When we live in a system, we absorb a system and think in a system.
—JAMES W. DOUGLASS
When I began my research career in nutritional science, I was naïve to a fault. My childhood environment of hay fields and milking barns did not prepare me for the dark side of “science” as it is currently done: the greed, the small-mindedness, and the outright dishonesty and cynicism of some of its practitioners. Not to mention the shocking examples of how public officials closed their eyes to important findings that got in the way of their reelection.
I entered the academy eager to participate in my idealized version of scientific inquiry. I couldn’t imagine anything better: learning new things, choosing which questions to research, then sharing and debating ideas with students and colleagues. I loved the transparency and integrity of the scientific method—how personal opinions and biases faded away before the majesty of real evidence. How a well-conceived experiment was like setting the table beautifully and inviting Truth to dinner. How honest questioning could banish ignorance and create a better world.
What I discovered is that science was, is, and can be just like that—as long as the researcher is careful not to pursue politically incorrect ideas outside the boundaries of “normal” science. You can wonder and ask and research anything you like, until you cross the line defined by prejudice and reinforced by the moneyed interests that fund almost all science.
Normal science. That’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? Normal science means anything that doesn’t challenge the prevailing paradigm—the agreed-upon story of how the world is. “Normal” doesn’t mean “good” or “better” in any way; it just means that the researcher has refrained from asking questions whose answers are considered already known and no longer subject to debate. For much of my career I’ve found myself bumping up against the invisible boundaries of the scientific paradigm. In the last few decades, I finally decided to blast through them altogether. That’s how I know so much about those boundaries: sometimes you have to cross the line to find out where it is.
One of the most devilish things about paradigms is that they’re almost impossible to perceive from the inside. A paradigm can be so all-encompassing that it simply looks like all there is. For example, let’s look at an obsolete paradigm that reigned for hundreds of years: the idea that the sun revolved around the earth, and not the other way around. You can’t blame people for believing that the earth was the center of the universe; when you go outside, you see the earth standing still while the sun, moon, planets, and stars move across the sky. When Copernicus published De Revolutionibus in 1543, asserting that the earth rotated around the sun, he was challenging common sense, a millennium of scientific agreement, and an outraged religious community. The fact that he had evidence—that his theory in fact explained phenomena that were unexplainable under the prevailing earth-centric theory—didn’t matter one bit. As philosopher-songwriter Paul Simon put it, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
I’m not trying to compare myself to Copernicus. His story is just a well-known example of an obsolete paradigm standing in the way of progress and the discovery of truth. In a perfect world (the one I believed in when I began my research career), the scientific method would simply compost inadequate paradigms when the evidence showed their limitations. But people who have built their careers upon these paradigms can act like threatened dictators; they cling to power at all costs, and the more they are challenged, the nastier and more dangerous they become. (This is doubly true when the paradigm supports powerful moneyed interests—but we’ll get to that shortly.)
Once I stepped outside the prevailing nutritional paradigm, I discovered something exhilarating: you can learn a lot about the inside of a paradigm from the outside. Think of a fish swimming in the ocean, blissfully unaware of other environments. Once she is caught in a net, hoisted in the air, and then dropped on the deck of a ship, she has no choice but to confront the inadequacy of her old belief that the entire world was water. Suppose she wriggles free of the net and flops back into the water. How can she describe what she has seen to her fellows? What would be their likely reaction, if they were anything like us? “Poor Dori has gone mad. She’s babbling and making up lies.” What’s happened, of course, is that Dori now sees the ocean for what it is: one environment among many. She realizes that it has boundaries, and understands some of the properties of this element called “water.” Because she has experienced dry air, she now perceives water as wet and cold. She now knows that water has a certain feel, and responds to tail and fin movements in a particular way that isn’t universal. There are other truths out there, and Dori can now place the ocean within that larger context.
My journey “out of the water” has led me to be branded a heretic by many of my colleagues. Unlike Dori, I wasn’t thrown out of the paradigm; I just kept swimming in a direction that led me closer and closer to shore until eventually I reached dry land. My heretical path through the research world has been a result of my curiosity about and dogged pursuit of “outlier observations.” An outlier is a piece of data that doesn’t fit with the rest of the observed results. It’s a weird blip, an anomaly, something out of place—an unusual outcome that, if we’re honest with ourselves about it, can call into question the integrity of our current understanding.
