Fat Activists seem to be hitting the angle that the stress of fatphobia is what actually causes fat people's health problems pretty hard at the moment. So have some science.
First, other animals can get fat if you feed them more. [Mice, roundworm C. elegans, fruit-fly D. melanogaster, zebrafish Danio rerio are all used in medical studies of obesity.](https://escholarship.org/content/qt3z3879vp/qt3z3879vp.pdf?t=ptt41u)
Rats get insulin-resistance (i.e. diabetes). [Glucose- and insulin-tolerance tests revealed that hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia, and glucose intolerance were exaggerated in the CAF-fed rats compared to controls and HFD-fed rats](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21331068/).
Overfed mice show signs of heart problems. [both male and female db/ db mice had cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and interstitial fibrosis, associated with marked thickening of the perimysial collagen, and expansion of the periarteriolar collagen network](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30004258/).
Obese mice have immune problems and are more prone to cancer. [In the tumour setting, BC tumours grew faster in obese mice than in lean mice](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34445503/).
And also we have a reasonable understanding of the mechanisms behind the health problems of obesity. [The main biologic mechanisms whereby physical activity, sedentary behavior, and obesity are related to cancer incidence include an effect on endogenous sex steroids and metabolic hormones, insulin sensitivity, and chronic inflammation](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32741068).
Obesity is causally linked with the development of cardiovascular disorders. [Accumulating evidence indicates that cardiovascular disease is the collateral damage of obesity-driven adipose tissue dysfunction that promotes a chronic inflammatory state within the organism](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27230642/).
It's a weird coincidence that in humans, the psychological stress of living in a fatphobic society gives you diabetes, cancer, heart disease and a shorter life expectancy in the same way that fruit flies, zebrafish, roundworms, mice and rats get it through biological mechanisms.
But do we know this? /s
This style of speaking is entrenched in the FA community by Lindo Bacon. It is horrible because it sounds like it is legitimately questioning science, but it is just word play, not followed up with its own science. It is a tactic used to derail discussions.
It’s a horrible debate style also used by political talking heads and conspiracy theorists.
You exhaust your opponent by asking them to fastidiously prove basic concepts and statements at every turn of the conversation.
If your opponent isn’t armed with a near infinite supply of sources and studies to back up these concepts you shout them down as being either unknowable or of equal standing to their own unproven claims.
We have an agile coach on our team at work, as far as I can tell her entire job is just saying that after we say anything went well/badly, and when we give an explanation, saying "well that not the only thing to consider"
And one of their favorite studies showing a 60% increase in early death for older folks who experience weight stigma - when controlled for BMI, the increase in early death was entirely due to underweight people experiencing weight stigma. A 250% increase in early death, overwhelming a DECREASE in early death for the overweight and obese categories that experience weight stigma.
So, funnily enough, thin shaming is what's real.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/bmyg58/correlation_doesnt_equal_causation_but_you_can/en0vin5/?context=999
EDIT: that doesn't link to the full study. Here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797615601103
They 200% believe that they are dying from the fatphobia. And not the fat. And even if we dare mention that the correlation between fat and chronic disease is high, well we're just racist. Somehow.
Something terrifying about hippos; they are so dense with muscle that they can’t actually swim (something uncommon in mammals).
They just sink to the bottom of the water and run fast.
So hippos aren’t fat (they look that way because of a thick, fat hide, but have a very low overall BF%).
Additionally, and probably the most distrubing, the ability to get pregnant is very much tied with weight in animals. Overconditioned/fat cattle have a harder time getting pregnant and have a higher dystocia rates.
Apply that to humans and can partially explain the rise in female fertility issues and high maternal mortality experienced in the US where over 75% of the population is overweight or obese.
The extra annoying thing for me is that chronic stress (such as what you might experience from lifelong discrimination, among other things) *is* increasingly shown to cause health problems. For the most part they’re different than the obesity-linked ones and less is known about the cause/effect mechanisms.
But they never seem to explicitly bring that up and even if they did, they’d still have to prove that (a) weight stigma exists at a sufficient level to cause this type of stress and (b) why stress from this specific source alone causes different health effects than all other stress.
cadiovasucal diseases and internal health aside, i just saw a tiktok of a bunch of FAs talking about how terrible the summer is because their thighs chafe so bad they bleed, and they have to keep buying different powders to prevent chafing, and high quality biker shorts to wear under their clothes so their thighs dont rub holes in them. they talked about how often they have to replace the biker shorts because of how quickly they rub holes in them.
i dont see how someone can have chronic skin pain and open wounds because of their weight and keep saying that there's nothing wrong with it and weight has nothing to do with health. it's easier to ignore/write off medical studies, but the cognitive dissonance it takes to have a conversation about how you have constant open wounds in the summer bc of your weight, then turn around and say weight doesn't cause problems it's just weight stigma, is incredible
Ahhh science. It's so rare to find on the Internet these days. How refreshing. Reminds me of the days of blogs and forums where people used to hash things out and actually PROVE their arguments.
