The Author, Mr. Fumento is a lawyer, and member of a big lobbying firm. He also attempted a similar attack on Atkins a couple of month ago, using the same tactics and arguments, "look how much money Dr. Atkins made from selling his book, see how much Taubes is making", etc.
The focus on their success as an argument, is mainly due to Fumento's failure when we wrote his own book, ironically it was against low-fat diets.
Now there's an 180 degree change in attacking "high-fat" diets, probably due to serving different clients of his firm?
Mr. Fumento's technique and argumentative style is pure circular thinking, which is quite expected from a lawyer. This isn't a slam against lawyers at all, it's just what they do and what they're good at.
You have a guilty client with all the evidence against him, so what any decent lawyer would do is throw some doubt on the evidence, throw some hypotheticals, and what-if scenarios, twist things as much as possible, in the hope of casting some reasonable doubt to vindicate his client.
The main point of most diatribes against Taube's article was that he "misquoted" researchers, and they are upset with him. Do you know why?
When researchers find low-carb is healthy, and you lose more weight, and it lowers your cholesterol, which Fumeto admits, the researchers always add a little conclusion saying, "yes, these are our findings, but you should still follow the low-fat diet".
He didn't misquote them! He simply cited the facts from the research and the findings, and ignored their opinions on they "think" is healthy.
So, when we run around saying this is what they found, they object "that's not what we concluded, we recomment a healthy diet" This is an ongoing irony, research finds something interesting, but researchers conclud something else, since the results are contrary to what they expected and what they thought was healthy.
And Mr. Fumento plays on this contradiction quite well.
I'm looking forward to Gary's rebuttal, even thought I think he has better things to do with his time
Wa'il