Often, outlier observations are simply mistakes. The scale was broken. Two test tubes were accidentally switched. That sort of thing. Sometimes outlier observations are the result of deliberate fraud, perpetrated by researchers seeking to make a name (or a fortune) for themselves. So science is rightly skeptical of data that seems to contradict prevailing wisdom. After all, we don’t want our understanding of the universe to lurch and sway with every random measurement.
The scientific method, at its best, looks at outliers and says, “Prove it! Show us that wasn’t a fluke, a mistake, or a lie.” In other words, reproduce that result under laboratory conditions. Describe the experiment in enough detail that others can repeat it and see if they get the same outlier result. If an outlier can withstand that kind of scrutiny, it’s supposed to get folded into our knowledge base and change our paradigm.
Unfortunately, scientists are human and don’t always represent the very best of the scientific method. When a finding threatens the validity of their life’s work, they can become irrationally defensive. And when new evidence threatens their funding, they can get downright nasty. You can tell when this happens because they stop arguing about the evidence and start slinging epithets.
My first step onto the path of heresy occurred when I discovered an outlier observation that called into question one of the most deeply held beliefs in nutrition: the notion that animal protein is good for us.
THE COW AND I
Coming from a dairy farm, I thought my contribution to humanity’s well-being would be to figure out how to get more protein from farm animals. After all, millions of people around the world suffer from malnutrition, and one of the principal nutritional problems was protein deficiency. If we could make milk and meat cheaper and more plentiful, we could alleviate untold suffering. As a popular folk song written in 1947 put it, “If each little kid could have fresh milk each day, if each working man had enough time to play, if each homeless soul had a good place to stay, it could be a wonderful world.” Fresh milk was right up there with a humane work week and ending homelessness! What could be more noble?
The topic was perfect for me. My entire childhood had been about milking cows and sharing the goodness with our customers. My background in veterinary medicine, biochemistry, and nutrition gave me knowledge and insights I could use to manipulate animal feeds to improve the human food supply. And the beef and dairy industries were—and still are—very generous with grant money to further such research. It would have been hard to find anyone less likely than me to throw all that away when confronted with evidence that animal protein was actually harmful to humans.
What did me in, as I look back, was my insatiable curiosity when it came to outlier observations. I believed that my job was to discover the truth, wherever it led. And my research into protein led me, step by step, to a realization that the entire modern scientific paradigm was badly flawed.
PROTEIN, THE (NOT SO) PERFECT NUTRIENT
My slippery slope to heresy began with that puzzling, even alarming observation I made in the late 1970s, which you’ll recall from the introduction: the children in the Philippines who ate the most protein were the ones most likely to get liver cancer. That finding was so strange, and so counter to everything I believed and thought I knew, that I immediately searched the scientific literature to see if anyone else had ever seen such a connection between protein and cancer.
Someone had. A group of Indian researchers had conducted a “gold standard” clinical trial, the kind that isolates one variable and performs a controlled experiment on it.1 The researchers had fed aflatoxin, a powerful carcinogen, to two groups of rats. One group was fed a 20 percent animal protein (casein) diet. The other group was protein deprived, ingesting only 5 percent of their calories from casein. The results? Every single 20 percent protein rat developed liver cancer or cancer precursor lesions. Not a single 5 percent protein rat did. (You may recall this study from chapter two’s discussion of depth of effect.)
Looking back, the wise career move would have been to imbibe several stiff drinks, go to bed, and never think about it again. Tackling such a controversial topic so early in my career was a lot more dangerous than I knew. And despite my growing awareness that the actual practice of science was not all about the selfless discovery of truth, I was still naïve enough to think that the world might appreciate (and reward) information that could eradicate the scourge of cancer.
I will say that I proceeded cautiously, and so managed to fly under the radar of potential critics for many years. I set up research labs, first at Virginia Tech, then for many more years at Cornell, to investigate the role of nutrition in preventing or causing cancer. We conducted very conservative experiments that looked at the biochemistry of proteins, enzymes, and cancerous cells, the sort of beaker-and-test-tube, high-powered microscope science that grant reviewers and journal editors like. Except our group of mad scientists was slowly proving, beyond any doubt, that not just excess dietary protein, but a particular type of excess dietary protein, promoted cancer formation and growth. And these results, seen in our experiments with rats, were consistent with human population and case-control studies that showed impressive associations between animal-based protein consumption and cancer rates.
