# Any other scientific paradigm overturning as dramatic as "infections cause ulcers" in last 40 years? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549 "2017-04-30T01:46:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/41 "2017-05-01T19:06:00Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > But put that way, what got overturned? > > The advice was basically cut down on fats, particularly saturated and trans fats. > Nowadays dieticians will tell you…the same thing. Or some might say they don’t think there’s enough evidence that fats are bad, but that’s not exactly a U-turn, yet. > > Well it’s tricky, because ideally you would give a large number of people very constrained diets for a long time. And ensure they don’t cheat, by perhaps supervising them. > The difficulty, ethical issues and expense of this, means many studies cannot come close to this ideal. > [@DrDeth](#): > > The idea was "low fat= lose weight’ and there’s little evidence this ever worked. The trend for the last 40-plus years was calories = obese, and fat = 2.5xcalories-per-gram of carbs or protein, therefore “low fat = good”. However, a lot of low fat foods would add an excess of sugar to make the food palatable with the fat missing - resulting in food that still had plenty of calories. If you start a discussion about diets, fat, carbs, etc. you will inevitably trigger the not-yet-established (so probably does not qualify for the OP) discussion that different types of food have different effects - i.e. carbs, and especially sugar, trigger insulin which can result in fat storage which other foods - proteins, fat - will not. (I.e. Atkins diet). But certainly the paradigm “calories cause obesity” needs refinement and the nuances are being hashed out these days. ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/42 "2017-05-01T19:10:39Z")
Not really a paradigm - but re-classifying Pluto away from planetary status overturns billions of peoples understanding of the solar systems. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/43 "2017-05-01T20:28:42Z")
> [@muttrox](#): > > Not really a paradigm - but re-classifying Pluto away from planetary status overturns billions of peoples understanding of the solar systems. That mostly just illustrates how poorly we teach science in school. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/44 "2017-05-01T21:20:11Z")
And even the people who say that Pluto should still be a planet mostly just ignore Eris (Eris? What’s that? They never told us about any Eris when I was a kid!), even though it’s bigger than Pluto, and thus has a stronger claim to planethood. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/45 "2017-05-01T21:22:54Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11168-virus-in-the-frame-for-prion-diseases/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11168-virus-in-the-frame-for-prion-diseases/) > > Might be looking at another paradigm shift there. That article is 10 years old, and subsequent research a) does not seem to indicate a viral cause, and b) seems to bolster the ‘warped protein’ hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/46 "2017-05-01T21:52:56Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > That mostly just illustrates how poorly we teach science in school. Why? I mean Pluto\* was\* a planet for 76 years. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/47 "2017-05-01T22:01:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And even the people who say that Pluto should still be a planet mostly just ignore Eris (Eris? What’s that? They never told us about any Eris when I was a kid!), even though it’s bigger than Pluto, and thus has a stronger claim to planethood. Now they think Pluto is bigger. Just slightly: > **[Eris (dwarf planet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet))** > > Eris (minor-planet designation: 136199 Eris) is the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System. It is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) in the scattered disk and has a high-eccentricity orbit. Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory–based team led by Mike Brown and verified later that year. It was named in September 2006 after the Greco–Roman goddess of strife and discord. Eris is the ninth-most massive known object orbiting the Sun and the sixtee... - In July 2015, after nearly ten years of Eris being considered the ninth-largest object known to directly orbit the sun, close-up imagery from the New Horizons mission more accurately determined Pluto’s volume to be slightly larger than Eris’s, rather than slightly smaller as previously thought.\* ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/48 "2017-05-01T22:43:16Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Why? I mean Pluto\* was\* a planet for 76 years. Yes, but most people apparently just get a list of planets to memorize. The nature of those planets must be largely glossed over, or people would have had the idea that Pluto is an oddball that doesn’t really fit in to either of the two subcategories of planets. If they knew this, they wouldn’t have been shocked, surprised, or upset that it got the heave-ho when we did find a class of objects that it does fit into. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/49 "2017-05-01T22:51:15Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > i.e. carbs, and especially sugar, trigger insulin which can result in fat storage which other foods - proteins, fat - will not. (I.e. Atkins diet). But certainly the paradigm “calories cause obesity” needs refinement and the nuances are being hashed out these days. Not exactly. [http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/index.php/free-content/free-content/volume-1-issue-7-insulin-and-thinking-better/insulin-an-undeserved-bad-reputation/](http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/index.php/free-content/free-content/volume-1-issue-7-insulin-and-thinking-better/insulin-an-undeserved-bad-reputation/) ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/50 "2017-05-01T23:34:09Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > ??? > > **RivkahChaya** was saying that the prior paradigm that autism is caused by bad parenting has been overturned. > [@DrDeth](#): > > I wasnt sure either. I just assumed that everyone was familiar with Bruno Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mother” theory of autism, which he formulated in the 50s, and wrote about in a book called _The Empty Fortress_ in 1967 that was the bible of autism for almost two decades. Bettelheim treated autism (for families who could afford it) in hospitals that used psychoanalysis to attempt to get patients to dredge up non-existent trauma in order to exorcise it. If families couldn’t afford psychoanalysis, their kids went to state hospitals. Even once parents, and specifically mothers were no longer blamed, autistic children were still thought to be “emotionally disturbed” or traumatized in some way, all through the 80s. IMO, the reason that Andrew Wakefield was heralded like a savior by families with autistic children, was that in spite of all his many levels of wrongness, and the damage he did to the credibility of vaccines, he was suggesting that autism might be a medical disorder, and not a psychiatric one, back when a lot of people still thought it was the result of abusive parenting. I have no love for the man, and it’s time for people to shape up-- a whole generation of autistic children have come and gone since his _Lancet_ article. But I understand those first few parents who said “Finally someone believes we love our child.