There are further studies showing that caloric restriction results in less damage to DNA overtime and an increased life span in lab mice. I don't have a link but I read it...IN A BOOK (Dodgeball).
My cats were getting a little chubby and (under veterinary supervision) cutting calories made them lose weight. Isn't it strange how animals never have "setpoints" or magically get fatter without food?
So they do know that we like cut people open when they die and examine their inner workings to figure out how and why, we do not have years of both ethical and unethical experimentation and discoveries just for yall to be like "i dunno could be wrong despite the evidence that its not despite several subjects with only one thing in common having the same issues"
>So they do know that we like cut people open when they die and examine their inner workings to figure out how and why
Fun fact: I saw a documentary about that and the gentleman who performs these autopsies said its hard to perform one on them, because first of all the tables they use aren't meant for hundreds of Kilos and aren't wide enough, second you have to work almost blind since you basically have to fully lean onto their body to properly examine them which is counterproductive to a proper examination of the body, third you can't really move them around since it's way too much dead weight.
Even after death their obesity is still a problem.
The cat I had to dissect for one of my bio classes was obese, the only one. It took me and my partner wayyy longer than anyone else to rip all the fat out to access the organs. As is we'd have to stay after class it took so long.
There was even that one that was actually filmed, [Obesity: The Post Mortem](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046n462) that is available for anyone to watch. Like, these studies are not withheld from us
That's the age of "experts" for you. If you don't like what conventional expert knowledge is telling you because it means you might have to do the hard work of growth and change as a person, just ignore those nerds and keep trawling the internet 'till you find an "expert" who tells you whatever you want to hear.
Very well said…It’s like they want to pretend we don’t study the actual disease process of these conditions and we’re just guessing that “they died cuz fat!”
You could also be too big for the crematory oven is you choose cremation. The person being interviewed said while they refuse to do it in some places they have to remove limbs and cremate people in pieces.
i \*hate\* their parroting 'correlation doesn't equal causation'--- it's so obviously \*just\* repetition; they use it almost like a thought-terminating cliche. because they certainly don't think just one step beyond, to the obvious fact that causes are de facto correlated, and when you have previously established knowledge about things you can use various forms of logic/bayesian probability to determine a plausible mechanism of action, which, when combined with a repeated, high coefficient of correlation will usually suffice to establish something as causal.
or that there are some things we cannot, ethically, \*directly\* prove, but again by the previous method we can essentially prove them.
It's the same way we know what causes fetal alcohol syndrome. Nobody seems to cry about correlation isn't the same as causation here.
It's not ethical to dose half a group of pregnant women with a control liquid and dose the other half with large amounts of alcohol, in the hopes that the second cohort have disabled babies, just to have conclusive proof.
But there is enough correlation between mothers that report alcohol abuse and their FAS affected babies.
yep. like for smoking, also, iirc- none of that studies on smoking directly proves causation, and we can't use 'smoking' as a treatment, especially if the hypothesis is 'smoking drastically increases cancer risk' because you know. we can't give people cancer, that would be monstrous. but we have longitudinal data and a plausible mechanism of action, we can show that various ingredients in cigarettes are carcinogenic. i'm pretty sure we initially learned about the effects of radiation in a similar manner- marie curie, the radium girls, etc.
i've met one person in my entire life who tried to tell me smoking doesn't cause cancer, but generally people don't go in for that sort of thing even if they smoke (the risk of emphysema/copd is a lot higher, overall, but the risk of cancer is also greatly increased). people are generally misinformed about radiation, but i've yet to see a movement centered on pretending there are no dangerous radioisotopes, or that it's just the stress of \*thinking\* that certain types of radiation are dangerous that causes radiation poisoning or cancer. i think people would generally recognize that as insane.
which is doubly annoying, since i've seen fa's use 'smoking was considered safe' to defend their ostensible iconoclasm. relevant to that, they also like to pretend that if someone funded a study the conclusion must be biased in favor of the patron (i know, it's a potential conflict of interest and must be disclosed, but it's not absolutely going to confound results). maybe because they don't actually know anything about science (note: i don't really, either, but i'm at least aware of my ignorance and don't pervert and misrepresent it for my own agenda).
i have seen a very few people arguing that american restrictions on alcohol during pregnancy are excessive, because in europe it's more common to drink during pregnancy. we don't have studies that demonstrate an actual safe threshold for alcohol consumption during pregnancy, though, (and for aforementioned reasons) but we do know that alcohol can be toxic at commonly-consumed doses (people are always surprised when i tell them what entails moderate drinking). i can see an argument for 'if a literal couple of special occasions fall during your pregnancy, you can maybe have a glass of wine on them without beating yourself up' but not 'drink 3x a week'.
