0:00

Welcome to episode 188 of

0:02

the Institute of Performance Nutrition's We

0:04

Do Science podcast. I am the host, Dr.

0:07

Laura Back. Now, today, a really

0:09

important discussion was

0:12

had. Normally, we get

0:14

into unraveling the science behind

0:17

various exercise physiology and sports nutrition

0:20

concepts, mechanisms,

0:22

all sorts of stuff that relates to helping

0:25

athletes become bigger, faster, stronger, or

0:28

recreational gym goers get

0:30

the results that they're after, body

0:32

composition, exercise, you name

0:34

it. These are the things that we get into. But

0:36

behind all of this goes thought,

0:39

beliefs, things like

0:41

critical thinking, the need to be

0:44

skeptical, but not so

0:46

open-minded that your brains fall out, which will

0:48

all make sense when you listen to

0:50

this podcast. Okay, it's

0:53

not necessarily sexy topics

0:55

like protein, creatine, and

0:58

so on. But this is important,

1:00

what we talk about today. I

1:03

know that you will get a lot out of it. I

1:05

really enjoyed listening to my two

1:07

guests today, which was Professor

1:09

Stu Phillips and Dr. Nick

1:12

Tiller, off the back of

1:14

a series of publications by

1:17

Dr. Nick Tiller, all about this

1:19

stuff. Boy, is it interesting.

1:21

Anyway, I'll let you have a good listen

1:24

in a second. But before you listen

1:26

to us talking about skepticism

1:27

and critical thinking

1:30

theory and all that sort of thing, please check

1:32

out our website at www.theiopn.com,

1:36

where, well, you can read our latest

1:39

publication on evidence-based practice

1:42

and guidelines for sports nutritionists.

1:44

You'll find that under research on our website. We're

1:46

doing a podcast about that soon. Our 100%

1:49

online diploma,

1:52

master's level diploma, fully accredited in

1:55

sports nutrition. This

1:57

podcast,

1:57

back episodes, resources.

1:59

courses, that sort of thing. Our new

2:02

professional development program for

2:04

current aspiring sports nutritionists, that's

2:06

up and running now. You can see that on the website

2:09

and all sorts of other things that we're up to and

2:11

releasing on an almost weekly basis on

2:13

our website. Lots of new content on there,

2:15

so come check it out at www.theiopn.com.

2:19

Now, here's our conversation with

2:22

Stu Phillips and Nick Tiller on how skepticism

2:25

can raise scientific standards and

2:28

all such

2:29

thoughts behind critical thinking in

2:31

sport and exercise nutrition in particular. Enjoy.

2:34

Hi, and welcome back to the

2:36

Institute of Performance Nutrition. We do

2:38

science podcasts. I am the host

2:41

Dr. Laurent Bancke and I've got two absolutely

2:44

awesome guests back on

2:46

today. I

2:47

say back because these guys have been

2:50

on this podcast before where we've talked

2:52

about probably the most popular

2:54

topic there is, of course, being protein

2:57

with Professor Stu Phillips. We've done quite

2:59

a few different

3:00

podcasts along with the late, great Professor

3:03

Kevin Tipton, God bless his soul. Nick,

3:06

Dr. Nick Tiller, you're also

3:08

here and we've had you on before to talk about

3:11

ultra endurance racing, which

3:13

is by no means your only area of

3:15

interest.

3:16

It was a paper that

3:19

you published or co-authored

3:21

with Stu that spurred

3:23

my interest in putting this podcast together.

3:27

Also, actually, an article that we'll

3:29

also talk about in the Skeptical Inquirer

3:31

that you had written along

3:34

the lines of skepticism

3:36

and how important it

3:39

is to raising scientific standards.

3:42

From my perspective, with an interest in

3:44

evidence-based practice in sports

3:46

nutrition, is this business

3:48

of evidence? What even is the evidence and

3:51

how relevant is that evidence to inform decision

3:53

making and this whole business of

3:55

decision making? Anyway, we've got a juicy chat,

3:58

not always something.

3:59

something people want to talk about because

4:02

it's a difficult one and we'll reveal why

4:04

this topic is such a hot topic. So

4:07

Nick, firstly,

4:08

if you'd like to tell us about yourself.

4:11

Of course. Well, I come from a sport and

4:13

exercise science background. So in the

4:16

US, it's kinesiology more broadly, but

4:18

I did my undergraduate degree in

4:20

sport and exercise science at a university called

4:22

the University of Hertfordshire, which is just outside

4:24

North London.

4:25

And I stayed to do my master's in exercise

4:28

physiology and applied sports nutrition.

4:30

I knew at that point that I wanted to be a physiologist.

4:33

That was the area that I'd really fallen in love

4:35

with. I remember having a lecture

4:37

on all the different bodily responses to different

4:40

environmental stimuli, whether it was

4:42

exercise or nutrition or, or

4:45

aviation or deep sea diving or whatever, whatever

4:47

happened to be the body has this wonderful

4:50

ability to adapt to the various environmental

4:53

stresses. And I just remember thinking

4:55

to myself, okay, I want to study this full

4:58

time up. This is the area for me. At

5:00

the time, like most post graduates,

5:02

I wanted to work in elite sport. So I worked

5:05

very diligently, almost obsessively to

5:07

get a job in high performance sport, which I eventually

5:09

did, did that for a couple of years and realized

5:13

that actually I was in love with the science more than

5:15

I was the sport. And

5:17

I mean, both of you guys worked in

5:19

high performance sport and really

5:22

as passionate as I was about that, the

5:24

science is a little bit diluted down.

5:26

Everything has to be very applied,

5:29

very specific, and has to be filtered

5:31

through the coach necessarily so,

5:33

but that means that the science doesn't necessarily

5:36

get the priority. And that was really what I was most

5:39

passionate about. So I left

5:41

the high performance world to do my PhD in

5:44

human respiratory physiology. That was at Brunel

5:46

in West London with Dr. Lee Romer.

5:48

And then I had a few different positions

5:50

in academia as an associate professor

5:53

before moving to UCLA to focus

5:55

on my research. But really, I guess most relevant

5:57

to this discussion, I think, is that the science is really the

5:59

discussion is that over the past decade or

6:02

so, more than a decade, I've

6:04

been trying to bridge the gap between

6:06

the

6:08

ethos of science and

6:10

the scientific method, the scientific

6:12

skepticism or everything that we understand

6:14

about this process,

6:15

humility, evidence-based practice,

6:18

testing your hypotheses, mitigating

6:20

bias,

6:22

and prioritizing the process above

6:24

the conclusions.

