Low Fat Cascade

In 1988 the surgeon general alerted people of the dangers of high fat in their diets. The surgeon general confirmed that eating foods high in fat were just as bad for you as smoking cigarettes. Common knowledge would have you believe that this idea is ridiculous. Coming from the surgeon general gives this idea more credibility and started the high fat/heart disease cascade. The New York Times said that the cascade became so involved that it transformed itself into a reputational cascade. This type of cascade is one where if a person disagrees with the consensus than they are at risk of losing their job.

The article here Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus goes into great detail about this cascade and how the medical profession is more prone to these types of cascades.

I thought it was interesting how common information cascades are in the health field and in a way it makes sense, there is only so much a single physician can know therefore they tend to rely on other's prior knowledge/opinion. So in this case it led to 93 percent of doctors to agree with a flawed hypothesis because they "were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn’t work in this field themselves."