary to feminist dogma, this matters very much, because no one is capable or willing to provide as much support to a young mother as a good husband. He not only provides material support, he provides his labor, skills, and emotional support. And perhaps most important, he provides crucial parenting contributions that greatly improve his offspring’s chances of survival and success.

Feminism sought to serve the feminine imperative by increasing women’s choices for mates, and freeing women of dependence on men for protection and provisioning. But feminism has failed to replace the value of a good husband through innovations such alimony, child support, government assistance, and preferential treatment for women in education and the workplace. Meanwhile, these same social innovations have greatly reduced the supply of good men willing and able to commit to long term child rearing. Some men are deterred by the negative incentives, some are encouraged to engage only in short term behavior by perverse incentives, some are discouraged through failure or poor opportunity, and others become too damaged by abuse to continue their participation in the mating game. The result is a net loss to young women motivated by the feminine imperative; good mates are in reduced supply, and the feminist innovations in provisioning are a poor substitute for good husbands.

This, I believe, is the story that “Women Against Feminism” tells – young women are realizing that feminism is thwarting their feminine imperative. Instead of increasing female mate choice, feminism has reduced the supply of good partners by undercutting men. Instead of decreasing their reliance on men for provisioning and protection, it has damaged men’s willingness and ability to provide those services while providing only poor substitutes. Forward thinking women recognize that their imperatives extend to the next generation; these women see that feminism will damage their sons and hurt the prospects of their daughters. Feminism dismisses the sex differences that women instinctively exploit to cajole (or manipulate) men into cooperation and replaces them with an adversarial, legalistic and one-sided egalitarianism. And feminism turns out to be opposed to the very basis of the feminine imperative – the reproductive instinct. Maternal, nurturing women feel scorned by feminism’s elevation of careerism to life’s highest good. To these women, feminism is a failure. A putatively liberating doctrine, it turned out to be more oppressive than the patriarchy it sought to overthrow.

I don’t think we need to compare degrees of oppression; both the awful old patriarchy and modern feminist political correctness constrain women’s choices and tell them how to think and act. Conformity enforced by attempts to silence and ostracize dissidents doesn’t sound like liberation to me.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

Stereotype Inaccuracy: False Dichotomies

Stereotypes

There’s a natural human tendency to stereotype: to combine cultural and real-life knowledge about correlations between superficial, easily-observed characteristics and traits we cannot immediately observe, like trustworthiness, tendency to violence, and intelligence.

Famously, Jesse Jackson once commented on his own use of stereotypes about young black men: “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.”

This is a good example of use of heuristics — simple rules for deciding which may not always be correct but help shortcut the time to decide. Mr. Jackson, like everyone else, discovers he is a little bit racist — he is using a stereotype about his own race to decide whether to be afraid about the man coming up behind him. He may decide to take evasive action if the young man is black, and not if it turns out to be a middle-aged, well-dressed white man.

And who can blame him? While there is some chance the white man is a mugger, the chance is far less than if it is a young black man in urban thug-style clothing. Note that it is not only race that people use to jump to conclusions on limited evidence — clothing, mannerisms, age, and walk also come into play.

Prejudice and stereotyping can harm those whose superficial characteristics are associated with negative judgments. The young black man who is hurt when others cross the street to avoid him is the least of the problems — the black man or woman who applied for a retail clerk’s job in the South in the 1950s would often be discouraged; even employers who were not themselves prejudiced would assume some of their customers would be, and hire the less qualified white person instead.

The civil rights movement, and other movements of the 1960s and on, tried to eliminate the harmful effects of prejudice and stereotyping by teaching everyone to internally reject stereotypes as a basis for making decisions. This has worked so well that now when we say the word “stereotype” it is assumed that what we are talking about is false and damaging. This makes us Better People because we do not treat others badly because of some irrelevant superficial characteristic, but may have gone too far.