6:26

All of these principles were in stark contrast

6:28

to what we see in the modern health and wellness industry

6:31

where

6:32

science really is subordinate to marketing

6:34

and the marketing rhetoric is really what's prioritized.

6:38

I've spent the last decade or so trying to

6:40

bridge the gap between those two opposing

6:42

entities, and

6:45

I guess that sort of has brought us to this

6:48

discussion today.

6:49

Yeah, it's a crusade

6:52

for sure. I'm excited to get

6:55

into this topic for various reasons, but Stu,

6:58

as I said, welcome back. It's definitely not

7:00

the first time we've had you here. It is possible

7:03

that some people have not listened to previous

7:06

episodes or have come across you on

7:08

other podcasts. Why don't you give us a little bit of a background?

7:12

Yeah, sure. I won't tell

7:14

you where I did my degrees because they were a long

7:16

time ago, but I've been a faculty

7:18

member at McMaster University for 26 years now.

7:21

I'm a professor in the Department of Kinesiology.

7:24

Spent most of my career looking at the interaction

7:27

between various forms of exercise

7:30

and nutrition

7:31

and really focusing in on skeletal

7:34

muscle. I would say that the early part

7:36

of my time here was really focused

7:38

on younger individuals,

7:40

and more recently it shifted towards

7:42

sort of older individuals as I

7:44

get older. Research becomes

7:46

knee search.

7:48

But really focusing in on protein

7:50

and lots of other supplements and their interaction

7:52

with exercise, predominantly resistance exercise,

7:55

and then

7:56

the hypertrophy phenotype that goes along

7:58

with that. But we've dabbled in lots of different ways. of other things

8:00

along the way. So I think from my

8:02

perspective, a lot of the want

8:05

to maybe set the record straight on

8:07

a few of these things has come from areas

8:09

in science in which I've changed my mind.

8:12

And it's been

8:14

humbling in some sense, because some

8:17

of it is having to wind back some

8:19

of the possible, I don't know if

8:21

it's rhetoric as much, but maybe some of the

8:23

hype around certain things like protein,

8:25

for example, and its role.

8:28

And when you're confronted

8:30

by evidence to the contrary that this

8:32

is really not very kind

8:35

of important, you're obviously forced

8:37

to maybe walk a few things back. And that

8:40

tends to upset people. But

8:42

as I say, science is a process. It's

8:44

not an absolute thing. And so it's been

8:46

humbling to come to the realization

8:49

that some of the

8:50

things you held near and dear earlier in your

8:52

career of all of a sudden are not

8:54

maybe as big a deal as

8:56

you once thought.

8:58

Yeah, I actually remember a number

9:00

of podcasts that we've done with various guests,

9:02

but including Kev, of course. And

9:05

you've mentioned that before. And it's very interesting

9:08

because protein research is such

9:10

a popular area. It is easily,

9:12

I joke all the time about this on the podcast,

9:14

but it is by far the biggest number of

9:17

downloads I get is whenever there's protein

9:19

is mentioned in the title. It's

9:22

just crazy. We're going to get into

9:24

this in a minute. There's a lot of information

9:26

out there and a lot of perspectives, some of which

9:28

are

9:29

qualified, whatever that means, and

9:31

some of which are just downright bonkers,

9:34

and some of which are deliberately

9:36

twisted for various commercial purposes

9:39

or otherwise. But it is very interesting

9:41

when you've got all that stuff

9:43

going on, but then we get the likes of yourselves,

9:46

actual researchers

9:48

doing the highest level of research

9:51

in this field. And you're saying, actually,

9:54

I've changed my mind about this topic. I

9:56

find that utterly fascinating, but

9:58

therein lies some of the issue, doesn't it?

9:59

because if we've got some disagreements

10:02

going on between experts

10:05

in our field and by experts, I mean actual

10:07

experts, which we can define in a minute as well,

10:09

I think that would be important. It can

10:11

be a little bit confusing for the consumer who

10:13

almost certainly doesn't have

10:15

PhDs or some

10:17

form

10:20

of science education.

10:22

As you guys have pointed out in your

10:25

paper, and also Nick in your National Enquirer

10:30

almost got you into the wrong publication

10:32

there. Even people with that level of training...

10:35

Nick's moonlighting doing it some other way. Yeah, I

10:37

bet. Well, you know, you've

10:39

got to get this information out into the

10:42

popular media, slip it into some

10:44

dodgy papers, you never know. But I

10:47

linked that to my own experience because of course,

10:49

my journey started out as

10:52

a PT in this industry. I've

10:54

had various careers, but that was my

10:55

health and fitness industry was as a PT,

10:59

sidetracked into alternative medicine,

11:01

all sorts of stuff that I talked about a lot in

11:03

the early episodes of this podcast.

11:06

And I absolutely got

11:08

stuck deep into this

11:10

stuff and believed every bit of it

11:13

was singing this stuff. You

11:15

know, you need to do this, these pills, potions,

11:17

whatnot. And I thought I was pretty well

11:20

educated until I realized I wasn't. And

11:22

that was a pretty scary place

11:24

to be, but the stimulus for that is

11:27

many 15 years or whatever it is now, almost 20

11:30

years now later, ended up

11:32

being retrained and educated. In fact, my own doctoral

11:35

research was on bridging the gap between

11:37

science and practice. And we've

11:39

just had another paper published on this topic, which

11:41

is an upcoming podcast. But

11:44

I'm really keen to get my teeth

11:46

into this topic for personal reasons.

11:48

But also I think

11:50

there's an awful lot of people listening to this podcast

11:53

who are obsessed

11:54

for all the right reasons, for the most part, about

11:57

nutrition, sports, nutrition, the

11:59

science.

11:59

and all that stuff. And although we do

12:02

mention it quite often, there is an issue when it

12:04

comes to

12:06

science, publications, quantity

12:08

rather than quality and so on, which we do dabble.

12:10

We get into this on most

12:13

podcasts, we briefly mentioned it. But this would

12:15

be the first time that we actually properly cover

12:18

this topic. So Nick, help

12:20

us understand what led you to wanting

12:22

to get this paper out.

