last supper not actually supersized

[kindkit]

Via angevin2, a lucid, intelligent, and funny explanation of why that study about how portion sizes in paintings of the Last Supper over the last 1000 years prove that we're all Evil Greedy Fatties (you know, the one that was linked from everywhere yesterday), is complete crap. Because the people who did the study knew bugger all about medieval art.

Comments

[oursin]

the people who did the study knew bugger all about medieval art

Why am I not surprised?
(Oh. That would be far too many encounters with people who think 'medical history' means 'let's play a really historically-underinformed game of retrospective diagnosis')

[kindkit]

Probably someone, somewhere, has kept track of how many different conditions famous figures (like Vincent Van Gogh, for example) have been retrospectively diagnosed with. The tally would be . . . interesting, I'm sure.

And then there's the whole business of diagnosing fictional characters (e.g. Sherlock Holmes's bipolar disorder).