Agreed. I think that is a fair distinction to make. I will bear that in mind for the future. And thank you for the compliment – I can say the same about you and a few others here

@tmac57:

What Kawarthajon says certainly makes sense to me. The other option I can think of that may help out, in case abstaining from drink during a meal proves difficult, would be to drink a glass or two about 15 minutes prior to a meal. By the time you start eating, most of the liquid will have gone from your stomach and will have hopefully slaked your thirst making it easier during the meal. I would also say that in order to ensure the benefits of this idea, you should refrain from drinking anything until 30ish minutes after the meal, otherwise you’d obviously defeat the purpose. Meals high in fat/protein will require longer for your stomach to empty, so keep that in mind as well.

tmac, I also have acid reflux and it is very painful. I, like Sara Novak suggests, do not drink during meals because of this. It is not for the reasons that Sara suggests, however. My understanding is that one of the ways that you can reduce the burning sensation (other than meds and controlling the types of foods you eat) is to reduce the volume of stuff you eat/drink at any one sitting. I think that being full puts pressure on the stomach and makes things back up in a nasty way. Not drinking during meals seems to help me, although it does not take away the need for meds completely. You should try it and see if it works for you. I eat and drink separately and try to eat smaller meals several times per day, which helps to keep the volume of stuff I consume down. My understanding is that you would have to drink a large volume of water in order to reduce the acidity of your stomach even a little bit, which might actually make your acid reflux worse.

Of course, Thanksgiving is this weekend and I will probably eat tons of turkey and drink lots of beer, in violation of this rule, but I have medication to fall back on.

No reason to apologize. Like many that frequent this site I enjoy the intellectual exercise, and no offense is taken. From reading the comments I have read from you on this site, I gather that we have little disagreement on most topics. I do like to engage in discussions with people I respect.

The distinction I was making is that “just so” stories are not limited to evolution or anthropology, and it is important not to lump all scientific hypotheses or theories into this category. At one philophical extreme one could argue that all of science is a series of “just so” stories of varying quality. I do not subscribe to such a view (and I don’t believe that you do either), and thats why I went out of my way to narrow the definition.

I took a few seconds to search any definitions for the phrase, and surprising found little, but wikipedia described it similarly to my interpretation. Not that that is in any way authoritative, but confirms that I am not too crazy (at least when it comes to this)

That is a fair assessment. Perhaps I should re-think my usage of the term.

My argument for using it in such a manner though is that such a proposition is not a theory – it is a hypothesis (I’m pretty sure you didn’t flub that intentionally, but I felt it pertinent to point out). The issue there is that people use such “just-so” stories, particularly anthropological/evolutionary, to justify a course of action. So whether the evidence backing it up could in principle be discovered or not is irrelevant to the claim. It is currently unsubstantiated, you are making assumptions and leaps of logic without evidence, and ultimately drawing inference and action based on that.

I realize you were not actually doing that, but commenters around here and SBM like Geoff and jmcohen do. So I apologize for using you as a springboard to demonstrate the inherent invalidity of using such stories to make a claim – I’m certain I worded it poorly, but I hope I am more clear now. I just think it is important, especially around these parts, to be clear when something is a reasonable story versus an evidence based assertion that can be used to substantiate a claim.

And once again, I apologize for an lack of clarity, especially currently. Suffice it to say that currently is not one of the best times for my brain to be working at full capacity for both professional and personal reasons. And my sincere apologies for any perceived slight against you.

I largely agree with your assessment re: gastric pH, but I disagree with your definition and use of “just so story.” If we broaden it to include anything for which we have insuffcient evidence, then what does the term add? In my mind it is a aesthetically pleasing narrative that has a component of being not verifiable at least in practice (or in principle). Otherwise a person is simply advocating a theory that turns out to be incorrect (or not), and I think this is a use that is way too broad. If people indeed take this broad interpretation, I would never use the phrase because it loses utility by losing what makes the term distinct from others.

@ccbowers:

I did not mean to say that you were making fanciful and erroneous claims. However, as I said above, unless you have evidence for one narrative over the other, it is indeed a “just so” story. That’s not to say it is wrong or bad to do – I was just using it as an example of how easy it is to do that and relate that to many of those med anthros and sCAMsters (like Moerman and the “Paleo diet” people).

For me “just so” means that we don’t have the concrete evidence to back up the story – not that it is in principle unverifiable.

For me, the protein degradation story is more compelling since we evolved from unicellular life, which incorporated prokaryotic cells (mitochondria, for example) into the cellular structure. Those unicellular organisms developed phagolysosomes long before multi-cellularity, so why would the pH lowering be useful in preventing microbial infection? It was useful for degrading food molecules at that point. As D2U pointed out, the pH of said phagolysosomes wasn’t as low as the stomach of humans. So perhaps that developed as an antimicrobial measure. But to me, the initial need for it and the evolution of corresponding proteolytic enzymes seems more likely to stem from degradation of food molecules.

But that is my point – all these versions are, at least superficially, equivalent and reasonable. That is why it is a just-so story – all of them. And in fact, I would wager that many of the finer details are in fact unverifiable in principle since we are talking about stochastic evolutionary processes that developed billions of years ago.

Please, don’t interpret me as trying to be offensive or in any way knocking you. I just have a bugaboo about evolutionary arguments and just wanted to point out an example of why is all

But if you do find evidence for one of those stories, I am happy to look at it and amend my view on it.

If you are stating that we should acknowledge the uncertainty involve in this issue, then I agree. It is perfectly reasonable to think that both the killing of potential pathogens and the role of ezymes may be involved (this is not an either or senario).

I personally don’t like the use of “just so story” because to me it implies an unverifiable/unfalsifiable narrative (in theory or practically), which is not necessarily true in this case. We do know that pH does play a role in both of these senarios and there is no reason to think that there can’t be an answer. Superficially, I find the pathogen explanation more compelling since infectious disease via this route is a common way in which humans die even today (especially in impoverished areas of the world). I will have to look at the evidence when I have more free time.