Comment by cogman10

The big problem is that "truth tellers" very often leverage media platforms to sell their unscientific and unsupported or lightly supported opinions.

It's relatively simple to ultimately buy airtime to sell a product and have the one air host fawn over it as if what's been sold is the greatest truth of our lifetime. Some of the court documents against infowars placed the price for that sort of airtime at something like $20,000.

The problem comes in that the actual experts have very little want or desire to do the same. We're lucky if we see a few "science communicators" that step up to the plate, but they very rarely end up with the funds to sell the truth.

This a big part of how the "vaccines cause autism" garbage spread. Long before it caught on like it did, Wakefield was going around to conferences and selling his books and doing public speaking events on the dangers.

That pattern is pretty apparent if you look at major fad diets over the years. Selling that "you just have to eat meat" or "You just have to eat raw" or "You just have to eat liver" can make you some big money and may even land you on opera where you can further sell your magic green coffee beans.

Medical reality is generally a lot more boring. Like you point out, CVD is likely influenced by multiple factors. Diet, alcohol intake, exercise (or lack thereof) all contributing factors.