Seth Roberts Is Dead

Today, from his siter Amy, via his blog, came the message that Seth Roberts has passed away. My condolences to his family and friends.

I never met him, only had a few exchanges with him on this and his blog. Generally, I felt he went to far in his criticism of standard approaches, and put too much weight on low-quality evidence. But, as long as I knew of his work - and I certainly include his blogging here - I valued him as an original, unusual, and stimulating thinker. I believe that once the great weight gain in affluent countries ca. 1970-present is better understood, his learning theory of the set point will be a large part of the explanation.

Here are posts in which I discuss Seths work (some of them quite critical):

• "Seth Roberts coins a new term"
• "The Best of Both Worlds"
•  "That's Not the Fast Lane to Stockholm"
• "Problems with Evidence-based Medicine"
• "The Long and Winding Post"
• "Original Medical Opinion of the Day"
• "Effect Size=Holy Crap!"
• "Do Rising Gas Prices Decrease Obesity?"
• "Appreciative Thinking and Cross-sectional Studies"

Two of his posts made it onto my year-end "Best Blogposts of..." lists:

• Will Like vs. Might Love vs. Might Hate
• Two Dimensions of Economic Growth: GDP and Useful Knowledge

Here are quotes of his that I found worth keeping. Here is his paper on self-experimentation in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Here is his paper "What Makes Food Fattening?" Blowhard, Esq. remembers. Ben Casnocha remembers. Andrew Gelman remembers.