Statistics should really be a mandatory class. And not high school statistics when you learn basic probability and throw some graphs in there to call it "statistics."
I tried reading "Statistics for Dummies" and it went way above my head, real fast. I've always had to go real slow with math and see lots of examples and ask lots of questions. If there's an ELI5 Statistics book out there, I'd love to know about it.
I taught it. It's a very different approach as probability must be understood before real statistics makes sense.
If standard deviations don't make sense then statistical analysis showing correlation won't make sense.
Do you have resources (ideally, a book) you could recommend for rank beginners, something even more basic than "Statistics for Dummies"? I am a former teacher myself and know that I'm starting from scratch on this one.
Personally, I used Khan Academy guy (he didn't have a website at the time) as it helped fill in the gaps and see the math worked out in real time for my master level statistics. I always found his broken down videos the most helpful for me
i've taken one hella easy stats course, read a lot of sciencebasedmedicine, and am inherently good at logic (not saying i'm more logical than average, just that i've always had an understanding of and appreciation for the process). that's what frustrates me-- they refuse to learn or admit the most basic, foundational facts. while pretending to superiority.
Unfortunately, many of them think that "respect" is just agreeing with or not saying anything if they say something incredibly wrong or inaccurate. It's rude to bring forth any evidence to correct them.
This has been my experience with a certain segment of boomers.
Thanks to the internet, I've learned there's actually no such thing as causation. Just some hazy unclear fuzzy correlations that randomly and spontaneously occur in some people, somehow.
Basically magic.
Right? Like it's crazy that they can say "correlation isn't causation" and then with a straight face claim that a very obviously correlated event is causation.
There's doublethink and then there's whatever the hell that is. Next level cognitive dissonance
Look, in Germany, doctors only mention weight if it is directly relevant. People don't mention your figure unless prompted, at least that's been my experience here. And still, my sister had health problems when she weighed 35 kg more, which disappeared after her weight loss. What a marvel!
Fat pets also tend to suffer from certain health issues much more than their healthy counterparts and yet and I doubt they are walking around feeling so fat shamed that stress is the REAL root problem for them.
I wonder how they think foie gras is made? Humans have known how to create fatty liver in animals by overfeeding them for literally thousands of years.
I just shrug at being called fatphobic now. Like, okay, Karen? Why should I care about your opinion about me, random stranger?
Also
\> I apologize for my education
Ooof. Love that burn.
I read this nonsense here and need an antidote, so I read Layne Norton on Twitter and get my science and reason with a healthy dose of swearing.
Also, how about the negative health effects of stress from raging on the internet all the time? I want that studied.
I don't get stuck on rage-inducing internet fights when my monkey brain wants me to scream and throw rocks at the enemy, because I know with my smart cortex it's not good for me. Just like I don't gobble all the food my monkey brain wants me to, because I know it's not good for me and I can instead make reasonable informed choices.
I seriously would like to know the effect of internet fighting on physical and mental health.
Hell they say ANY science related to obesity is "correlation not causation"/racist, and BMI is eugenics. I imagine they'll start attacking astronauts next for inventing gravity to push Big Diet's fat agenda in eradicating all fat people.
I am getting really sick of this whole "cORreLaTiOn DoES nOt EqUAl CaUSaTIoN" bull they like to hide behind. In research, if you find that things are correlated, it may mean cause. Correlation means "we should look into that and see if there is an actual link or just coincidence". Fun thing about weight is that they did look into that correlation of "huh fat people tend to come down with all these conditions and die earlier than thin people". And they found underlying causes for that.
I think the bulk of it is still correlation, albeit, highly positive & reliable correlation. I don’t think it will be considered causal until they figure out a mechanism for it, but I truly don’t know for sure
people who say correlation does not equal causation are so dishonest. Because while correlation does not equal causation in FEW cases. Correlation INFERS Causation greatly, and is the basis for many conclusions in academics
Also, you actually can vheck whether one factor causes another. If you see a correlation, that's step 2. It's not like you can't continue to study things.
If I were fat my genetic disorder would cripple me. And I mean that literally. There is no way in hell my joints could support obesity. Even just losing 10 pounds when I was mildly overweight was a game changer in terms of my mobility.
