Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
*Me telling people to subscriber to EvoGenVideos. Dialog start in 29 seconds*
I find it encouraging that more people are using and citing scientific papers to back
up their positions. Because of the rise of the internet and the freedom of information,
the skeptical community seems to be growing and that is causing people to wish to be more
certain of their claims and use the tools science provides. Sadly many people are not
trained to actually translate scientific papers. There was a debate on facebook I had recently
with some vegans. I do not want to get into the subject of veganism in the comments sections
and anyone who tries to convert me in the comments section might get blocked because
this video is on science and not veganism. The point that this fundamentalist vegan was
trying to make the claim that humans are now herbivores. He was not the original poster
just a friend of a friend. The chart showed comparative anatomies of carnivores, omnivores
and herbavores. Humans anatomy does show a lot more in common with herbavores than omnivores
via this list. At first glance it would look like, well this means we are herbivores. Actually
this chart was misleading. We cannot use just comparative anatomy with this because humans
are quite special, we have a key ingredient that makes it impossible to use comparative
anatomy. Fire. Cooking has been shown to have unlocked a lot of nutrients unavailable to
any other animal. It allowed us to shrink our digestive system and change our jaw and
teeth setup. This redirected more energy to the brain. In a healthy human 25% of all nutrients
is sent to the brain. *** has been able to use and harness fire starting with erectus
and possibly habilis. Fire is accredited by many scientists as showing a doubling in brain
size. Prior to that, our brain growth evolution was a combination of the evolution of amylase,
an enzyme in saliva that allows for the breakdown of starches in tubers, and our ability to
eat meat. These two new sources of energy moved us from austrolopithicus, with a brain
proportionally 1/3rd our size up to habilis who had ½ our size. So humans fit snuggly
into a new branch of eaters, the cooking omnivore. Our species is capable of gaining nutrients
from animal products. Herbivores live exclusively naturally on plants because they cannot digest
or process raw animal based products. Feeding rendered and processed meat to cows was just
a bad idea, and while they could get nutrients out of the rendered meat, they also got mad
cow disease from it. Go prions! Carnivores live exclusively on meat, unless they are
sick. Cats for example require taurine found in meat or they will go blind. To put a cat
on a vegan diet without chemically synthesized taurine would be cruel. This is also assuming
that the cat's body will uptake the non-natural taurine as well which is its own study. Omnivores
can eat and get nutrients out of both. Whether animal products or plant products are healthier
for you is irrelevant. The person arguing the case with me didn't
know any of this and refused to accept anything I had to say unless I had scientific papers
to back it. In any branch of science, if you we a part of that field and things are common
knowledge, You don't have to cite scientific papers. Scientific papers do increase your
chances of accuracy but many of those papers will reference books as as part of their sources.
A textbook or other books written by experts in the field will suffice. Which is why using
Jargon in your papers will give you better leeway when writing. This is because the use
of jargon shows that you went though the education process that everyone else in that field did.
Telling someone basic taxonomy, is not something you need a scientific paper for, just a textbook.
I also cited “catching fire”, a science book which is nothing but cite sourced so
he can go read that. He wanted links of course and refused anything less than scientific
papers. He also didn't realize that scientists can
use hair and bone to analyze diets of humans and animals and wanted scientific paper links
as well. That would require the engineer's papers on building the device and specs and
it is a well known technique in biology. He also made the claim that most hunter/gatherers
were vegetarians, and that inuit only lived on average to 20 years old strictly because
they ate mostly meat, which would have NOTHING to do with the deadly cold and harsh surroundings.
I'm sorry but if you are going up against the massive majority of the science community,
the burden of proof is on you, you have to show us papers to back your claims, and usually
you don't know enough of the basics to do so. I was going to say that is just like a
creationist but I think that is now Godwin's second law if instead of comparing someone
to Hitler you are comparing them to a creationist. He also claimed that eating meat from bacteria
killed more people than *** which meant that humans couldn't eat meat. You can actually
eat raw meat, sashami and steak tartar are examples. These are high quality cuts that
have been tested for bacteria or have techniques that allow them to test a few because the
technique is so reliable. The main reason why meat is so dangerous is fecal contaminants.
Most of the low quality meat is on the outside where fecal bacteria contamination is most
likely to occur. These must be cooked but are still completely edible. I also had to
tell him that vegetables have to be tested for almost all of the same contaminants because
we use animal wastes as fertilizers, and many times the water used to water the crops is
low quality water than can be contaminated. All these E.coli outbreaks in the US have
occurred mostly on vegetables. I am glad that many people are becoming more
and more skeptical, but be careful when you take on a major topic. One of Carl Sagan's
rules for skeptics was “Do Not Go Beyond Your Level Of Competence:” Only argue the
areas you are trained in. Do not try to argue with a quantum physicist if you did not study
the same amount in the same field. This doesn't mean to stop questioning, far from it, but
if you are discussing a topic with someone who is a trained expert or more of an expert
than you are, use that time for learning, asking questions from them so you can find
out if any or your ideas hold merit, as opposed to strongly holding the position that you
are right until they prove you wrong. You could end up making very basic mistakes that
make you look unskeptical while you continue to be certain and call yourself a skeptic.