Information Hesitancy
Information hesitancy, a new name for an old concept. It is possible that a lot of us deal in opinions and old data that has been passed on by word of mouth, media or in newspapers. For example, the food pyramid that was created toward the end of last century was based on weak data put forward by the likes of Ansell Keys and taught to 1000s of nutritionalists. It propounds the use of carbohydrates as our main source of fuel and poo poohs saturated fat as a dangerous substance that will not only raise your cholesterol but which will also cause heart attacks. Fast forward to 2020 and the research has pretty much proven conclusively that high carbs create insulin resistance, low fat food is full of sugar and harmful seed oils and that healthy saturated fat is actually good for you and if used correctly can help you lose weight and reverse Type 2 Diabetes amongst other things.
With the birth of the internet and the information age a discerning person can keep abreast of any new research that interests them. It’s all there. Pretty much all of the research papers are published on line and are accessible and even if your training doesn’t allow you to understand the results there is sure to be somebody online who is there communicating this information in layman terms.
Unfortunately the attitude of most people is that they are far too busy, they wouldn’t understand it anyway or that they will trust the “experts”. The question that you have to ask is “are the experts also keeping up to date with the latest research?” or could it be even possible that they are being influenced financially in regard to the data that they put out and apparently agree with.
I have come across this countless times over the past two years. “Experts” who say that we must follow the science. What science? What research papers are they basing their decisions upon? And on and on it goes.
We are all responsible to follow our own road to discovery and come to our own conclusions based on the data that is available.
So hence, information hesitancy. It is a real thing as far as I am concerned.