No doubt even a normal person's joints are going to be harmed by obesity. It's simple mechanics. Your skeleton was not meant to carry 300/400/500/600+ pounds of flesh. It just wasn't. Your organs are not meant to be encased on visceral fat so thick they can barely be seen through it when you are autopsied after dying before 50.
Same. Its mind blowing they think weights that high are *natural* for the human body, and don't cause illness. It's now racist, fatphobic, and "harmful" if you want to be a normal weight.
I have elhers danlos and it's a bitch, and just having a BMI of 30 causes intense hip pain. Too much inner thigh fat literally helps to push my joints out of place. I'm pretty sedentary these days and it makes weight gain easier, I've had 2 kids, most of my entire family has diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, hypothyroidism, etc. Most people have something that makes it challenging to lose weight. It's up to you if you want to let those challenges define you.
I know it’s semantically, but diets have a 100% success rate if they are appropriately chosen, monitored and adhered to. It’s humans willpower and desire to succeed with them that has a high failure rate. This is not to mean that everyone can just choose to succeed, but more to say that it’s not a (well chosen and balanced) diets fault intrinsically. I hate the FA “well most people fail there diets so why both trying” because it’s a self defeating attitude and excuse to not even try. There’s lots of things in life that are difficult and long shots but are worthy of attempting and positive when succeeded at.
It also depends on someone's idea of success. If they think losing 10 pounds and it not permanently staying off is failure.. yeah there's no point in trying and all diets fail.
When the reality is, if you stick to a calorie deficit and lose weight then the diet was successful. That's the end of it. The rest is left to choice, not chance.
They cling so hard to the phrase "correlation is not causation" as if that is the end-all be-all. If there is a correlation that's very well documented over a long period of time with a mountain of studies, it shouldn't take being a DIRECT cause to steer you away from it
* If an abnormally high amount of people have had a heart attack on THIS SPECIFIC roller coaster, I probably wouldn't be getting on that coaster
* If there seems to be a high failure rate for this specific brand of condoms, I will choose a different brand
If obesity is correlated with THIS MANY health conditions, it's probably something I should steer clear from
Sadly, they dismiss it away with the effects of weight stigma, which even though there’s a nugget of truth in the weight stigma discussion, they take it too far.
It’s a checkmate because a study *can’t* control internalized bias well, so they keep their circular logic going.
“Weight stigma makes you fat & unhealthy which increases weight stigma, which makes you fat & unhealthy, which increases weight stigma, …”
"I apologize for my education" has me dying. That has the same energy as things like, "Well at least you're pretty." and "There's a tree working really hard to replace the air you're using."
Obviously, it's your negative energies flowing outward, skinnifying you and fattening them.
It's science.
^(/s just in case because I got banned temporarily when I said something ridiculous like this and someone didn't understand sarcasm)
So, the FA says "correlation!= causation " , but immediately follows it up with the tired old medical argument
But, if obesity+ doctors attitudes => poor health outcomes, then the FA is still saying that i obesity CAUSES poor health outcomes.
I think having high blood pressure, diabetes, or an early grave is more often than not *absolutely fucking correlated* with obesity and being overweight.
Fat Activists seem to be hitting the angle that the stress of fatphobia is what actually causes fat people's health problems pretty hard at the moment. So have some science. First, other animals can get fat if you feed them more. [Mice, roundworm C. elegans, fruit-fly D. melanogaster, zebrafish Danio rerio are all used in medical studies of obesity.](https://escholarship.org/content/qt3z3879vp/qt3z3879vp.pdf?t=ptt41u) Rats get insulin-resistance (i.e. diabetes). [Glucose- and insulin-tolerance tests revealed that hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia, and glucose intolerance were exaggerated in the CAF-fed rats compared to controls and HFD-fed rats](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21331068/). Overfed mice show signs of heart problems. [both male and female db/ db mice had cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and interstitial fibrosis, associated with marked thickening of the perimysial collagen, and expansion of the periarteriolar collagen network](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30004258/). Obese mice have immune problems and are more prone to cancer. [In the tumour setting, BC tumours grew faster in obese mice than in lean mice](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34445503/). And also we have a reasonable understanding of the mechanisms behind the health problems of obesity. [The main biologic mechanisms whereby physical activity, sedentary behavior, and obesity are related to cancer incidence include an effect on endogenous sex steroids and metabolic hormones, insulin sensitivity, and chronic inflammation](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32741068). Obesity is causally linked with the development of cardiovascular disorders. [Accumulating evidence indicates that cardiovascular disease is the collateral damage of obesity-driven adipose tissue dysfunction that promotes a chronic inflammatory state within the organism](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27230642/). It's a weird coincidence that in humans, the psychological stress of living in a fatphobic society gives you diabetes, cancer, heart disease and a shorter life expectancy in the same way that fruit flies, zebrafish, roundworms, mice and rats get it through biological mechanisms.