12:24

What was the reason for doing

12:26

this? Because it's quite a lot of work anyway to do this.

12:30

As I said, I've been writing and speaking

12:32

about this subject in one form or another

12:34

for well over a decade. And

12:36

as you kindly mentioned, I have a monthly column in

12:39

the skeptical inquirer, I'm talking about this sort of

12:41

stuff all the time, but it reaches a certain

12:43

audience, it doesn't necessarily reach academics,

12:45

certainly not people who exercise scientists, you

12:47

know, within our discipline. And

12:49

these are the folks that

12:51

I really want to try and reach more and more

12:54

because the people that seem to be most

12:56

receptive to the stuff that I've written about health

12:58

and wellness, skepticism, most broadly, are

13:01

people who are science enthusiasts and who are critical

13:03

thinkers, the type of people that would

13:05

attend a conference on science and skepticism.

13:08

But very rarely are these people exercise scientists,

13:11

the people who are doing the research, people

13:13

who are communicating the science, people like us.

13:16

And

13:17

I really want to try and do more

13:20

to you were talking about bridging the gap,

13:22

but bridging the gap between this message of

13:24

scientific skepticism and the exercise

13:26

science community. Because one of the key

13:28

things that we mentioned in our short paper

13:31

is how being a scientist and being a

13:33

critical thinker can be mutually exclusive.

13:37

The fact that somebody has a science education does

13:39

not necessarily mean that they can think critically,

13:41

does

13:41

not necessarily mean that they

13:44

can mitigate bias. And being a good

13:46

scientist above all,

13:47

means not just being able to look at evidence and

13:50

apply evidence, but being able

13:52

to

13:53

take a look at the way that you are assessing

13:55

information the way that you are disseminating and bias

13:58

and address your bias.

13:59

is something we call cognitive de-biasing.

14:02

So where are those biases being introduced? Are

14:05

we exhibiting a confirmation bias

14:07

in the way that we interpret data? Are

14:09

we being truly objective in the way that

14:12

we are arriving at conclusions? And

14:14

a lot of the time, we are practicing

14:17

what we think is good science, but we're forgetting

14:19

the broader picture of being able to do that

14:21

effectively. So I really wanted to work

14:24

within our field a little bit more, write papers

14:26

like this. We wrote a slightly broader

14:28

paper along similar lines that was

14:31

published in Sports Medicine a couple

14:33

of months ago, and really just try and

14:35

communicate these important themes to people within

14:37

our discipline. And I wanted

14:39

to focus more on a little bit more

14:42

nutrition and supplements, and that's

14:44

when I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to

14:46

co-author with Stu, given that

14:48

he's a leader in this field.

14:50

Yeah, no, that's great. Well, I love this concept

14:53

of

14:54

ignorance, but also, you know, we have

14:56

to bear in mind that

14:57

there's an awful lot of people who are ignorant of their own

14:59

ignorance, of course. And that's what we're trying

15:01

to do, is help them understand that stuff. Just

15:04

to stay on that point just for a second, people

15:06

often don't understand like almost the philosophy

15:08

of science, that the modern day scientific

15:11

method is derived from the Socratic

15:13

method. And that is premised on the

15:15

idea of Socratic ignorance. You have to

15:18

be aware of the reach of your own ignorance.

15:20

And that's sort of where a lot of modern scientists

15:23

fall down, because we're so focused on our

15:25

own area of research. We forget to think

15:27

about, okay, what do I not know? And

15:29

what do I not yet understand? And that's kind of

15:31

where we need to spend a little bit more time.

15:34

I gave a lecture just before the pandemic about

15:36

the epistemology of ignorance. I'm

15:39

not going to spend time on that right now, but

15:41

it is a fascinating

15:42

topic. But speaking of which, Stu,

15:45

you are well known for

15:47

battling some of this stuff on

15:50

social media, which, you know, is amazing

15:52

given how busy you are as

15:54

a researcher and a professor. Getting

15:57

a lot of publications out there. You've got a lot of responsibilities.

15:59

with your PhD students and so on and so

16:02

forth. And yet you still

16:04

obviously feel it necessary to

16:07

spend the time and effort

16:08

trying to fight the good fight on this stuff, including

16:11

this paper with Nick. Why is that? Why have

16:13

you felt that that's necessary and continue

16:16

to do so?

16:17

I'm not sure, to be honest with you. Most

16:19

of it has come around. I was

16:21

trained as a biochemist, so I think

16:23

of things in biochemical

16:25

detail

16:27

before I think of the physiology, to be honest

16:29

with you. That

16:31

was my training. And a lot of, I'll

16:34

call it exercise science,

16:37

tends to be, and this is not to sort

16:39

of paint with a very broad brush, but

16:41

it's arisen out of, you know, it has

16:43

roots probably more in sort of, British

16:46

people call it PE or phys-ed,

16:48

and sports science. And a

16:51

lot of sports science is, I think,

16:53

born out of things

16:56

that people did because they

16:58

worked for somebody else. They just got the empirical,

17:01

that worked for that athlete, so this is how

17:03

we do things. And there's been a lot more

17:06

lore, I think, in the area of

17:08

sports science than probably other sciences.

17:11

And Nick goes to Pains to point

17:13

out that sports science, it's a very

17:15

young science. Kinesiology

17:18

is, in turn, even maybe 50 years

17:20

old at most. So I

17:22

think that that's a little bit

17:24

of maybe some of where this has

17:26

come from. So it's not like

17:29

physics or chemistry or, you know, other,

17:31

or biology, very old sciences,

17:34

very mature, that have gone through a number

17:37

of iterative cycles of having theories

17:39

and then

17:40

theories being debunked and then etc,

17:42

etc. And sort of certain things have stuck,

17:45

whereas, you know, we're not even

17:47

a century into sport science,

17:49

quote unquote. But I think that that

17:51

has meant that some principles and

17:53

some things

17:55

came from a position of a lack

17:57

of understanding of basic either

18:00

physiology biochemistry and ochronology

18:03

etc

18:03

and maybe

18:06

i was well grounded and add

18:08

to that then the. Monetization

18:12

of things like supplements and other issues

18:14

that i think you begin to ferment

18:17

a little bit of an environment where things can really

18:19

go off the rails so more than anything

18:22

it's been my understanding of

18:24

biochemistry or biology.

18:27

It is puzzled me when i first saw

18:29

some of these what i would call

18:31

dogmatic beliefs in sports

18:34

science i would be like.

