sure this turn of people getting sick is worrying, because coming late and sudden hints at contamination, and I hope they can mature enough to go past manufacturing problems
but the data they're collecting will be extraordinary for bringing down the layers of encrusted myths about how the body works.
I'm pretty sure food science and studies of nutrition have been around a lot longer than Soylent.
Also, I see no reason why they should be cut any slack. It's not just a webapp that experiences downtime. When this goes wrong people get hurt.
I've only read about this in passing, in general histories, but this was one of MIT's early strengths, in the post-Civil War late 19th Century era.
The human body with it's organs and molecular pathways is quite a tough black box to crack, and there is not a spark of a doubt that Soylent - and no one else - will not understand it for quite a while.
And then there is human human variations.
The concept was flawed from the very beginning. It's sad to see them fail, and I feel bad for the people that suffer because they believed what was marketing and not hard science.
> there is not a spark of a doubt that Soylent - and no one else - will not understand it for quite a while
I agree but at some point this work should begin somewhere, somehow.
"People love it" isn't a rigorous double-blind scientific study.