It is absolutely the norm for weight scientists to conclude every single publication, no matter the topic, no matter the results, with a firm assertion that fat people should lose weight. It is infuriating.
This is a hall of fame ask lmao
It’s SO standard for scientific and journalistic articles to do this that I’ve developed a kind of game where I’m like “okay boys what’s the kicker??” and try to figure out how/when in the article (usually the conclusion) they will say “we’re shocked & baffled by this data which clearly showed that you can [weigh what you weigh, eat a thing] and be healthy. So what you should really take from this is our Scientific advice to lose weight and restrict your diet!” Like are these authors okay??
When I am feeling charitable, I remind myself of the gauntlet of judgement that researchers must pass through to publish. And how most high profile weight scientists are funded by the weight loss industry, and as editors and reviewers, they will *insist* that researchers include these kinds of statements in their papers if they want to get published. I know a few researchers who have faced this pressure, which puts them in an awful bind. THEY know they have important results that need to be published if the dominant, unscientific attitudes about weight and health are ever going to be over-turned. But the price of publication is high: you have to sell a little bit of your integrity.
But yanno, those ones are by far the minority. The rest just cannot see the contradiction. Anti-fat bias is so ingrained in our culture, it easily goes unexamined.
And that is why it is naive to claim that science is objective, unbiased, pure. It is no. such. damn. thing.
I was looking at the meta-analysis you posted about pregnancy and it is as you say. The researchers admit in the “result” section of the abstract that there really was no statistical difference when it came to health, but then contradict their own evidence in the conclusion by saying pregnant people can “improve outcomes” by reducing weight by diet. Do you find that it is normal for scientist in this field to ignore their own research?
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