18:35

That's not how i understand this

18:37

to be and

18:39

and so yeah we've we've set about challenging

18:41

them and trying to find the right basis

18:44

as opposed to just accepting that.

18:46

That's the way it is because

18:49

tens of other people or hundreds

18:51

of other people before you thought that that's the way

18:53

it should be so there's been a number

18:55

of examples but probably more famously

18:58

post exercise rises in anabolic

19:00

hormones heavy loads being.

19:03

Necessary for muscle hypertrophy

19:05

and a couple of others but supplement wise we've

19:08

taken a run at a few things and it's

19:10

been gratifying to do that yeah i'm

19:12

not really sure where it comes from.

19:14

What is the part of me that doesn't joy pushing

19:16

back against a long held belief particularly

19:19

when we think the science says that it's not exactly

19:21

the way that it should be.

19:23

I wish i had the proper sound effects i would

19:25

have pressed the button that was the jackpot

19:27

belief the word believe me.

19:30

Is such an interesting word here because

19:33

i mean look for me as a nutritionist

19:35

right i only have to go to a dinner

19:38

party or something where i have to mention

19:40

what i do for a living and just everything

19:43

goes downhill. Which is why

19:45

i often tell people and forgive me if there are

19:47

accountants out there, but i tell them i'm an accountant

19:50

and then they don't want to talk to me. But belief is

19:52

a crazy thing

19:53

and everything from the consumer

19:55

to the researcher there's a degree of belief

19:57

and how

19:58

this belief.

19:59

forms or impacts, decision making

20:03

biases. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff which we'll dig

20:05

into. But repositioning me

20:08

from just being a nutritionist to

20:10

a nutritionist who, for the most

20:12

part, has worked with

20:14

elite

20:15

athletes. And my athletes

20:17

are

20:18

basically, they've got one thing in mind and that

20:21

is to win the competition, win

20:23

the match.

20:25

In the case of Olympic athletes, they've

20:27

got a four year cycle before they're even

20:29

going to potentially podium and there's only

20:32

a few spaces on the podium.

20:34

And if they don't do things that work, it's

20:37

a serious problem. Now, it may not first

20:39

do no harm, it may all that stuff which we'll

20:41

get into in this conversation, but ultimately,

20:45

knowing the

20:46

difference between

20:48

quality and fluid evidence or right

20:51

and wrong and so on and so forth, which I hope

20:53

to explore further, really does matter

20:55

when you're interested in outcomes and outcomes

20:57

that results in the intended

21:00

or desired results that people are after.

21:03

It's a big deal, this stuff. And sports

21:06

nutrition, which is the focus of this podcast,

21:10

is an interesting field. Like you said,

21:12

it's a sub-discipline of sports science that

21:15

is not old at all. And

21:17

sports nutrition is a real young newbie

21:20

in that sphere. And yet,

21:23

one of the tools in our toolbox is

21:26

supplements, which constitutes,

21:29

I don't know, you guys will have the answer to this,

21:31

but it's a vast amount of money.

21:34

Is it trillion dollar industry

21:36

now? I certainly multi-billion, I

21:38

would imagine. It could be coming close

21:40

to trillion on a global level. I know

21:42

it's hundreds of billions

21:45

in North America.

21:47

But that's crazy. And unfortunately,

21:49

what goes with that

21:51

is money and

21:54

the pressure, particularly now, in

21:57

the UK, we talk about cost of living crisis, people

21:59

have different

21:59

ways of phrasing these things. But

22:02

people are trying to make a living, and there may be

22:04

a bias to recommend products

22:06

and services, tests, and various

22:09

other things that we see out there that

22:11

will result in increasing

22:14

revenue for people. It's a

22:16

sad fact that that is a factor that exists out

22:18

there, but either which way, it's a big business.

22:22

With that come some problems. Having said

22:24

that,

22:25

some of these things can be useful. We've

22:27

discussed that with various experts

22:29

on this podcast. But centrally

22:31

to this, it's this ability to navigate this

22:34

concept of whether something is

22:37

valid or not.

22:39

Nick,

22:39

let's bring this back to you because you used the

22:41

phrase snake oil a

22:43

bit in this. That's

22:45

a term that I think everyone's heard of,

22:48

not just in North America, obviously, this

22:50

comes from originally. But why has this been a problem

22:52

for so long? Just how long

22:57

has superstition and pseudoscience

23:00

been around, do you think?

23:02

Since the dawn of civilization, pseudoscience

23:05

and bad science and false claims have been around

23:08

since the earliest recorded

23:10

history. In this paper, we

23:12

give some examples chronologically

23:14

from Mesopotamia to the

23:17

Roman and Greek empires all the way through to the Old

23:19

West. The term snake oil

23:21

itself was derived from the Old West. But

23:23

when they were building the Transcontinental Railroad in

23:25

the 1800s, some of the workers

23:28

that the conditions were particularly severe

23:31

and lots of very long hours, very

23:33

dangerous hard work. Some

23:35

of the Chinese immigrants would rub the

23:38

oil from the Chinese water snake onto the joints.

23:40

They shared that with some of their

23:42

co-workers. Before long, these

23:45

snake oil preparations were being toured

23:47

around the Old West.

23:49

They were making all sorts of miraculous

23:51

claims about how this thing could cure

23:53

pain and cure all kinds of medical

23:56

ailments. Of course, not evidence-based

23:58

at all. This was before the end of the book. analytical

24:01

chemistry had been developed in the early 1900s,

24:03

so they couldn't even tell what was in the product. And

24:06

in the early 90s, I think about 1905, when

24:08

they finally did test one of the

24:11

main snake oil preparations that was developed

24:13

and sold by a guy called Clark Stanley, they

24:15

found that it really contained no active ingredients

24:18

and certainly nothing that would reduce inflammation

24:20

or pain. And from that moment on, the

24:22

term snake oil has been synonymous with

24:25

false and fake, or health

24:28

fraud, essentially. And even

24:30

though a lot of the products and services

24:32

that we associate with snake oil have now

24:35

been relegated to the

24:37

pages of history,

24:39

through the process of modern science, because

24:41

we can test these things and determine

24:43

to a relatively high

24:44

degree of accuracy if these things

24:47

work or not,

24:48

snake oil, or at least traditional

24:50

snake oil, has been replaced by, as we've

24:52

been talking about all of these supplements and services

24:55

and garments and sport shoes and fad diets

24:57

and anything for which a health claim

25:00

can be made,

25:01

these things are going to be sold. And it comes back

25:03

to the point you made earlier about belief. It

25:05

doesn't matter if these things work, manufacturers

25:07

of these products know that as long as people

25:10

believe that they work, then it's going

25:12

to manifest in sales. And coupled

25:15

with the very, very poor, the very lax

25:17

regulations

25:18

on the sale of these products, it

25:21

leads to the sales,

25:23

the commercial sales actually going through the roof, because

25:25

the science is subordinate to marketing.