When I say “protein,” what foods do you think of? Probably not spinach and kale, although those plants have about twice as much protein, per calorie, as a lean cut of beef. No, to most of us in the United States, protein means meat, milk, and eggs. Our love affair with protein has been around for a long time. The word protein gives us a clue as to how deeply we revere our protein: its Greek root, proteios, means “of prime importance.” And the “really good kind” of protein has long been the kind found in animal-based foods. Shortly after protein was discovered by Gerardus Mulder in 1839,2 a famous chemist, Justus von Liebig, then went on to exclaim that animal-based (“high quality”) protein “was the stuff of life itself!” The high-quality label even made sense from a biochemical perspective—our bodies, themselves made up of animal protein, can metabolize animal protein much more efficiently than they can plant protein.
So imagine our shock when animal protein, but not vegetable protein, was the culprit in turning on cancer in our studies. The most significant carcinogen, the substance that almost invariably led to cancer at 20 percent of the rats’ diet, was casein, or milk protein. Plant proteins, such as those from wheat and soy, had no effect on cancer development, even at high levels.3
In fact, in 1983, my Cornell University research group showed that we could switch early cancer growth on and off in rats simply by changing the amount of protein they consumed. Equally amazing, when cancer was switched off for a relatively long time by feeding a low-protein diet, it could be turned on again by switching to a high-protein diet.4 The effect was striking. When turned on, cancer growth was vigorous and robust. When turned off, it was totally shut down. Major changes in cancer development, both positive and negative, were triggered by only modest changes in protein intake.
Boy, did we have outlier research on our hands! Part of the significance of our findings was the relatively low animal protein levels needed to trigger cancer. Most carcinogen studies (for example, the ones on food dyes and nitrates in hot dogs and environmental toxins like dioxin) dose the lab animals with hundreds or thousands of times the amount they would ever encounter in nature. The extremely powerful carcinogenic effect we saw was occurring at levels of animal protein that humans routinely consumed, and were encouraged to consume.
At this point I knew we had a provocative finding on our hands. We needed airtight experimental design, rigorous documentation, and as much transparency as we could provide to back up the protein–cancer connection. We approached our continuing research from different perspectives and published our results in the most critical peer-reviewed scientific research journals. We had to do our studies very carefully according to the accepted criteria for research in order to survive and secure the necessary but very competitive funding.
Because we followed those research criteria so rigorously, we were able to get funding despite the incendiary nature of the topic. We received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for twenty-seven years in a row, money that allowed us to learn an incredible amount about the nature of animal protein and its biochemical effects within the body. We learned how protein, once consumed, works within the cell to turn on the cancer process. As with the similar Indian research on rats, our results were lopsidedly convincing. Something quite dramatic and provocative was going on.
During these early days of our research, I was invited to give a lecture at the Fels Institute of the Temple University School of Medicine by Peter Magee, the editor in chief of the leading journal in the field of oncology research, Cancer Research. At dinner after my lecture, I told him of a new experiment that we were planning, one that might prove to be quite provocative. I wanted to compare this remarkable protein effect on cancer growth with the well-accepted effect produced by a really potent chemical carcinogen. I told him that I suspected that the animal protein effect would be of far more concern. He was highly skeptical, as the editor of a prestigious journal should be. When a scientific paradigm comes under attack, the burden of proof falls squarely and rightfully at the feet of the attacker.
Part of our current paradigm is that bad stuff in the environment causes cancer, and the more enlightened elements involved in the war on cancer seek to reduce our exposure to that bad stuff. Not part of our current paradigm is that the food we eat is a much more powerful determinant of cancer than just about any environmental toxin. And I suggested that a relatively modest change in nutrient consumption might be even more relevant for cancer development than consuming a potent carcinogen. I asked the journal’s editor whether he would consider highlighting our findings on the cover of his prestigious journal if we actually got such results. To his credit, he agreed to consider it despite his well-entrenched skepticism. He “knew,” as did almost all cancer specialists back then, that cancer occurs because of chemical carcinogens and viruses and genes, not because of modest changes in nutrient consumption. But he agreed that if I could prove my heretical statement to his satisfaction, he would accept the findings and publish our research.
When we actually did these new experiments, it supported our previous findings even more clearly than I had expected.5 Animal protein intake determined cancer development far more than the dose of the chemical carcinogen. But my hope for having these exciting results featured on the cover of our association’s journal was dashed. My editor in chief colleague was now retired, and his replacement and the Editorial Review Board were changing policy. They were inclined to dismiss nutritional effects on cancer. Instead, they referred manuscripts on the connection between cancer and nutrition to a new, untested journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a good way of relegating such nutrition-related research to second-class status. They wanted papers that were more “intellectually stimulating”—ones with aims like figuring out how cancer works in molecular terms, especially if the answer concerned chemicals and genes and viruses. They considered investigating nutritional effects on cancer growth, as we were doing, to be almost akin to nonscience.
