Someone ate 12 Oreos daily and reported a 71% drop in LDL cholesterol. The speaker explores why people twist this strange result to fit what they already believe instead of just sitting with the oddity and asking what's actually going on.
How do you get people to just immerse themselves in the curiosity and scientific awe that you feel? The Oreo cookie addition to your diet is probably not a healthy intervention, no matter the jokes people make about, oh, he's trying to prove Oreos healthy. Eating 12 Oreo cookies per day on top of what you're eating is generally not considered a healthy intervention. So bad intervention. And then the outcome, a 71% reduction in LDL from previously very high levels, is presumed to be a good outcome. So When you present people with what appears implicitly to be a bad intervention and good outcome, there is an implicit tension there, and it creates a cognitive dissonance that most people are uncomfortable sitting with. So then what happens is people tend to layer on their own interpretations based on pre-existing opinions. So some people will say, oh, Nick is saying that statins are garbage. I didn't say that. Nick is saying LDL is safe. I didn't say that. There are converse interpretations as well. I think it's very interesting to see the extent to which people do mental gymnastics to try to find a value judgment that was never placed, rather than just saying, well, this is weird. Why did this happen? And expressing curiosity.
