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The Rise of the Government Expert
Civic-minded Americans are generally familiar with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning in his farewell address to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex.” Yet, there is another passage that deserves equal if not greater attention. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, numerous intellectuals were conscripted to become part of Leviathan, silencing their proper roles as critics of power:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. … The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
There is no better example of “public policy … becom[ing] the captive of a scientific-technological elite” than with what happened with nutrition research and health policy. Ironically, the story of how saturated fat became demonized began in the Eisenhower years. After President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, Washington policymakers became alarmed by the disease that was suddenly striking the ruling elite. After going into “Do Something!” crisis mode, it wasn’t long before they came under the sway of experts who offered easy answers. One such individual was Dr. Ancel B. Keys, the originator of the hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease. Keys went on to exercise perhaps the greatest influence in the “history of nutrition” through professional and personal dominance.
Opponents of the saturated fat–heart disease hypothesis included accomplished scientists George V. Mann and E.H. “Pete” Ahrens, who voiced many legitimate criticisms. But in the end, they were no match for the unprecedented changes rammed through by Keys and his sidekick Jeremiah Stamler. Through their efforts, these two men and their supporters blurred the line between objective scholarship and political advocacy. It wasn’t long before most skeptical nutrition researchers were browbeaten into submission, relegated to sidelines, or otherwise drowned out as the zeitgeist ultimately shifted in favor of Keys’s hypothesis and preferred solutions.
Dogma is a term that is usually associated with fundamentalist religions. But unfortunately, even scientists who are supposedly trained to think critically and independently are not immune to groupthink, the temptations offered by political prestige, and the limits of what’s “acceptable” as dictated by funding. Despite the shortcomings of various studies that appeared to provide a solid scientific backing, the saturated fat–heart disease hypothesis became a dogma when it was formally institutionalized within the US government’s public health bureaucracies. This was thanks to Keys’s relentless advocacy and intimate relations he established with the American Heart Association (AHA). The influence of the AHA over nutrition policy cannot be overstated. In fact, the “AHA and NIH were parallel, entwined forces from the start.” As the two main organizations responsible for setting the agenda and distributing millions in funds for cardiovascular research, it was increasingly difficult to “reverse course and entertain other ideas” even as the saturated fat diet–heart disease hypothesis continued to disappoint because it “had become a matter of institutional credibility.”
Congress and “Big Food”
To make matters worse, Congress became directly involved during the 1970s in the question of what the American people ought to eat. Teicholz explained how the Beltway culture allowed for bad ideas to take hold and stay entrenched (as anyone who has worked there can attest to):
With its massive bureaucracies and obedient chains of command, Washington is the very opposite of the kind of place where skepticism — so essential to good science — can survive. When Congress adopted the diet-heart hypothesis, the idea gained ascendancy as an all-ruling, unassailable dogma, and from this point on, there has been virtually no turning back.
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