Discussion on answer by Oddthinking: Is "Is this foodstuff harmful?" harmful?

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01:33

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A: Is "Is this foodstuff harmful?" harmful?

This sort of question sounds simple, but is actually very difficult to give a straight answer. Pedantic note on behalf of the English prescriptivists: Food is better described formally as "healthful", not "healthy". To explain, I will use an invented foodstuff as an example: Lemon-Lined Lima Be...

Ebenezer Sklivvze

Can you add a section on how to moderate and especially how to fix such questions?

Oddthinking

@EbenezerSklivvze: Thanks for the suggestion. Added a how-to-fix section. I don't have a how-to-moderate section, because I am not convinced that these questions need mod powers to fix. While they remain poorly worded, they will be unanswerable. Anyone can fix them.

Ebenezer Sklivvze

I meant community moderation, something along the lines of "if you encounter a similar question, here's what you can do: * edit it and fix it if you can; * vote to close if you can't fix it; * vote to reopen questions which have been fixed -- or whatever else you think it's appropriate.

Maybe it can be formatted along these lines what do you think?

George Chalhoub

100% agreed wit this post. You mods could simply close those type of questions as too board and link this post when trying to explain your decision.

Oddthinking

@GeorgeChalhoub: I am not proposing to close these questions. (Of course, the community could.) In some cases, they could (eventtually) be answered. "Is smoking harmful?" is an example where the epidemiology is clear. (Took a long time!) Isn't it reasonable to believe that one day science will be able to answer the same question about other items?

(To people without 10K rep, Sklivvz is proposing, above, that each of my listed issues has its own section on how to fix.)

@EbenezerSklivvze When I first drafted the question, I actually tried, half-heartedly, to do this. If you look at the edit to add the How To Fix section, I actually moved a few sentences around from the specific sections.

The trouble is, some of the problems I don't have a simple answer to, and most of the problems have the same solution - find a good claim (which may be impossible if the only claimant is Dr Oz.)

Rather than repeat the advice many times, I decided to factor it out at the end.

@EbenezerSklivvze It isn't clear to me that we should close these questions, (see my response to George above). I don't like them, but to be consistent with the other questions, it seems they should just sit unanswered. I am open to convincing otherwise.

Ebenezer Sklivvze

01:55

@Oddthinking it was just an example of some action that could be taken. On the other hand, from what you describe, it seems that at least some of these cases could be considered "unclear what you are asking"

@Oddthinking "Find a good claim" could become "Find a claim that specifies X". I think this would make the advice more specific, and at the same time it would clarify what you mean by "good claim".

Oddthinking

@EbenezerSklivvze Oh, I was reading your suggestion it more as a proposed template. Did I misunderstand that?

Ebenezer Sklivvze

It is, but the "template" looks like this. I don't think the "how to fix" section is going to repeat.

**Dosis facit venenum. ("The dose makes the poison")**
This applies to questions that do not specify a dosage of the food stuff.

Many - perhaps all - foodstuffs are lethal if consumed in extremely large amounts in a short period. We could argue that Lemon-Lined Lima beans could kill if you overconsume. However, this doesn't seem to be a satisfactory answer. It is not a reason to avoid Lemon-Lined Lima beans if you are eating them in moderation.

**How to fix**
Find an example of the claim that specifies (at least at some level) the dosage.

Oddthinking

@EbenezerSklivvze You are saying each of the sections has a How to Fix subsection, right? I can give it a go and see how it looks.

Ebenezer Sklivvze

@Oddthinking yeah, also, if two sections can only have the same fix, they are probably the same problem :-)

nomen agentis

04:19

I believe you're using the term "epidemiology" in a non-standard way.

Epidemiology refers to the pattern of incidence, as in distribution amongst different populations, ages, geographic locations, job-types, etc.

See, for example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Epidemiology

And: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Epidemiology

nomen agentis

04:36

bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/…

> Epidemiology is the study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why.

cdc.gov/EXCITE/epidemiology.html

> Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health problems in specified populations and the application of this study to control health problems.

nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/Pages/epidemiology.aspx

> Epidemiological research helps us to understand how many people have a disease or disorder, if those numbers are changing, and how the disorder affects our society and our economy.

Not meaning to pile on... just giving different organiziations' different wordings

Whether a food is harmful would be just nutrition science, or toxicology,

Oddthinking

05:17

@nomenagentis I want to explain my use, but not defend it.

I was referring to Nutritional Epidemiology, which is a subset of the definitions that you provided.

However, if I am using it in a non-standard or confusing way, we should fix it, rather than me defend it.

I associate toxicology with the short term dangers. Do they look at the long-term effects of eating too much saturated fats versus poly-unsaturated, etc? Or whether diet soda causes disease?

I am leaning towards "nutrition science" as the best of the three.

nomen agentis

05:57

Yeah, no need to be defensive... the usage was just confusing/jarring to me.

I think nutrition science would be a fine drop-in replacement

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