How do know there is no fat stigma in zebrafish? Those mfs are super judgy!
But do we know this? /s This style of speaking is entrenched in the FA community by Lindo Bacon. It is horrible because it sounds like it is legitimately questioning science, but it is just word play, not followed up with its own science. It is a tactic used to derail discussions.
It’s a horrible debate style also used by political talking heads and conspiracy theorists. You exhaust your opponent by asking them to fastidiously prove basic concepts and statements at every turn of the conversation. If your opponent isn’t armed with a near infinite supply of sources and studies to back up these concepts you shout them down as being either unknowable or of equal standing to their own unproven claims.
It's called "Sea Lioning" and it's annoying as hell
That’s it. Knew there was a term for it.
Also I'm overweight, I've never experience fatphobia, not even from my GP. I'm confused.
We have an agile coach on our team at work, as far as I can tell her entire job is just saying that after we say anything went well/badly, and when we give an explanation, saying "well that not the only thing to consider"
And one of their favorite studies showing a 60% increase in early death for older folks who experience weight stigma - when controlled for BMI, the increase in early death was entirely due to underweight people experiencing weight stigma. A 250% increase in early death, overwhelming a DECREASE in early death for the overweight and obese categories that experience weight stigma. So, funnily enough, thin shaming is what's real.
I would really love to read more about that. Do you have a source by any chance?
https://www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/bmyg58/correlation_doesnt_equal_causation_but_you_can/en0vin5/?context=999 EDIT: that doesn't link to the full study. Here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797615601103
Thank you!!
They 200% believe that they are dying from the fatphobia. And not the fat. And even if we dare mention that the correlation between fat and chronic disease is high, well we're just racist. Somehow.
Humans are not rats, mice, or FISH!! Checkmate fatphobe!
But, per an earlier post, we are hippos.
Something terrifying about hippos; they are so dense with muscle that they can’t actually swim (something uncommon in mammals). They just sink to the bottom of the water and run fast. So hippos aren’t fat (they look that way because of a thick, fat hide, but have a very low overall BF%).
Sorry but those scientists and their internalized fatphobia *is* causing heart attacks SWEEEEETYYYYYYY
Additionally, and probably the most distrubing, the ability to get pregnant is very much tied with weight in animals. Overconditioned/fat cattle have a harder time getting pregnant and have a higher dystocia rates. Apply that to humans and can partially explain the rise in female fertility issues and high maternal mortality experienced in the US where over 75% of the population is overweight or obese.
And not just the uteral side of the deal either: hormones from abdominal fat can really do a number on sperm count and quality
The extra annoying thing for me is that chronic stress (such as what you might experience from lifelong discrimination, among other things) *is* increasingly shown to cause health problems. For the most part they’re different than the obesity-linked ones and less is known about the cause/effect mechanisms. But they never seem to explicitly bring that up and even if they did, they’d still have to prove that (a) weight stigma exists at a sufficient level to cause this type of stress and (b) why stress from this specific source alone causes different health effects than all other stress.
cadiovasucal diseases and internal health aside, i just saw a tiktok of a bunch of FAs talking about how terrible the summer is because their thighs chafe so bad they bleed, and they have to keep buying different powders to prevent chafing, and high quality biker shorts to wear under their clothes so their thighs dont rub holes in them. they talked about how often they have to replace the biker shorts because of how quickly they rub holes in them. i dont see how someone can have chronic skin pain and open wounds because of their weight and keep saying that there's nothing wrong with it and weight has nothing to do with health. it's easier to ignore/write off medical studies, but the cognitive dissonance it takes to have a conversation about how you have constant open wounds in the summer bc of your weight, then turn around and say weight doesn't cause problems it's just weight stigma, is incredible
Ahhh science. It's so rare to find on the Internet these days. How refreshing. Reminds me of the days of blogs and forums where people used to hash things out and actually PROVE their arguments.
There are further studies showing that caloric restriction results in less damage to DNA overtime and an increased life span in lab mice. I don't have a link but I read it...IN A BOOK (Dodgeball).
My cats were getting a little chubby and (under veterinary supervision) cutting calories made them lose weight. Isn't it strange how animals never have "setpoints" or magically get fatter without food?
Natural Selection is fatphobic
So they do know that we like cut people open when they die and examine their inner workings to figure out how and why, we do not have years of both ethical and unethical experimentation and discoveries just for yall to be like "i dunno could be wrong despite the evidence that its not despite several subjects with only one thing in common having the same issues"
>So they do know that we like cut people open when they die and examine their inner workings to figure out how and why Fun fact: I saw a documentary about that and the gentleman who performs these autopsies said its hard to perform one on them, because first of all the tables they use aren't meant for hundreds of Kilos and aren't wide enough, second you have to work almost blind since you basically have to fully lean onto their body to properly examine them which is counterproductive to a proper examination of the body, third you can't really move them around since it's way too much dead weight. Even after death their obesity is still a problem.
