The whole truth

I'm recently returned from the India-International Salt Summit in India and so my eye caught the news that, in the wake of ClimateGate, India has withdrawn from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  India's environmental minister, Jairam Ramesh, was quoted observing: "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science."

For more than two decades, back to at least 1988 when the Intersalt Study was published, we've seen the same "theological" threat to science in the salt and health controversy.  In fact, the  shenanigans of the salt reductionist advocacy groups give theology a bad name.  It's just the dogmatic rejection of science showing no general health benefit from salt reduction and even the futility of the public health campaign to alter salt intake levels once they are the the range that 90+% of the world's population ingests (the U.S. is right smack in the middle of this intake range).