The problem with today’s politically correct rejection of the entire idea of stereotypes is that cultural stereotypes and generalizations are actually remarkably accurate in many areas. Social scientists who study them have reams of data showing this, but rejection of stereotypes is now an article of faith impervious to any contrary data. So we all still make judgments based on stereotypes internally but pretend that we don’t! Jesse Jackson’s moment of shame was in realizing the inconsistency. And well-meaning white people in the same circumstance will try to avoid taking any action which might be seen as implying they fear the young black man — hoping to avoid hurting an innocent person’s feelings. Which can lead to being mugged.

Lee Jussim, Ph.D, writing for Psychology Today, discusses this problem:

I suspect that, when many of you saw the title, you assumed I would be discussing how inaccurate stereotypes are impervious to change in the face of data. That is how social scientists have been discussing stereotypes for nearly 100 years.

Nope!

But we agree that being impervious to data is a bad thing, right? Liberals routinely rail against conservatives’ supposedly anti-scientific stands, right? Liberals, in sharp contrast, don’t ever oppose data and science, do they?

Great! In that case, you will be interested to discover that:

1. Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology

2. The fact that this is true has had almost no effect on the frequency with which social scientists claim, assume, or imply that stereotypes are inaccurate.

You probably find this hard to believe. After all, you have been told, over and over and over and over, that stereotypes are inaccurate. This has been part and parcel of the liberal project of fighting oppression and prejudice.

…

Stereotype accuracy is an empirical question. You can claim anything you want. Your interpretation of your experience is whatever you believe. But combating the well-established flaws and limitations of subjective interpretation of experience is exactly why science was developed.

Which gets us to, not your personal experience, but the science. What has scientific research found about the accuracy of stereotypes?

Stereotypes are (Usually) More Valid Than Most Social Psychological Hypotheses

Over the last 40 years, there has been a ton of research assessing the accuracy of stereotypes. The findings are astonishing, at least if you have bought the longstanding line that “stereotypes are inaccurate.”

The following data are from my recent review of this area of research (Jussim et al, 2014). It gives the proportion of results for various types of research that are greater than correlations of .30 and .50, respectively, because Richard et al (2003) provided these figures for all of social psychology, which then constitutes an excellent standard of comparison.

Which is more accurate, social psychology or social stereotypes?

Percent of Correlations that are >.30 >.50

All of Social Psychology 24% 5%

Race, consensual stereotype accuracy 95% 95%

Race, personal stereotype accuracy 47% 18%

Gender, consensual stereotype accuracy 100% 94%

Gender, personal stereotype accuracy 79% 58%

These results are based on over 20 studies of stereotype accuracy conducted by multiple independent researchers and laboratories (see Jussim, 2012; Jussim et al, in press, for reviews). Results for other stereotypes (e.g., age, occupation, politics, etc.), are similar. As such, stereotype accuracy is far more replicable than many far more famous “effects” in social psychology (large effects are inherently more replicable, but understanding why that must be involves an arcane statistical discussion that is beyond the scope of this blog entry).

To be sure, there is some evidence of inaccuracy in stereotypes, especially national stereotypes of personality. There is also good evidence that political ideologues exaggerate each others’ views. Nonetheless, the BIG picture remains intact: Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable findings in all of social psychology.

Why, then, have social scientists been declaring and decrying the inaccuracy of stereotypes for nearly a century? The data don’t now, and never have, supported such a claim.

Social scientists don’t go around making stuff up to advance their leftish narratives of oppression. Do they?

Disclaimer II: I AM a social scientist. There are LOTS of other social scientists out there who go to great lengths and do a good job of not allowing their politics to distort their science. I admit that making claims that are unhinged from data does no credit to our field and, if taken out of context, can lead people to dismiss the field’s value and importance. However, the solution to bad science is not to kill science. It is to pressure and advocate for, and push, enhance, and support good science. Such efforts, which include exposing bad science, should count as a CREDIT to the social sciences.

