On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Dean Esmay wrote:

> Facts do not have an agenda, facts do not care what you think or how you
> wish the universe worked. They don't care about your reputation or your
> career.  They don't care whether you ignore them or not.  You can cry at
> them, laugh at them, rage against them, and they still don't care.  They
> don't even care whether you notice them or not.  They simply are.  And
> without them you don't have science.

If facts are simply ways the world is, then I have to agree with
you.  In that event, however, facts are not found in science
journals or even Internet postings, just statements which may or
may not represent facts.  And statements are generated by people
who *always* have an agenda, which is nothing more insidious than
an *interest* in asking a question, asking it in a certain way,
and answering it in a certain way.

I started this thread by expressing my concerns about the AA
content of the paleodiet, especially pemmican.  Those concerns
are an agenda.  I thought I had a reasonable argument as to why
the contemporary paleodiet is dangerously higher in AA than the
actual diet of our ancestors.  I think my argument was probably
correct in estimating the contemporary AA content to be higher,
but I am no longer convinced that the situation is dangerous.
Your own experience, Andrew's explanations, and Gary Jackson's
citations from the recent literature have made a difference to my
thinking on this.

It is absolutely proper to want to temper speculation with facts,
but the adducing of facts is itself a selection process that is
tantamount to a kind of speculation.  Ray Audette's book is
intellectually appealing, but it is speculative in that no
empirical study of paleodieting outside of actual hunter/gatherer
populations has been done.  It may be a long time before any such
study is done.  Meanwhile, we are left with a priori reasoning
and the hunting/gathering of those statements that appear to
represent relevant facts.

Todd Moody
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