At about this same time, when we had even more convincing evidence of this remarkable protein effect, I gave a keynote presentation at the World Congress of Nutrition in Seoul, South Korea. A good-sized audience of researchers was in attendance, and during a question-and-answer period, a former colleague of mine in the audience—and a well-known advocate for consuming more, not less, protein—arose and lamented, “Colin, you’re talking about good food! Don’t take it away from us!” He did not question the validity of our research results; he was concerned that I was trying to undermine his personal love for animal protein.
I knew then that our research was becoming a lightning rod for people’s strong feelings about their food habits. Even rational, data-driven scientists could be sent into prolonged states of hysteria when presented with evidence that their favorite foods might be killing them. Talk about hitting a sensitive nerve! The sad part of this story is that my questioner has since traveled to greener pastures, at an age much too young. He suffered from a kind of heart problem that is promoted by animal-based protein.
Our research continued to pose a series of very provocative heresies focusing on the idea that so-called high-quality protein might not be as high in quality as always thought. Associating a valued nutrient like protein with increased growth of a feared disease like cancer was heresy squared. Our most revered nutrient promoted our most feared disease. (Other heresies to come!)
THE CANCER MINEFIELD
During the late 1980s, I accepted an invitation to give a Grand Rounds lecture to the McGill Faculty of Medicine in Montreal, the top-ranked medical education program in Canada. Because it was before the publication of the results of our nationwide study in China (the one I discuss in depth in The China Study), I spoke only of the potential relationship between cancer and imbalanced nutrition, based on our own findings on protein, along with a few observations of other research groups. I showed in some detail the remarkable results that we were getting on cancer reversal when dietary protein was decreased. I went on to speculate about someday using a nutritional strategy to treat cancer in humans. I could say no more than that, however, because at that time, I did not know what specific strategy might be used.
Later that evening, I was taken to dinner by the chairs of the Big Three departments involved in cancer treatment: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. During our conversation, Surgery Chair asked me what I meant by my remark on the possibility of nutrition affecting cancer development after patients had learned of their cancer. I pointed out that we had enough preliminary evidence to justify the testing of this hypothesis. We had a lot more evidence than is generally available for risky commercial treatments, such as new forms of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Really, it was no comparison. Potential upside of nutritional therapy: turning off cancer development completely. Likelihood based on experimental data: very high. Potential downside of nutritional therapy from a health perspective: none. We all know about the side effects of chemo and radiation, as well as their far-from-stellar success rates. Surely it made sense to give nutrition a try?
Surgery Chair quickly responded to say that he would never allow any of his patients to try a nutritional approach as a substitute for the surgery that he knew well. He went on to give as an example: the superior ability of surgery to treat breast cancer. But Chemotherapy Chair took issue with Surgery Chair’s opinion, saying that chemotherapy was more effective than surgery. While Surgery Chair on my left was contesting Chemotherapy Chair on my right, Radiotherapy Chair, sitting across the table from me, found fault with the opinions of both of his colleagues. On the case under discussion, he insisted, radiotherapy could offer the best treatment. I was in no position to know who might have the better argument and merely listened. Looking back, it was really quite funny, except when you consider all the death and suffering these attitudes have caused.
At the time, I took note of three interesting things. First, these medical luminaries could not agree on which treatment—surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy—was best for treating breast cancer. Second, they had no tolerance for nutritional therapy, because according to them, and me at that time, it hadn’t yet been shown to be effective for humans. Third and far more important, they clearly had no interest even in discussing ways in which research might be conducted to explore the possibility of using nutrition as a means of treatment. Now, more than twenty years later, the discussion remains the same. It was clear that there was a serious disconnect between these gentlemen and me as to what the emerging evidence of nutrition on cancer was showing. The majority of oncologists still worship one of the three “traditional” treatments and have no patience for or understanding of nutritional treatment options.
I since have presented two recent talks, one to an audience of cancer researchers and specialists in Chicago sponsored by two highly reputable medical schools, and the other to a U.S. National Cancer Institute venue in Sacramento, California, in which I recalled this twenty-year-old story. I did so simply to make that point that while the clock is still ticking, the conversation is barely shifting. If it isn’t a new surgery, chemo cocktail, or radiation protocol, the cancer industry isn’t buying.
