(From an Email Correspondence on Veganism)
It does not matter if he is a scientist, he quotes real vigorous scientific research, while Doctor Campbell, although being a scientist, has no rigorous research to support his claims. The China study has been highly criticized for assuming correlation implies causation, among other things. Declaring that you don't want to hear what someone has to say because they are not a scientist is borderline ad hominem. Only listening to scientists is argumentum ab auctoritate, as is bringing up a list of influential vegans. Scientific research must stand on its own merit, not the merit of who is presenting it.
No one is claiming you are going to lose intelligence simply from not eating meat, what is being claimed is that over millions of years meat played an important role in the development of human intelligence. To claim that that is false simply because an African tribe survives without meat is a strawman at best. What this does suggest is that if meat is taken out of the human diet, intelligence will be lost over millions of years.
It does not matter if he is a scientist, he quotes real vigorous scientific research, while Doctor Campbell, although being a scientist, has no rigorous research to support his claims. The China study has been highly criticized for assuming correlation implies causation, among other things. Declaring that you don't want to hear what someone has to say because they are not a scientist is borderline ad hominem. Only listening to scientists is argumentum ab auctoritate, as is bringing up a list of influential vegans. Scientific research must stand on its own merit, not the merit of who is presenting it.
No one is claiming you are going to lose intelligence simply from not eating meat, what is being claimed is that over millions of years meat played an important role in the development of human intelligence. To claim that that is false simply because an African tribe survives without meat is a strawman at best. What this does suggest is that if meat is taken out of the human diet, intelligence will be lost over millions of years.