So, my liberal friends who embrace science, you are now outraged at the anti-scientific stand of all those who deny the scientific evidence demonstrating stereotype accuracy, right?

Percent of Correlations that are	>.30	>.50
All of Social Psychology	24%	5%
Race, consensual stereotype accuracy	95%	95%
Race, personal stereotype accuracy	47%	18%
Gender, consensual stereotype accuracy	100%	94%
Gender, personal stereotype accuracy	79%	58%

His data show that groups have averaged stereotypical beliefs that are remarkably accurate, while individuals are less accurate but still doing much better than chance.

The takeaway lesson: the first-order reaction against stereotypes, while very useful in correcting poor treatment of individuals, is far too simple. A second-order or even more nuanced understanding of the mechanism of stereotyping can salvage their utility while still removing most of the harm to individuals.

The Enlightenment values of individualism and justice are best served by recognizing the real world utility of heuristics based on superficial factors, while always doing more to determine true characteristics of individuals in truly important matters. All of us are judged constantly and may do more or less well in interacting with others based on superficial characteristics and snap judgments; this cannot be completely removed. Those who wish to gain the trust of others will always need to signal their reliability. It may not be fair, but it is human.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

For more on SJWs, modern feminism, and memetics:

Culture Wars: Peace Through Limited Government
Divorced Men 8 Times as Likely to Commit Suicide as Divorced Women
Life Is Unfair! The Militant Red Pill Movement
Leftover Women: The Chinese Scene
“Divorce in America: Who Really Wants Out and Why”
View Marriage as a Private Contract?
Madmen, Red Pill, and Social Justice Wars
Unrealistic Expectations: Liberal Arts Woman and Amazon Men
Stable is Boring? “Psychology Today” Article on Bad Boyfriends
Ross Douthat on Unstable Families and Culture
Ev Psych: Parental Preferences in Partners
Purge: the Feminist Grievance Bubble
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Modern Feminism: Victim-Based Special Pleading
Stereotype Inaccuracy: False Dichotomies
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
Red Pill Women — Female MRAs
Why Did Black Crime Syndicates Fail to Go Legit?
The “Fairy Tale” Myth: Both False and Destructive
Feminism’s Heritage: Freedom vs. Special Protections
Evolve or Die: Survival Value of the Feminine Imperative
“Why Are Great Husbands Being Abandoned?”
Divorce and Alimony: State-By-State Reform, Massachusetts Edition
Reading “50 Shades of Grey” Gives You Anorexia and an Abusive Partner!
Why We Are Attracted to Bad Partners (Who Resemble a Parent)
Gaming and Science Fiction: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again

Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect

Gluten-free Singles

I recently noticed my bottle of Ca-Mg-Zn (calcium-Magnesium-Zinc) tablets has a large “GLUTEN-FREE” on the label. This seems odd since I wouldn’t expect a lot of gluten in a tablet! Just as cereals once sported “Cholesterol Free!” labels, manufacturers have discovered some consumers will react positively to a label associated with healthy eating even when the food in question never contained any of the supposedly hazardous substance.

Celiac disease is a serious digestive disorder where even small amounts of gliaden (a component of gluten protein found in grains like wheat, barley, and rye) causes an auto-immune inflammation of the bowel, leading to malabsorption of nutrients, chronic constipation or diarrhea, and discomfort and low energy.

Less than 1% of the population suffers from true celiac disease. A larger group seems to have problems digesting wheat and other grain products, often called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but this diagnosis has never been well proven, and recent studies show the digestive difficulties of these people are not due to gluten as such, but to other components of wheat and grains.

So like many memes, the “gluten-free diet” meme started from a truth: people with celiac disease suffer greatly if they consume anything with gluten. Added on was another truth: a larger group has some sensitivities to wheat and other grains. But then it became a runaway train of half-truths and marketing, where manufacturers discovered they could charge more and sell more by offering gluten-free products to meet demand mostly from those who had no real reason to avoid gluten.

