I’m more in the thoroughly convinced category.
“Who profits?” is a great heuristic.
Yoshinori Ohsumi won a Nobel Prize for his work on autophagy, which is triggered by fasting and has anti-aging properties. And yet it seems you have to go seek out low-carb/fasting sources in order to hear about it. As if people who care about anti-aging directly wouldn’t care about it. (Well, maybe I’m wrong and autophagy is more well-known than I have the impression of.)
In this particular case, there are many natural experiments we can conceive of that demonstrate why fasting alone is highly unlikely to significantly impede “normal” aging in humans in the lab. That’s before we get to how effective it could actually be as a treatment.
And while we’re following the money, there are many powerful entities that would love a “free” aging cure to juice their demographics…so why don’t they use it?
A heuristic is not evidence, as you should know.
I say that it is a heuristic, you conflate it with evidence, and then you say that’s exactly the point (that it’s not evidence)? You’re not saying anything that I haven’t said originally.
Your supposed counter-example is beyond facile. Who-benefits presupposes that the agent has the means to affect some outcome. But no human could have arranged the rotation of the Earth.