25:28

So that's really the crux of what we're trying to do

25:30

here is to get people thinking a little bit more about, okay,

25:33

why am I investing in these products? Is

25:35

there evidence to show that it works? And if

25:37

not, why is my belief

25:39

constantly being reinforced? And it really comes

25:42

down to the fact that these marketing companies

25:44

understand our biases better than we

25:46

do, and they exploit our biases

25:48

in order to sell product.

25:50

What's fascinating about this though,

25:53

is just how fixated

25:56

people can be on their beliefs. And

25:59

even when presented, with evidence,

26:01

varying kinds of

26:03

evidence, they can still

26:06

not budge on their positions

26:08

that they have on this, which makes this very

26:11

difficult. Actually, there was a bit in your skeptical

26:14

inquirer piece that you talked about

26:17

rather than tackling people. We'll

26:19

get into debunking and so on in

26:21

a minute, but getting people to question

26:24

their own beliefs

26:25

and having them

26:27

get to a point where maybe they can't actually

26:29

answer your questions or can be a

26:31

rather interesting position. But Stu,

26:33

I want to bring this to you because we

26:35

do exist in an interesting place in sport

26:38

science in particular, where

26:40

there is a massive growth of

26:43

evidence that's coming from the research

26:46

community. But if

26:49

one was looking at the criticisms that

26:51

have been levied at the research community

26:53

in sport science, is the quantity

26:56

rather than quality perspective,

26:59

what are your thoughts about

27:00

that angle of things when we talk about evidence

27:03

in the context that I've just mentioned? I'll

27:06

be the first to admit that research isn't

27:09

easy. So you can maybe

27:12

forgive some people for trying

27:14

to do as best they can with limited

27:16

resources because the funding for

27:18

the

27:19

type of, say, sport science research

27:21

that's out there compared to a disease-based

27:24

research paradigm is it's

27:27

nothing, basically. So people

27:30

kind of try to do the best that they can. And

27:33

some people are doing good jobs and some people,

27:35

I think, don't do a particularly good job.

27:37

One of the things that you have to bear in mind is

27:40

that physiologists and with supplements

27:42

and everything are now, I think, just

27:45

coming to grips with a concept that

27:47

pharma has known for years. And that's that

27:49

individual variability is inherent

27:52

in testing humans. So the

27:54

concept that a placebo in a

27:57

lot of circumstances or a nocebo

27:59

can

27:59

essentially have in various, particularly

28:02

sports performance arenas, a

28:05

pretty marked effect.

28:07

Probably that's even been exploited by

28:09

some coaches and just reinforcing

28:11

to their athletes the specialness of something

28:14

and the athlete believing that it's going

28:16

to

28:17

do something. That's

28:20

probably no harm in that, but when

28:22

it's put against a backdrop

28:24

of marketing and sales, the question

28:26

is, well, who's getting

28:29

duped by how much

28:31

and how much money do you have in your pocket as you

28:33

point out, the cost of living is going up and up.

28:36

I think that that's the real rub for

28:38

me with a lot of research that's

28:40

done. First, it's

28:43

hard to do, so it's generally small sample

28:45

sizes. Sometimes it's not appropriately

28:47

controlled.

28:48

Other times, and it's rarely, if ever done,

28:50

in elite athletes, but

28:53

other times it gets misinterpreted or

28:55

even the authors themselves aren't really certain

28:57

what the research means, but

29:00

it's very difficult to filter out the

29:03

signal in the noise. If you can,

29:05

then that's great, but when

29:08

you get down to reviewing all

29:10

the evidence for supplements, there's

29:13

maybe four or five that

29:16

repeatedly come to the top. If

29:19

nothing can be caffeine, then that's

29:22

where it sits, isn't it? That's

29:25

reproducible, pretty marked

29:27

for most people,

29:28

and everything else is compared to it.

29:32

That tells you a lot about the maturity

29:34

of the science and

29:36

what else you can expect with

29:39

a given supplement, for example.

29:41

Yeah, and I don't necessarily think that

29:43

there's any difference fundamentally

29:46

between sports nutrition research and other

29:48

fields in terms of the emphasis

29:51

on quantity over quality. I think it

29:53

seems to manifest maybe a little bit more in nutrition

29:55

research for the reasons that Stu just mentioned,

29:58

but I think the big...

29:59

One of the big problems is the way

30:02

that the science is then portrayed in the media,

30:04

because if there is one, let's say,

30:07

a poor quality study with low sample size

30:09

and rubbish statistics that shows

30:11

that a supplement can help with weight loss, let's

30:14

say it completely contradicts the scientific

30:16

consensus, and it's published in a

30:18

low-quality journal, most scientists

30:20

would look at it and go, okay, well, this isn't very

30:23

convincing for me, and they'll put it to one side.

30:26

But all it takes is for somebody in the New York Times

30:28

or the Washington Post or the Health &

30:30

Fitness Magazine

30:32

to say, look, there's a published study here showing that

30:34

XYZ supplement can help with

30:36

weight loss, and it's all over the front page,

30:39

and that's how misinformation

30:41

is essentially spread. And unfortunately,

30:44

most of the people who are writing these types of articles

30:46

for the media, they're not scientists, they're

30:48

often not scientifically trained, they

30:51

don't have the understanding to interpret

30:53

the nuances of the studies. They

30:55

see a published study, they're not able to,

30:58

like a scientist would, pick holes in it, look at the

31:00

statistics, look at the sample size, the power

31:02

calculation, all of these very specific

31:05

scientific methodological things that

31:07

we would highlight. And that's why it's

31:09

important that I think

31:11

people who are doing the research,

31:13

they often have a responsibility to

31:16

communicate it as well. So I think

31:18

it's great when scientists are

31:20

active on social media, you know, likes to, when

31:23

we're writing for mainstream articles, because

31:25

if we're not going to write about this research, then it's

31:28

going to be left to people who don't necessarily have

31:30

the nuanced understanding of the science.