From Canadian magazine MacLean’s:

Gluten-free products are a $90-million enterprise in Canada alone, and the sector is expected to grow at least 10 per cent each year through to 2018—an astounding feat for what is primarily a food-based category. In the United States, the market is valued at $4.2 billion and climbing. A landmark study by researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, published in the Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research in 2008, revealed that gluten-free foods were, on average, 242 per cent more expensive than their “regular” counterparts, and up to 455 per cent pricier in some cases. “If I was to manufacture a product,” says Dron, “there is no way that I would not have a gluten-free option in today’s day and age.”

…

With all these products, one might assume the need for gluten-free items is epidemic in Canada, that without them a public health crisis could emerge. In reality, the explanation for the recent explosion in demand is a spectacular mix of real medical concerns, changing views on what accounts for a healthy diet, savvy marketing and celebrity influence. Sports stars Steve Nash and Novak Djokovic insist going gluten-free has turned them into the finest and leanest athletes in the world. Public health messages have shifted focus from low fat and sugar-free to low-carb, partly to stave off rampant obesity. And the best-selling book Wheat Belly, by American cardiologist William Davis, published in 2011, has convinced millions to stop eating, as the author puts it, “a perfectly crafted Frankengrain” that “has exerted more harm than any foreign terrorist group can inflict on us.”

Note that it is easy to avoid gluten by not eating breads and cereals, and that changing your diet this way based on a false belief gluten harms you does, in fact, help most people lose weight — but because of the reduced carb consumption, not the lack of gluten.

Science Daily reports on a University of Florida study on popular beliefs about gluten-free foods:

Unlike their conventional counterparts, refined gluten-free foods, for the most part, are not enriched or fortified with essential vitamins and minerals. “If I’m a college student, and I want to lose weight, and I read on the Internet that a gluten-free diet is the way to go, I may start avoiding products that contain essential nutrients such as those found in cereal grains fortified with folic acid,” Shelnutt said. “The problem is you have a lot of healthy women who choose a gluten-free diet because they believe it is healthier for them and can help them lose weight and give them healthier skin.”

…

One of Shelnutt’s doctoral students, Caroline Dunn, wanted to know if gluten-free labeling has any impact on how consumers perceive the foods’ taste and nutrition. In a one-day experiment on the UF campus in Gainesville in February, 97 people ate cookies and chips, all gluten-free. Half were labeled “gluten-free”; the other half labeled “conventional.”

Participants then rated each food on a nine-point scale for how much they liked the flavor and texture. They also filled out a questionnaire, said Shelnutt, a faculty member with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

About a third of participants said they believed gluten-free foods to be healthier than those labeled “conventional,” a figure she thought would be much lower. While avoiding gluten-containing foods can reduce carbohydrate intake, thus helping some lose weight, many health experts say a gluten-free diet is no healthier than a conventional diet except for those with celiac disease.

Paying high prices for gluten-free products is necessary for celiac sufferers, and the gluten-free diet fad has improved their access to gluten-free foods a great deal — which is good. But for the vast majority, it is simply superstition and pseudoscience; while it probably is a good idea for most people to eat less bread and grains (and starches and sweets!), there is no reason to pay high prices for special gluten-free foods.

A nice wrapup in Forbes on the careful scientific experiments showing the apparent nonexistence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity:

In 2011, Peter Gibson, a professor of gastroenterology at Monash University and director of the GI Unit at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, published a study that found gluten, a protein found in grains like wheat, rye, and barley, to cause gastrointestinal distress in patients without celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder unequivocally triggered by gluten. Double-blinded, randomized, and placebo-controlled, the experiment was one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date that non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), more commonly known as gluten intolerance, is a genuine condition.

By extension, the study also lent credibility to the meteoric rise of the gluten-free diet. Surveys now show that 30% of Americans would like to eat less gluten, and sales of gluten-free products are estimated to hit $15 billion by 2016 — that’s a 50% jump over 2013′s numbers!

