In a recent blog post, Overcoming Bias reports that Gary Taubes, who has written much to further the idea that refined carbohydrates are a stronger contributing factor to overweight and “diseases of civilization” than dietary fat and cholesterol, has compiled his thoughts on the subject in a major 600-page work called Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Why is Taubes so interested in bias?  For several decades, it has been the conventional wisdom that dietary fat (and especially saturated fat) contributes to obesity, heart disease, and cancer.  Judging from Taubes’ exhaustive research — indeed, I’d be surprised if any other book examined bias within a particular scientific field in such detail — the conventional wisdom was based on unreliable and slender evidence that, once established and institutionalized in government funding, set a pattern of confirmation bias by which further research was judged (or ignored).