31:33

Yeah, I think the other point, and just to like

31:35

nitpick a little bit here, and I've

31:38

said this on social media several times,

31:40

is that

31:41

people talk about the

31:43

bar to get past is that

31:46

it's a published article, but you know,

31:48

rewind this field 20 years, 30

31:52

years, there were there were a handful

31:54

of journals that you had

31:56

choices to publish in, and then

31:58

it dropped off fairly sharply. into

32:01

other journals that nobody really had access

32:04

to. But now

32:05

with the internet and online

32:07

only journals, so there actually is no physical

32:10

print copy of the journals. So they're relatively

32:12

cheap from that perspective to produce,

32:15

there are no barriers to publication

32:17

anymore.

32:18

Everything can get published. You

32:20

can find a journal,

32:22

you can pay the open access

32:24

fee or not,

32:26

and most of these journals, if not

32:28

all of them are listed somewhere either

32:31

on Google Scholar or PubMed. So

32:33

they're indexed and searchable

32:35

and get ahold of the science

32:37

and interpret it themselves. So there's

32:40

nothing that can't get,

32:42

and I use quotation marks, peer reviewed

32:44

and published anymore. There is no barrier.

32:47

And so it's not even like that

32:49

is a requirement for something to appear,

32:52

to use the term

32:55

sciency to some extent

32:57

as a means of judging the quality

33:00

of what is out there, let alone methodological

33:03

details. So it's certainly not something that

33:05

is a big deal.

33:06

I think that's an important point you make. And

33:08

you mentioned sciency, and that was something

33:11

I wanted to talk about. I think it was Stephen

33:13

Colbert that came out with Truthiness. That's

33:15

a Colbertism for sure. Yeah, Colbertism.

33:17

And then a great article by

33:20

Professor Louise Birk on sciency-ness

33:23

in sports nutrition,

33:25

which is well worth reading. But I'll link to that in this, because

33:27

that's kind of where we're at is

33:30

this issue of, it's not the downright

33:33

sort of fraudulent,

33:35

snake oil peddling fraud necessarily.

33:38

And it's not necessarily the sort

33:40

of Nobel prize-winning research is

33:43

this gray area stuff that I think becomes

33:46

an issue. And I mentioned earlier about

33:48

being ignorant or ignorant of one's ignorance.

33:51

We got this issue where this stuff is

33:53

rather difficult to differentiate quality

33:56

from

33:57

flawed. And anyway, depending

33:59

on what-

33:59

what question you ask

34:01

will depend on how you answer that, won't it?

34:03

Because, I mean, the journalists, I mean, there is a requirement

34:06

for some of them to have science

34:08

communication training. I realize that's

34:10

not necessarily sufficient for some

34:13

of this stuff, but it's very confusing

34:16

nonetheless. And that's why we're

34:18

having these conversations, of course.

34:21

But Nick,

34:22

you've talked about in your articles, this

34:24

other thing that I find particularly interesting, and people

34:26

will be much more familiar

34:28

because of the COVID pandemic and so on.

34:30

And it's this business of anti-science.

34:33

I think that's worth throwing in the mix for a minute because

34:35

you do take some rather crazy

34:37

angry people out there who have certain

34:39

agendas. What does that term even mean? And how

34:42

does that impact sport and exercise science

34:44

and nutrition, you think?

34:46

Yeah, this is not a new thing. I suppose

34:48

it's been pretty

34:50

cemented and popularized because of the

34:52

element of social media and the way that we can all share

34:55

information. Everyone's given a platform these days

34:57

to share their

34:58

opinions, whether or not they're valid.

35:00

But this is a term that Asimov wrote,

35:03

I think, in the 1960s about there's this

35:05

growing strain of anti-intellectualism

35:07

in America. And it

35:10

was a big long quote. I can't remember

35:12

all of it in detail, but it really mirrors

35:15

the kind of problems that we're dealing with in 2023 in

35:18

the modern world. And it's really just

35:20

this idea that there's a lack

35:22

of public trust in science. And I think

35:25

largely, as I've said, this is because of social media

35:27

and the way that we can

35:28

share messages and share misinformation

35:30

and disinformation so easily. I

35:33

think we wrote in the article that this idea that

35:36

if you had a pseudoscientific product

35:38

that you wanted to sell in the 1800s, 1900s, it would

35:40

require some kind of horse and

35:44

cart and a touring theater company.

35:47

And you'd be relying on letters and prints

35:49

and newspapers and things to get the message out, whereas

35:52

the same kind of theme can be spread to millions and millions

35:54

of people across the world almost instantaneously.

35:57

There's research showing that fake

35:59

news spreads for the world. further, farther and deeper

36:01

than facts on social media, in

36:04

all categories of information, not just in health and wellness.

36:06

So social media and the internet is a big part of it.

36:10

But I think one of it comes back to

36:12

what we were talking about at the start, this idea

36:14

that one of the real strengths of science is

36:17

that we change our mind, we change

36:19

our perspectives on things based

36:22

on new evidence that becomes available. This

36:24

is absolutely crucial to

36:27

extending and developing new knowledge and acquiring

36:30

new understanding of different phenomena.

36:32

But

36:33

unfortunately, the world we live in, people

36:35

want absolutes, people want right answers

36:38

and they want wrong answers. So when

36:40

COVID hit, it was a really unprecedented

36:43

situation. It was all very new.

36:45

The CDC and the FDA and so forth

36:48

were constantly changing, the World Health Organization

36:50

were making decisions based on

36:52

the scientific consensus,

36:54

but new research and new information

36:56

was emerging all the time. So we kept on having

36:58

to pivot and come up with new recommendations

37:01

and new public health guidance. That is a strength

37:03

of science, but people want absolutes. And

37:06

that is why the health and wellness industry

37:09

is generating so much money because

37:12

people will offer a supplement,

37:14

will offer a fad diet, will offer a garment,

37:17

will offer some kind of contraption, and

37:19

they will make these outrageous claims that

37:21

this will help you lose weight, this will

37:23

help you perform,

37:24

this will improve your libido, this will improve

37:26

your mental health.