HERESIES AND MORE HERESIES
I don’t mean to say that everyone who disagrees with me is some sort of dogmatic, narrow-minded caveman. I’m a scientist, and I expect (and hope) that my findings will be challenged by other researchers. Given the importance of what I believe I and others have discovered, it’s critical that we put it to the test to make sure it’s correct, and that it’s not the result of sloppily and poorly executed studies. I welcome those who critique my statistical methods. I’m thrilled when someone attempts to replicate one of my findings, even if their goal is to prove me wrong. Over the years, many of my critics have been responsible for pointing out the next phase of my research, or helping me tighten up a study design, or helping me imagine new ways to approach a thorny issue. That’s the scientific method at its best: all of us competing not for personal glory and wealth, but to serve the highest truth and the highest good.
The attacks on and dismissals of my findings are more than the normal scientific discovery process, however. The real issue in many cases is that I am asking questions that threaten the reigning research and medical paradigms. The questions I and others have asked over the years have produced answers that are outside the rigid mental boundaries that small-minded science enforces.
We’ve discovered that cow’s milk protein at reasonable levels of intake markedly promotes experimental cancer growth, which is outside of the nutrition paradigm.
We’ve discovered that experimental cancer growth can be turned on and off by altering practical levels of nutrient intake, and can be treated by nutritional means, which is outside of the cancer treatment paradigm.
We’ve observed that these effects are driven by multiple mechanisms acting in concert, which is outside of the medical paradigm.
We’ve found that cancer growth is controlled far more by nutrition than by genes, which is outside of the scientific paradigm.
We’ve shown that the nutrient composition of foods is more a determinant of cancer occurrence than chemical carcinogens, which is outside of the cancer-testing and regulatory agency paradigms.
We’ve found that saturated fat (and, for that matter, total fat and cholesterol) is not the chief cause of heart disease (there’s animal-based proteins as well), which is outside of the cardiology paradigm.
I could go on and on. I’m just thankful I don’t live in a past era, when heretics were sentenced to house arrest or burned at the stake for their views!
These findings may not be that striking to readers outside of the world of scientific research, but be assured that they clearly are unexpected, even unbelievable phenomena (heresies?) for virtually anyone inside the medical research community. Most of these findings—and many more that I could cite—arose partly by luck, but after making that first unlikely observation (high casein “causing” cancer growth), I became more and more aware that I had strayed beyond the paradigm of normal science.
Once I had tasted the forbidden fruit, I was hooked. Having accidentally strayed from the straight and narrow, I was becoming more and more curious about what else might be hiding in plain sight outside of the existing paradigms. I then began to see, through my public policy work, why paradigms exist and how they function. I especially became aware that the ideas inside of a paradigm are often strikingly opposed to ideas outside of it, thus making the boundaries clearer.
You may be thinking that all this talk about what’s inside and what’s outside of paradigms seems abstract and even academic. Why does this argument really matter? Actually, deciding whether an observation is or is not heretical has real consequences. In the medical research world, unexpected observations are oftentimes ignored. Researchers dismiss them, saying something like, “That can’t be right.” Such observations therefore may never see the light of day (or come to rest on the page of a professional publication). In reality, they might be gems, either pointing out flaws in what we consider to be normal or suggesting a new dimension to our thinking.
Much philosophy has been written through the ages on the research done to discover elusive truths. We make rules to guide our thinking, but we fail to see that these same rules, although helpful in articulating and sharing our current understanding of the world—within science and elsewhere—also may be constraining. We formulate hypotheses, then create or search for evidence to “prove” them.
Another way to pursue truth, proposed by the famous science philosopher Karl Popper, is to try to falsify our hypotheses—in effect, to seek out the boundaries of our mental paradigms and push against them, to see if they can withstand scrutiny. Can we find evidence to disprove our hypotheses, and are we able to take seriously such evidence? At times, I cannot help but wonder how much and how often our rules and strategies keep us from straying from the status quo.
I have always liked exploring outlier observations in my research. They make me think. During my career, I obtained (or at least noticed) more than my share of observations that were not considered normal. After collecting enough of these heresies, however, I began to see an emerging pattern of them that suggested a substantially different worldview—at which point, it seemed to make sense to call them not heresies but “principles.” Here are a few examples.
