David Allison

You might legitimately say, I have a strong a priori rationale there isn't harm.

And Dudley Lambing might say, I have a strong a priori rationale there is harm.

You're entitled to your opinion.

Those are opinions.

And then we can both look and say, well, neither one of you has the absolute definitive data.

At what point, where's the burden of proof?

And I think right now, the notion is the burden of proof is on those who want to argue for higher protein intake.

Well, the evidence isn't clear enough to show that the RDA is too low, to which I would reply, well, the evidence isn't clear that it isn't.

Now, where does the needle point?

Where does prudence point?

And I don't think the status quo is necessarily what's always prudent.

Saying leave everything the way it is is always the best way.

Sometimes it is, but in this case, I think we've left it alone long enough.

I think it's time to say, we've looked and looked and looked.

If I look at a thousand swans and I cannot find a black swan,

Does that mean that no black swans exist?

Of course not.

But if I looked at 10,000 black swans, if I sent a helicopter in the air and we scoured and we looked with binoculars, if I sent teams of undergraduate students to walk around ponds and measure, look for every black swan, if I put drones with cameras out and I have failed time after time after time to find a black swan, at one point say, maybe for practical purposes,

I can say black swan's probably not something we need to worry about.

So let's separate the idea of what I think people ought to do if they have these goals that most of us have, like live longer, be stronger, be healthy, et cetera.