37:27

And it offers this guarantee

37:31

shortcut to expedite your health and wellness

37:34

outcomes, whatever your target happens to be. And

37:37

the real world doesn't work like that. Any meaningful,

37:40

as we all know, any meaningful health and wellness

37:42

outcome

37:43

takes time, it takes investment, it takes patience,

37:45

can take many months or years to achieve.

37:48

But this idea of the quick fix, the quick

37:51

fix fallacy that I've written about previously

37:54

is really the basis for the modern health and

37:56

wellness industry. So that's kind of the anti-science

37:59

aspect.

37:59

of it is that it subverts

38:03

everything that we know about science in that it

38:05

takes time, it takes evidence, and it takes

38:08

patience to interpret new data.

38:10

So I had mentioned on this topic

38:13

of sports nutrition, and particularly for

38:15

this podcast, a particularly popular topic,

38:18

Stu, is protein. One of

38:20

the reasons why people love this topic

38:22

is because it

38:23

has the potential to impact

38:26

adaptations to training, body

38:28

composition, you'll look bigger,

38:31

faster, stronger, all these things. It is central

38:33

to almost everything that people

38:35

are trying to do in the gym or as athletes,

38:39

physique athletes, whatever, even

38:41

health outcomes and so on. And

38:43

yet,

38:44

there's a lot of claims that are made.

38:47

And there are a lot of

38:49

perspectives, given that there's only one solution

38:52

for this kind of protein and other kinds of proteins

38:54

absolutely don't work. Maybe you could

38:56

help

38:57

us

38:58

understand from your perspective,

39:01

a few examples of that would be useful,

39:03

I think, for the listener, but also you mentioned changing

39:06

your mind and other researchers changing

39:08

your mind on this topic. Give

39:10

us a little bit of an overview there, that would

39:12

be great.

39:13

Yeah, so

39:16

it's an evolution of my understanding of

39:18

how to evaluate science, so

39:21

I

39:21

work at McMaster University. McMaster

39:24

University,

39:25

they lay claim to the

39:27

being the home of evidence-based medicine.

39:29

And you can probably argue on a David

39:32

Sackett and Gordon Guy, two very famous

39:35

clinical researchers, were probably

39:37

the first to pool

39:39

data from multiple randomized controlled

39:42

trials and say that

39:44

the answer to a question for a clinical

39:46

treatment of disease X is

39:49

not this trial or this

39:51

trial or this trial, it's all of these

39:53

trials together and this is

39:55

the aggregate result. And if you like,

39:57

that's the foundational basis. of

40:01

a systematic review and a meta-analysis,

40:03

which a lot of people now are, were

40:06

sick to death meta-analyses, but

40:08

you know, and they can be good and they can be bad and I'll

40:10

freely admit to that. So, you

40:13

know, for a decade or more,

40:15

we did a lot of randomized controlled trials.

40:17

We did a lot of training studies. My good

40:19

friends and colleagues, Kevin Tipton, Luke

40:21

Van Loon, Blake Rasmussen, lots

40:24

of other people did lots of trials in this

40:26

area. And you begin to form a picture

40:29

and an idea of your understanding.

40:31

And then when you formally examine the

40:33

concept and you say, look, we're going to systematically

40:36

look at this. And then now that literature

40:38

is sort of blown up, I mean, there's, there's

40:40

lots more data available now than

40:43

there were even

40:44

five years ago, but let alone 10 or 15 years ago.

40:48

And it's getting to the point where it's, there's

40:50

a critical number of people that

40:52

you can perform these types of analyses

40:54

on and have to be meaningful.

40:56

When you do that and you answer,

40:58

you want to answer the question, does protein

41:01

supplementation, supplements

41:03

taken in addition to your regular

41:05

diet, and that can be

41:07

way soy, whatever, it doesn't

41:09

really matter, or just more food,

41:12

augment strength gains

41:14

or make you get more, more

41:16

muscle as the claims generally would

41:19

be. And you know, like, where is

41:21

we, the Royal, we people who have gone through

41:23

my lab, probably as guilty

41:26

as anybody else of sort of reinforcing that

41:28

notion from a,

41:29

from a mechanistic basis and

41:31

even clinical outcomes. But when you look

41:33

at the answer and aggregate

41:36

of all of the research that's done out there, and

41:38

we've done

41:39

two, I would say pretty

41:41

good meta-analyses on this question, the

41:43

effects there,

41:45

but it's remarkably small. In

41:47

other words, you get a

41:50

probably 90% plus of the

41:52

muscle that you're going to gain by just going

41:54

to the gym and the protein supplementation

41:57

adds a little bit on top,

41:59

but it's just a

41:59

small effect and then

42:02

embedded within that question of

42:04

protein or all of the other things of the

42:06

timing, the type and the

42:09

leucine content, which I think are all

42:11

very interesting questions, but

42:13

that takeaway answer is it's

42:16

an effect there, but it's not that big

42:18

of a deal. So for most people

42:20

to go to the gym and the

42:22

extra protein is, I

42:24

don't know whether it's the icing on top

42:26

or it's the cherry on top of the icing, but

42:30

it's a small amount. And look, that's a tough one

42:33

for a guy who spent

42:34

almost 30 years talking about the effect of

42:36

protein to kind of say, but

42:39

once you've done that type of analysis

42:41

a couple of times and it returns the same

42:43

sort of

42:44

aggregate answer, it's not that big

42:46

a deal,

42:48

how can you turn around and continue

42:51

to say, yes, it's a huge

42:54

deal, it's a huge issue. Everybody needs

42:56

protein. I'm like, yeah,

42:59

it's there, but it's not that big a deal.

43:02

I actually have an interesting anecdote that is

43:04

in line with what Stu's just been saying.

43:07

I have a friend who used

43:09

to be an athlete in her youth and recently

43:11

she's wanted to get back in shape and

43:13

lose body fat and increase in muscle and get back into

43:15

training was asking my advice

43:17

because people assume that I'm a personal

43:19

trainer, even though I've got three degrees and I've been

43:22

doing this for two decades, whatever,

43:24

but okay, fine.

43:25

And

43:27

so I gave all this off the record

43:29

advice that you need to increase your activity levels,

43:31

you need to get your diet fixed, you

43:33

need to start something sustainable,

43:36

the activity is really important, start training, doing

43:38

this, maybe start doing some lifting and don't

43:40

worry about supplements at this point, make sure you're

43:43

getting your protein because protein is

43:45

a role in building muscle mass and recovery

43:47

and stuff.