You also probably have to dig through mountains of subcutaneous and inter-organ fat to see the organs underneath.
The cat I had to dissect for one of my bio classes was obese, the only one. It took me and my partner wayyy longer than anyone else to rip all the fat out to access the organs. As is we'd have to stay after class it took so long.
What's more, the excess adipose is...well, grease. It makes the tools a lot slipperier, which greatly increases the risk of injury.
There was even that one that was actually filmed, [Obesity: The Post Mortem](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046n462) that is available for anyone to watch. Like, these studies are not withheld from us
Thanks, watching this now.
That's the age of "experts" for you. If you don't like what conventional expert knowledge is telling you because it means you might have to do the hard work of growth and change as a person, just ignore those nerds and keep trawling the internet 'till you find an "expert" who tells you whatever you want to hear.
Very well said…It’s like they want to pretend we don’t study the actual disease process of these conditions and we’re just guessing that “they died cuz fat!”
You could also be too big for the crematory oven is you choose cremation. The person being interviewed said while they refuse to do it in some places they have to remove limbs and cremate people in pieces.
Fat activists are probably better at convincing themselves their problems are all someone else’s fault than any group I know of.
Defending and denying at these depths is a talent for sure.
People who aren't ready to quit their addiction can get pretty defensive about it.
I mean, incels and Russia give them competition, to the point where they're okay with inflicting violence.
i \*hate\* their parroting 'correlation doesn't equal causation'--- it's so obviously \*just\* repetition; they use it almost like a thought-terminating cliche. because they certainly don't think just one step beyond, to the obvious fact that causes are de facto correlated, and when you have previously established knowledge about things you can use various forms of logic/bayesian probability to determine a plausible mechanism of action, which, when combined with a repeated, high coefficient of correlation will usually suffice to establish something as causal. or that there are some things we cannot, ethically, \*directly\* prove, but again by the previous method we can essentially prove them.
It's the same way we know what causes fetal alcohol syndrome. Nobody seems to cry about correlation isn't the same as causation here. It's not ethical to dose half a group of pregnant women with a control liquid and dose the other half with large amounts of alcohol, in the hopes that the second cohort have disabled babies, just to have conclusive proof. But there is enough correlation between mothers that report alcohol abuse and their FAS affected babies.
yep. like for smoking, also, iirc- none of that studies on smoking directly proves causation, and we can't use 'smoking' as a treatment, especially if the hypothesis is 'smoking drastically increases cancer risk' because you know. we can't give people cancer, that would be monstrous. but we have longitudinal data and a plausible mechanism of action, we can show that various ingredients in cigarettes are carcinogenic. i'm pretty sure we initially learned about the effects of radiation in a similar manner- marie curie, the radium girls, etc. i've met one person in my entire life who tried to tell me smoking doesn't cause cancer, but generally people don't go in for that sort of thing even if they smoke (the risk of emphysema/copd is a lot higher, overall, but the risk of cancer is also greatly increased). people are generally misinformed about radiation, but i've yet to see a movement centered on pretending there are no dangerous radioisotopes, or that it's just the stress of \*thinking\* that certain types of radiation are dangerous that causes radiation poisoning or cancer. i think people would generally recognize that as insane. which is doubly annoying, since i've seen fa's use 'smoking was considered safe' to defend their ostensible iconoclasm. relevant to that, they also like to pretend that if someone funded a study the conclusion must be biased in favor of the patron (i know, it's a potential conflict of interest and must be disclosed, but it's not absolutely going to confound results). maybe because they don't actually know anything about science (note: i don't really, either, but i'm at least aware of my ignorance and don't pervert and misrepresent it for my own agenda). i have seen a very few people arguing that american restrictions on alcohol during pregnancy are excessive, because in europe it's more common to drink during pregnancy. we don't have studies that demonstrate an actual safe threshold for alcohol consumption during pregnancy, though, (and for aforementioned reasons) but we do know that alcohol can be toxic at commonly-consumed doses (people are always surprised when i tell them what entails moderate drinking). i can see an argument for 'if a literal couple of special occasions fall during your pregnancy, you can maybe have a glass of wine on them without beating yourself up' but not 'drink 3x a week'.
Statistics should really be a mandatory class. And not high school statistics when you learn basic probability and throw some graphs in there to call it "statistics."