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/51 "2017-05-02T02:43:46Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > The trend for the last 40-plus years was calories = obese, and fat = 2.5xcalories-per-gram of carbs or protein, therefore “low fat = good”. > > However, a lot of low fat foods would add an excess of sugar to make the food palatable with the fat missing - resulting in food that still had plenty of calories. Sure, and if they had replaced the fat with cyanide, that would have shown a low-fat diet is _really_ bad. I maintain that this is not a good example for this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Ionizer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5daacb/32.png) [@Ionizer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ionizer)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/52 "2017-05-02T15:14:48Z")
Astronomically speaking, I’d say that the Hubble’s Deep Field image(s) changed the view of Universe, namely the huge(!) increase of galaxies, etc, that astronomers had no idea even existed. The discovery (and rough-imaging a few so far) of exoplanets was relatively stunning, too. They seem to be quite common amongst stars everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/53 "2017-05-03T02:51:25Z")
> [@Ionizer](#): > > Astronomically speaking, I’d say that the Hubble’s Deep Field image(s) changed the view of Universe, namely the huge(!) increase of galaxies, etc, that astronomers had no idea even existed. But those weren’t a surprise to astronomers. They looked at a patch of apparently empty space for much longer than had been looked at before. Of course they’re going to see stuff too dim for shorter duration images. That’s expected. No paradigms were overturned. > [@](#): > > The discovery (and rough-imaging a few so far) of exoplanets was relatively stunning, too. They seem to be quite common amongst stars everywhere. The fact that there were planets around other stars is no stunner. Again, those were expected. It would be a surprise if we didn’t find any. What was unexpected was very large planets very close to some stars, the hot Jupiters. That caused a revision of solar system formation theories. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/54 "2017-05-03T17:18:21Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I just assumed that everyone was familiar with Bruno Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mother” theory of autism, which he formulated in the 50s, and wrote about in a book called _The Empty Fortress_ in 1967 that was the bible of autism for almost two decades. > > Bettelheim treated autism (for families who could afford it) in hospitals that used psychoanalysis to attempt to get patients to dredge up non-existent trauma in order to exorcise it. If families couldn’t afford psychoanalysis, their kids went to state hospitals. > > Even once parents, and specifically mothers were no longer blamed, autistic children were still thought to be “emotionally disturbed” or traumatized in some way, all through the 80s. > > IMO, the reason that Andrew Wakefield was heralded like a savior by families with autistic children, was that in spite of all his many levels of wrongness, and the damage he did to the credibility of vaccines, he was suggesting that autism might be a medical disorder, and not a psychiatric one, back when a lot of people still thought it was the result of abusive parenting. > > I have no love for the man, and it’s time for people to shape up-- a whole generation of autistic children have come and gone since his _Lancet_ article. But I understand those first few parents who said “Finally someone believes we love our child.” I do remember common wisdom (was it also current psychology thought?) was that domineering mothers and wimpy / absent fathers caused male homosexuality - right up until about the 70’s when gay lib pushed a more logical point of view… And I recall an interview with Bruno Bettelheim where he said he was against sex education for a very simple reason - if you tell teenagers that sex is not harmful, that it feels good and is nothing to be ashamed of - what do you expect a bunch of bored teenagers to do? > [@Mijin](#): > > Sure, and if they had replaced the fat with cyanide, that would have shown a low-fat diet is _really_ bad. > > I maintain that this is not a good example for this thread. Maybe. My point was that a simplistic “less calories” option with no regard for nuances was not the anti-obesity formula it was alleged to be. The theory also was to blame all problems on FAT, not SUGAR, so that the theory was a Atkins-type diet aimed at fat rather than carbs would mean less weight gain… when it appears to have had the opposite effect. Of course, there was a “pure liquid protein only” diet fad back in the 1980’s that was remarkably effective, if you could survive the heart attack. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549/55 "2017-05-03T17:36:43Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Maybe. My point was that a simplistic “less calories” option with no regard for nuances was not the anti-obesity formula it was alleged to be. There are nuances, such as the thermal effect of food, but less calories in then out is still the basic formula for losing weight. > [@](#): > > The theory also was to blame all problems on FAT, not SUGAR, so that the theory was a Atkins-type diet aimed at fat rather than carbs would mean less weight gain… when it appears to have had the opposite effect. There wasn’t a scientific paradigm that blamed all problems on fat. And there is no opposite effect. Your statements about insulin are wrong. In the link below Alan Aragon goes over a debate he had with Dr. Lustig (the sugar is evil guy) and shows it’s not as simple as blaming cherry picking higher sugar consumption for things like diabetes and obesity. > **[A retrospective of the fructose alarmism debate. | Alan Aragon's Blog](https://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-the-fructose-alarmism-debate/)** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-other-scientific-paradigm-overturning-as-dramatic-as-infections-cause-ulcers-in-last-40-years/785549.md?page=2)