But like any meticulous scientist, Gibson wasn’t satisfied with his first study. His research turned up no clues to what actually might be causing subjects’ adverse reactions to gluten. Moreover, there were many more variables to control! What if some hidden confounder was mucking up the results? He resolved to repeat the trial with a level of rigor lacking in most nutritional research. Subjects would be provided with every single meal for the duration of the trial. Any and all potential dietary triggers for gastrointestinal symptoms would be removed, including lactose (from milk products), certain preservatives like benzoates, propionate, sulfites, and nitrites, and fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates, also known as FODMAPs. And last, but not least, nine days worth of urine and fecal matter would be collected. With this new study, Gibson wasn’t messing around.

37 subjects took part, all confirmed not to have celiac disease but whose gastrointestinal symptoms improved on a gluten-free diet, thus fulfilling the diagnostic criteria for non-celiac gluten sensitivity.** They were first fed a diet low in FODMAPs for two weeks (baseline), then were given one of three diets for a week with either 16 grams per day of added gluten (high-gluten), 2 grams of gluten and 14 grams of whey protein isolate (low-gluten), or 16 grams of whey protein isolate (placebo). Each subject shuffled through every single diet so that they could serve as their own controls, and none ever knew what specific diet he or she was eating. After the main experiment, a second was conducted to ensure that the whey protein placebo was suitable. In this one, 22 of the original subjects shuffled through three different diets — 16 grams of added gluten, 16 grams of added whey protein isolate, or the baseline diet — for three days each.

Analyzing the data, Gibson found that each treatment diet, whether it included gluten or not, prompted subjects to report a worsening of gastrointestinal symptoms to similar degrees. Reported pain, bloating, nausea, and gas all increased over the baseline low-FODMAP diet. Even in the second experiment, when the placebo diet was identical to the baseline diet, subjects reported a worsening of symptoms! The data clearly indicated that a nocebo effect, the same reaction that prompts some people to get sick from wind turbines and wireless signals, was at work here. Patients reported gastrointestinal distress without any apparent physical cause. Gluten wasn’t the culprit; the cause was likely psychological. Participants expected the diets to make them sick, and so they did. The finding led Gibson to the opposite conclusion of his 2011 research:

“In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten.”

Instead, as RCS reported last week, FODMAPS are a far more likely cause of the gastrointestinal problems attributed to gluten intolerance. Jessica Biesiekierski, a gastroenterologist formerly at Monash University and now based out of the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Disorders at the University of Leuven in Belgium,* and lead author of the study alongside Gibson, noted that when participants consumed the baseline low-FODMAP diet, almost all reported that their symptoms improved!

“Reduction of FODMAPs in their diets uniformly reduced gastrointestinal symptoms and fatigue in the run-in period, after which they were minimally symptomatic.”

Coincidentally, some of the largest dietary sources of FODMAPs — specifically bread products — are removed when adopting a gluten-free diet, which could explain why the millions of people worldwide who swear by gluten-free diets feel better after going gluten-free.

For more on diet and weight loss:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Starbucks, Jamba Juice Make You Fat
Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat. Government Guidelines Did!
‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal?
Fructose: The True Villain?
More on “Fed Up”, Sugar Subsidies, and Obesity
Another Study on Diet Drinks
LeBron James Cut Carbs for Lean Look
Why We’re Fat: In-Depth Studies Under Way
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
More on Diet Drinks: Best Studies Show They Aid Weight Loss
Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Sugared Soft Drinks: Health Risk? (and What About Diet Soda?)
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Acidic Soft Drinks and Sodas: Demineralization Damages Teeth
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy
Bulletproof Coffee: Coffee, Oil, and Butter for Breakfast?

For more on useful supplements and life-extending habits:

Low-Dose Aspirin Reduces Pancreatic Cancer
Daily Aspirin Regimen Reduces Cancer Rates
Lower Back Pain: Acetaminophen (Tylenol, Paracetamol) Useless
Scams: Multi-Level Marketing, Herbalife
Vitamin D: Anti-Dementia?