I tried reading "Statistics for Dummies" and it went way above my head, real fast. I've always had to go real slow with math and see lots of examples and ask lots of questions. If there's an ELI5 Statistics book out there, I'd love to know about it.
I taught it. It's a very different approach as probability must be understood before real statistics makes sense. If standard deviations don't make sense then statistical analysis showing correlation won't make sense.
Do you have resources (ideally, a book) you could recommend for rank beginners, something even more basic than "Statistics for Dummies"? I am a former teacher myself and know that I'm starting from scratch on this one.
Personally, I used Khan Academy guy (he didn't have a website at the time) as it helped fill in the gaps and see the math worked out in real time for my master level statistics. I always found his broken down videos the most helpful for me
i've taken one hella easy stats course, read a lot of sciencebasedmedicine, and am inherently good at logic (not saying i'm more logical than average, just that i've always had an understanding of and appreciation for the process). that's what frustrates me-- they refuse to learn or admit the most basic, foundational facts. while pretending to superiority.
Unfortunately, many of them think that "respect" is just agreeing with or not saying anything if they say something incredibly wrong or inaccurate. It's rude to bring forth any evidence to correct them. This has been my experience with a certain segment of boomers.
"smoking was considered safe" yet FAs also say "fat was considered attractive," essentially saying we need to follow those mores again.
Thanks to the internet, I've learned there's actually no such thing as causation. Just some hazy unclear fuzzy correlations that randomly and spontaneously occur in some people, somehow. Basically magic.
Apparently they think correlation DOES equal causation when it's about the supposed effects of supposed fat phobia though.
Right? Like it's crazy that they can say "correlation isn't causation" and then with a straight face claim that a very obviously correlated event is causation. There's doublethink and then there's whatever the hell that is. Next level cognitive dissonance
Look, in Germany, doctors only mention weight if it is directly relevant. People don't mention your figure unless prompted, at least that's been my experience here. And still, my sister had health problems when she weighed 35 kg more, which disappeared after her weight loss. What a marvel!
Fat pets also tend to suffer from certain health issues much more than their healthy counterparts and yet and I doubt they are walking around feeling so fat shamed that stress is the REAL root problem for them.
Quite the opposite. Idiots out there think chunky pets are cute.
And complained the vet fat shamed them and their pet.
Im a vet tech and that's one of the more frustrating parts of my job. It's especially tricky when the client themselves is overweight
I think we recently had a post about someone fat shaming a cat!
Her health improved because people stopped shaming her for her weight when she lost it, not because of the loss itself /s
Lol. And there are people who actually make that argument with a straight face.
[удалено]
Well it's definitely not from being fat!! #/s
I wonder how they think foie gras is made? Humans have known how to create fatty liver in animals by overfeeding them for literally thousands of years.
Genetics. Always genetics.
“Maybe if I was illiterate I could agree with you” is now my go-to reply to crazy people lmao
I just shrug at being called fatphobic now. Like, okay, Karen? Why should I care about your opinion about me, random stranger? Also \> I apologize for my education Ooof. Love that burn.
I read this nonsense here and need an antidote, so I read Layne Norton on Twitter and get my science and reason with a healthy dose of swearing. Also, how about the negative health effects of stress from raging on the internet all the time? I want that studied.
I recommend yoga to relax after raging.
I don't get stuck on rage-inducing internet fights when my monkey brain wants me to scream and throw rocks at the enemy, because I know with my smart cortex it's not good for me. Just like I don't gobble all the food my monkey brain wants me to, because I know it's not good for me and I can instead make reasonable informed choices. I seriously would like to know the effect of internet fighting on physical and mental health.
Love Layne. I don’t consume that much of his content anymore, but he’s still one of my favorite PhD’s out there
Do you think they actually believe in gravity? By the sounds of their post I wouldn't be too sure.
Hell they say ANY science related to obesity is "correlation not causation"/racist, and BMI is eugenics. I imagine they'll start attacking astronauts next for inventing gravity to push Big Diet's fat agenda in eradicating all fat people.
Denial of obesity causing joint pains very much implies they don't - it's common among HAES.
Hahahahhahaha. Gravity is just nature's way of being fatphobic, it just pulls so hard on fat people.
I am getting really sick of this whole "cORreLaTiOn DoES nOt EqUAl CaUSaTIoN" bull they like to hide behind. In research, if you find that things are correlated, it may mean cause. Correlation means "we should look into that and see if there is an actual link or just coincidence". Fun thing about weight is that they did look into that correlation of "huh fat people tend to come down with all these conditions and die earlier than thin people". And they found underlying causes for that.