In the China Study, we discovered that blood cholesterol for rural Chinese adults averaged 127 mg/dL, with individual village averages ranging 88–165 mg/dL.6 At that time (the mid-1980s), 127 mg/dL was considered dangerously low. The “normal” range for serum cholesterol in the United States at that time was 155–274 mg/dL (with an average of 212 mg/dL), and there was some surprising evidence among Western subjects that incidences of suicides, accidents, and violence,7 as well as colon cancer,8 were higher when total cholesterol levels were below 160 mg/dL. Should I therefore have assumed that virtually all rural Chinese were at high risk range for suicides, accidents, violence, and colon cancer? Of course, we found nothing of the sort. Instead, we discovered that the Chinese villagers averaging 127 mg/dL were actually far healthier than Americans with so-called normal cholesterol levels.
My first thought was that perhaps our cholesterol assay method (how we collected and analyzed the blood samples) might be faulty. Following Popper’s principle of trying to disprove my own hypothesis, I tried to discredit my own finding by using another assay method and repeating these analyses at laboratories in three different locations (Cornell, Beijing, and London). All the analyses showed the same low cholesterol levels. Now we had to make sense of the apparent paradox that the healthiest Chinese people had cholesterol levels that would have been considered dangerously low in the United States.
Further examination revealed that, for this Chinese range of 88–165 mg/dL, like the U.S. range of 155–274 mg/dL, lower levels of cholesterol were associated with increased protection from several cancers and serious related diseases. The Chinese population showed correlations between low cholesterol and health that could not be observed in the United States because almost no Americans had cholesterol that low. The Chinese range showed us that cholesterol of 88 mg/dL could be healthier than cholesterol of 155 mg/dL, a finding that simply could not have been gleaned from a study of a U.S. population.
Another example of an outlier that led me away from “accepted wisdom” was our finding that casein, which for decades had been the most highly rated and respected protein, dramatically and convincingly promoted cancer. Even today, it is so heretical that no one wants to say the obvious—that casein is the most relevant chemical carcinogen ever identified. The implications of this heretical finding, like the implications of the exceedingly low blood cholesterol level in rural China, have been among the many hinges on which new doors of understanding opened on the relationship between nutrition and health.
Interestingly, this effect of casein on cancer proved so heretical that even the researchers in India who first showed this effect in a far more limited study never wanted to acknowledge their finding for what it was.9 They preferred to focus not on casein’s long-term effect on initiating cancer, but on the seemingly opposite effect casein had in quickly reducing the toxic effects of huge single doses of carcinogens.10 (We’ll discuss these two effects in greater depth in Part II.) In other words, they ran away from the immense implications of their discovery by focusing on an insignificant detail.
I’m glad I didn’t run because I have observed that giving some attention to unexpected observations that might otherwise be discounted or discarded can be unusually rewarding, especially if these observations are pursued to an explanation. My career began when I followed some outlier observations into murky territory, risking (and ultimately parting with) the pro-animal-protein beliefs of my childhood and early research career. When enough of these heresies accumulated, interconnected patterns began to emerge. Those patterns morphed into principles and then into full-blown theories, alternate paradigms that changed the way I saw the world. The rewards of living with heresies can be an exhilarating experience, well worth the costs of being considered a heretic.
True, my social and professional collegialities changed when I began to speak of research findings that lay outside the norm. Skepticism and silence, to put it gently, became more common. Yet the rewards have been numerous, and I do not hesitate to encourage young people to follow the same path that I trod. (When they ask me, as many have, how they might be able to do what I do, I tell them very simply to never be afraid to ask questions, even ones everyone tells you are stupid. Just be prepared to use good science and logic when defending your perspective.)
The view from the outside of a paradigm can be especially rewarding, and also meaningful, when it is considered within the context of everyday life. As time has passed, the odd and unexpected research observations collectively began to shape a new worldview for me. They seemed to be more and more connected. If this worldview touched on matters of life and death, that’s when personal passions arose, both pro and con. That’s when the boundaries of these paradigms sharpened and came into view.
THE FINAL (PARADIGM) FRONTIER: REDUCTIONISM
Now that you have a taste of my encounters with rigid paradigms, it’s time to share what I’ve learned, from all this questioning, about the prevailing scientific and medical paradigm.
From those initial outliers came heretical questions. From the questions flowed heretical answers, which led to a heretical set of principles. But for a long time I was trying to apply these principles inside a paradigm so big that even I couldn’t see it. It was only when I started questioning the mechanisms of the scientific method itself that I stepped outside the biggest, most restrictive, and most insidious paradigm of all: reductionism.