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 behind it? Debates about nutrition science, metabolic health and obesity are squarely in the public consciousness. But how is scientific consensus formed? When does it deserve our trust? And how should we reason about the questions it has yet to settle? For four decades, journalist Gary Taubes has probed the gap between scientific consensus and scientific certainty—from cold fusion to dietary fat to sugar—challenging accepted wisdom about what makes us fat and what makes us sick. Join us for a conversation about diet, disease, scientific controversy, and the limits of what health science can claim to know.

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.