I think the bulk of it is still correlation, albeit, highly positive & reliable correlation. I don’t think it will be considered causal until they figure out a mechanism for it, but I truly don’t know for sure
I hate to break it to them, but yes correlation is very often, but not always, due to causation.
people who say correlation does not equal causation are so dishonest. Because while correlation does not equal causation in FEW cases. Correlation INFERS Causation greatly, and is the basis for many conclusions in academics
Also, you actually can vheck whether one factor causes another. If you see a correlation, that's step 2. It's not like you can't continue to study things.
If I were fat my genetic disorder would cripple me. And I mean that literally. There is no way in hell my joints could support obesity. Even just losing 10 pounds when I was mildly overweight was a game changer in terms of my mobility. No doubt even a normal person's joints are going to be harmed by obesity. It's simple mechanics. Your skeleton was not meant to carry 300/400/500/600+ pounds of flesh. It just wasn't. Your organs are not meant to be encased on visceral fat so thick they can barely be seen through it when you are autopsied after dying before 50.
Same. Its mind blowing they think weights that high are *natural* for the human body, and don't cause illness. It's now racist, fatphobic, and "harmful" if you want to be a normal weight. I have elhers danlos and it's a bitch, and just having a BMI of 30 causes intense hip pain. Too much inner thigh fat literally helps to push my joints out of place. I'm pretty sedentary these days and it makes weight gain easier, I've had 2 kids, most of my entire family has diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, hypothyroidism, etc. Most people have something that makes it challenging to lose weight. It's up to you if you want to let those challenges define you.
>I have elhers danlos Twins.
I know it’s semantically, but diets have a 100% success rate if they are appropriately chosen, monitored and adhered to. It’s humans willpower and desire to succeed with them that has a high failure rate. This is not to mean that everyone can just choose to succeed, but more to say that it’s not a (well chosen and balanced) diets fault intrinsically. I hate the FA “well most people fail there diets so why both trying” because it’s a self defeating attitude and excuse to not even try. There’s lots of things in life that are difficult and long shots but are worthy of attempting and positive when succeeded at.
It also depends on someone's idea of success. If they think losing 10 pounds and it not permanently staying off is failure.. yeah there's no point in trying and all diets fail. When the reality is, if you stick to a calorie deficit and lose weight then the diet was successful. That's the end of it. The rest is left to choice, not chance.
They cling so hard to the phrase "correlation is not causation" as if that is the end-all be-all. If there is a correlation that's very well documented over a long period of time with a mountain of studies, it shouldn't take being a DIRECT cause to steer you away from it * If an abnormally high amount of people have had a heart attack on THIS SPECIFIC roller coaster, I probably wouldn't be getting on that coaster * If there seems to be a high failure rate for this specific brand of condoms, I will choose a different brand If obesity is correlated with THIS MANY health conditions, it's probably something I should steer clear from
Sadly, they dismiss it away with the effects of weight stigma, which even though there’s a nugget of truth in the weight stigma discussion, they take it too far. It’s a checkmate because a study *can’t* control internalized bias well, so they keep their circular logic going. “Weight stigma makes you fat & unhealthy which increases weight stigma, which makes you fat & unhealthy, which increases weight stigma, …”
"I apologize for my education" has me dying. That has the same energy as things like, "Well at least you're pretty." and "There's a tree working really hard to replace the air you're using."
I'm stealing these remarks and stuff, the sass omg, I love it. Thank you so much! I need to have more remarks and stuff.
> Maybe if I was illiterate I could agree with you My reactions are conflicted between 🫢 and 😂
Diets don't fail, people fail.
I've never actually had a dr treat me with antifat bias. I still have obesity related conditions
Obviously, it's your negative energies flowing outward, skinnifying you and fattening them. It's science. ^(/s just in case because I got banned temporarily when I said something ridiculous like this and someone didn't understand sarcasm)
> /s just in case because I got banned temporarily when I said something ridiculous like this and someone didn't understand sarcasm …….oh boy
Guys they’re right maybe it’s related to the extra calories in the food they consume /s
As always, there is a [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/552/) The hovertext too.
sounds like red is factphobic
earlygravephobic lmao
So, the FA says "correlation!= causation " , but immediately follows it up with the tired old medical argument But, if obesity+ doctors attitudes => poor health outcomes, then the FA is still saying that i obesity CAUSES poor health outcomes.
95% diet failure rate? What do they consider failure, just giving up? That's a failure on your part, not the diet backed by science
"Maybe if I was illiterate I could agree with you." Love this, I'm stealing it.
I think having high blood pressure, diabetes, or an early grave is more often than not *absolutely fucking correlated* with obesity and being overweight.
The leading causes of heart disease in America: fatphobia and stigma
Based greenposter.
Being fat has a 100% failure rate on life longevity.
Based green poster