“Parallel Science Propaganda Machine”

Science! – Breaking Bad

Noticing the ways in which “Science!” is being used as an authority signal by all sorts of propagandists now — including Vani Hari “Food Babe” and Dr. Oz — it alerts us to a much broader problem: lack of rigorous scientific method has spread from social sciences where researchers typically misunderstand statistics and fail to use proper controls, then have their press release end up interpreted as “proving” some more broadly-stated claim by popularizing media reports. This tendency has infected all the other sciences.

Aside from simple distortion, there are a variety of other methods to mislead by borrowing the authority science brings to any debate position. Activist organizations (and business lobbying groups as well!) now find a way to get studies done that support their politics, then proclaim the studies as proving their point of view correct. Reason Hit and Run’s Ronald Bailey brought my attention to a good story on this phenomenon by Marcel Kuntz of the Genetic Literacy Project — the large number of marginal journals and “institutes” that will cooperate in promoting junk science:

Political ecologists–commentators in the media and among NGO advocacy groups–like science…when it confirms their views. When it contradicts them, rather than changing their minds, they often prefer to change the science to fit their ideology. They have thus created a “parallel science.” Which should not be confused with pseudo-sciences (e.g. astrology, false medicine, the paranormal, ufology, etc.).

Pseudo-sciences may harm naive believers, parallel “science” is harming democracy. It is a component of a predetermined political project to the exclusive benefit of the ideological views of a minority. “Parallel science” seemingly resembles science, but it differs from science since its conclusions precede experimentation.

Parallel “science” has been created to replace scientists, especially in risk assessment, by “experts” (often self-proclaimed) supportive of a political project. This parallel “science” is hidden behind positive-sounding terms, such as “citizen science” or “independent” or “whistleblower”, while mainstream scientists are accused of having “conflicts of interest” or having ties with “industry”. In order to further propagate distrust in current risk assessment, parallel “science” will invoke unrelated past health problems or environmental damages, but never to the way science has solved problems. …

Why is parallel “science” not discredited and why is it represented so uncritically by the media? The answer partly lies in the current dominance of a relativist ideology. The danger of such a postmodern approach to science is that it considers all points of views to be equally valid and thus raises the value of “independent” (in fact ideological) views to the same level as scientific ones.

Ronald Bailey adds an incident illustrating the problem of politically-biased sources cited as “Science!”:

Let me give an example of how “parallel science” manufactures propaganda for activist groups with which they can mislead the credulous. In March, 2014, Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist in Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, stated in no less a place than MIT’s Technology Review:

It’s also worth noting that there’s no real consensus on GMO crop safety.

As evidence that there’s “no real consensus,” to what website did Gurian-Sherman link? A declaration issued by the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility. ENSSER is a collection of long-time foes of agricultural biotechnology. The disingenuous statement has so far been signed by fewer than 300 scientists, including such anti-biotech luminaries as Charles Benbrook, Vandana Shiva, Gilles-Eric Seralini, and Gurian-Sherman himself. Referring to this declaration as evidence against biotech crop safety is akin to citing a statement from tobacco company scientists asserting that cigarette smoking isn’t a risk factor for lung cancer.

Vani Hari’s mistake — what makes her so easy to discredit — is that she incorporated as a profit-making LLC, when sophisticated propagandists know to start a nonprofit NGO and simply pay themselves a hefty salary out of nonprofit funds. The effect is the same — corrupt dollars from sponsors and special interests go in, propaganda and a comfortable lifestyle for the propagandists go out. The difference is it’s harder to attack the nonprofit.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

Jeb Kinnison

Writing About Life and Love

Memetics and Evolution

Evolve or Die: Survival Value of the Feminine Imperative

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Stereotype Inaccuracy: False Dichotomies

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Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect

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“Parallel Science Propaganda Machine”

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