This argument begged the question of how science could ever correct itself if researchers who disagreed with the conventional wisdom must be considered wrong because, well, the conventional wisdom disagreed with them.
In the end, however, Krauss lost the battle to the traditionalists, who counterattacked. When Lichtenstein took over the nutrition committee chair, in 2006, she swung the AHA guidelines back in the other direction, dropping the allowable amount of saturated fat from Krauss's 10 percent, past the previous 8 percent, down to 7 percent of calories or less. This was the same tiny amount of saturated fat allowed in the NIH's most aggressive diet, Step 2, which was designed for the highest-risk, post-heart-attack patients. Now it was being recommended to men, women, and children alike. When I asked Lichtenstein whether her committee had considered Krauss's work on LDL subfractions and their implication for saturated fat, she replied that his work was "complicated" and that she "didn't have the time" to review it.