Taubes actually started the mainstream reexamination of fat over 10 years ago with his New York Times Magazine article "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?":
The key point is that it is only very specific varieties of fat that matter for heart disease. It goes in to much more detail than his opinion piece for those looking for more info.
It's not even clear to me that the post you link and his reply are necessarily at odds. A calorie-metering approach and a shift in diet could both be effective weight-loss strategies in that they would be acting at different points in the process and using different resources.
The hyperbole wasn't the problem. Which you surely know.
Cherry-picking is where you pick the sources that support your case while ignoring the rest. What he did was a sweeping dismissal.
He may be right or wrong; I have no idea. But if you're going to accuse somebody of being an intellectual fraud, you should probably know what you're talking about.
I find it hard to take that site seriously when they call fish oil a "brain booster" next to a great big affiliate link to buy fish oil supplements on Amazon [1]. Also they don't seem to have a page about trans fats at all. Are they pushing an agenda through cherry picking and deliberate omission of contrary information? I don't have the time or energy to investigate. (Note: I'm not trying to defend Taubes here, as far as I can tell he is a hack).
My issue was that "brain booster" is a bullshit term that means nothing. I put it in the same category as "super food" and other such meaningless terms. If they want to be taken more seriously they should use more precise language.
You should be skeptical, however language can be used for its gestalt. Coming to conclusions without evaluating the rest of the situation (in this case, evaluating the quality of Examine) is pretty meaningless.
In my personal opinion the content that has showed up on Examine has been pretty stellar. It has grown considerably in a short amount of time and is one of the few sites that hosts this sort of content and isn't riddled with ads.
If I see claims using bullshit non-scientific language next to a link selling the product then yes I'm going to question the scientific credentials of the site. I make no apology for that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...
The key point is that it is only very specific varieties of fat that matter for heart disease. It goes in to much more detail than his opinion piece for those looking for more info.