The Uncertainty Principle: Diet, Disease, and the Limits of Scientific Consensus

38th Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy

Gary Taubes, co-founder of Nutrition Science Initiative, will present the 38th Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy titled, “The Uncertainty Principle: Diet, Disease, and the Limits of Scientific Consensus.”

What do we actually know about why we get sick—and how confident should we be in the science? Gary Taubes has spent decades probing the gap between scientific consensus and scientific certainty, from cold fusion to dietary fat to sugar. At a moment when nutrition guidance is being questioned and rewritten, he asks what “consensus” really means in health science, when it deserves our trust, and how to think critically about the questions science hasn't settled.

Gary Taubes is the author of six books, including the best sellers Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat. His latest book, Rethinking Diabetes, was published in 2023. He is a former staff writer for Discover and correspondent for Science, and his writing has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine and in The Atlantic, Esquire and numerous “best of” anthologies, including The Best of the Best American Science Writing. He has received three Science in Society awards from the National Association of Science Writers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.