Jinn of Quality and Risk

The perversity of this alternative hypothesis is that it identifies the cause of obesity as precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid -- the pasta, rice and bread -- that we are told should be the staple of our healthy low-fat diet, and then on the sugar or corn syrup in the soft drinks, fruit juices and sports drinks that we have taken to consuming in quantity if for no other reason than that they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy. While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy. [NYT]

Many areas of dogma, featuring scientists fed by government grants, are in a similar situation. Examples are global warming, the ozone layer, and sleep. The best advice I can offer is: don't automatically believe what you read in newspapers — preserve your objectivity and perform your own independent research of the evidence, if any.