Weekend reading roundup

[nanila]

How did your weekend reading go? If you planned on anything specifically, did you read it?

Comments

[nanila]

I'm curious now. I'm guessing the argument is in favour of supplements? Is it backed up by actual science?

I would totally count the finished-by-Monday-morning book in with the weekend reading.

[fred_mouse]

It is strongly in favour of supplements, backed up by science, and so far does not appear to be extrapolating beyond the data. For example, in the chapter on heart disease and coenzyme Q10, it only goes so far as to say the evidence says that there is benefit in cases of serious congestive heart failure (and cites multiple studies, including one of 2000+ people).

Unfortunately, from the perspective of convincing me, the author is also strongly religious, and there have been multiple appeals to the reader's belief in the Christian god, and righteousness of this belief and god. Also, intelligent design, which is a topic that gets me very very cranky (this is not intelligent design. Even if I concede a creator, which I don't, what we have at best is design by committee). I'm finding it a fascinating case study (me) on bias, because I find significant parts of the discussion to be unbelievable, and thus I'm having difficulty with giving credibility to the discussion of the science! And I've read enough (pop) science that cherry picks the published data, so I'm also a little leery from that perspective.