43:48

And then I saw her about a month later and

43:50

I said, how's it going? How's your training going? She said,

43:53

yeah, I'm not training

43:55

so much here. I've increased my protein intake and

43:57

I've doubled my protein intake and I'm getting this many. grams

44:00

and this meals. And she's

44:02

not

44:03

getting more activity, not walking more, not really

44:05

doing much at the gym. I hasn't thought about long-term

44:08

dietary strategies, changing her

44:10

relationship with food.

44:11

But doubling her protein intake is something

44:13

that's easy to do and that you

44:15

can fixate on as being

44:19

the means to the ends. And I think this is

44:21

a consequence of the way that protein

44:24

is portrayed in the media. It's obviously

44:27

important. It's an important macronutrient.

44:29

And it's important in recovery.

44:32

But that's it. There's

44:34

nothing magical or sensational about protein,

44:37

as she's just been saying. And he's the guy that's

44:39

best placed to say this, to be honest about it.

44:41

But it's in line with everything that we know about

44:44

contemporary health and wellness. People want something

44:46

that they can take, something that they can buy

44:48

that's going to expedite all of their health and wellness

44:50

outcomes. And it's like, well,

44:52

that's part of this, a small part of the equation,

44:55

small piece of the puzzle.

44:57

But you've got to look at the rest of the puzzle as well. Well,

44:59

I think some of this is a path to the least

45:02

resistance sort of thing for people, isn't

45:04

it? It's a hell of a lot easier to have

45:06

a protein shake than it is to actually physically

45:09

go and do some exercise. And it's

45:11

also a cart before the horse scenario,

45:13

isn't it? But either which way, if we

45:15

all gave the horse a bit of time

45:18

off and pulled around our own carts, I

45:20

think we'd find a lot of solutions. But

45:22

again, as a nutritionist, I look at this broadly

45:25

where I'm also going to go, but there are other reasons

45:27

for

45:27

eating protein, of course. And if I'm not

45:29

going to eat protein, what else am I going to eat?

45:31

Am I going to eat more of something else? So of course,

45:34

it depends on how you frame

45:36

that. But there is a way of dealing with

45:39

this, Nick. And that is developing

45:42

a method of thinking, a form

45:44

of critical thinking. And we use terms

45:47

like skepticism and so on. And

45:49

listeners of this podcast will have heard us talk about

45:52

this a few times. Kev

45:53

Tipton, in most of the podcasts

45:56

we did together, we did loads in the

45:58

last year of his life. And He frequently

46:00

made this comment about the

46:02

importance of being

46:04

skeptical, but also being open-minded,

46:07

not one, not the other, but both together.

46:09

But

46:10

Nick, I mean, that's sort of the

46:12

second word in the title of

46:14

this paper that we've been talking about. What

46:16

is skepticism and why is it important? And

46:19

the sort of the wider frame of

46:21

critical thinking as it relates

46:24

to this kind of problem that we're talking about now.

46:26

Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, because this is a really

46:28

important point. And it reminds me what

46:31

you said, Richard Feynman quote, that

46:33

we should keep an open mind, but not so open that our

46:35

brains fall out.

46:37

And this is essentially what skepticism

46:39

is. And we talk about this in

46:42

the paper.

46:43

And I even wrote it in the title, how

46:46

skepticism, not cynicism, can

46:49

raise scientific standards and reform the health and wellness

46:51

industry. Because the way that the term skepticism

46:53

is used in contemporary culture

46:56

is sort of a little bit misleading. To be skeptical

46:58

in science is to

47:00

judge the validity of claims based on objective

47:03

evidence, or at the very

47:05

least to withhold judgment until you have

47:08

that kind of evidence available.

47:09

But it's also, it's not just about evidence-based

47:12

practice, because that's the essence of science.

47:15

But being skeptical is about

47:17

introducing more of the broader tenets

47:19

of critical thinking into your own practice. So

47:22

that means, as I've mentioned already,

47:24

understanding your biases, understand

47:27

when you are exhibiting bias,

47:29

when other people are exhibiting their own bias,

47:31

and understanding the mechanics of that, understanding

47:34

the mechanics of

47:35

decision making,

47:37

the depth and reach of our scientific

47:39

media and social media literacy. That's

47:42

an important one, is that the fact that

47:45

people, especially young people, get most

47:47

of their information and entertainment from social

47:49

media.

47:50

Very few people actually understand

47:52

how social media algorithms work and

47:54

how it generates content based

47:56

on your previous viewing history. So we essentially,

47:59

we are curating our social media feeds

48:02

into this sort of echo chamber of confirmation

48:05

bias. We're not getting exposed to two sides

48:07

of the same argument. So whatever you believe, your

48:10

rampant use of social media is going to reinforce it.

48:13

And unfortunately, the only people

48:15

that really know how these platforms work

48:18

are the people who design the algorithms

48:21

in order to promote engagement. So that's

48:23

a part of being a skeptic. It's about

48:25

understanding decision making, understand

48:28

the platforms that we use to share

48:30

information and receive information, and

48:32

doing whatever we can to mitigate bias

48:34

to become

48:35

objective decision makers. So it

48:38

doesn't matter what you believe, what you

48:40

think is true, and what you want

48:42

to be true, it's prioritizing the

48:45

process of

48:47

evidence-based practice and objectivity

48:50

to arrive at something that we can all agree

48:52

on is the best approximation of

48:54

the truth.

48:55

That's, I guess, in essence, what being a skeptic

48:57

is. Yeah, that's particularly helpful.

49:00

I just wanted to just quickly mention because I'm aware,

49:02

Stu, that you need to run and

49:04

probably stick a biopsy needle into somebody

49:07

or something. But I know you have to

49:09

exit at this point, but I just wanted to use this

49:11

opportunity, whilst we're still recording, to thank you for

49:15

your contribution to this conversation

49:17

and so on. If you had any parting words

49:19

you wanted to say just before I carry

49:21

on with you. Yeah, I mean, thanks first for the

49:24

opportunity. And I need to

49:25

thank Nick because he was the one that did

49:27

the majority of the work and just sort of pulled me

49:29

into the project. So it was

49:31

a pleasure writing with Nick. But I think

49:34

that he hits the nail right on the head when

49:36

we talk about skepticism,

49:38

which is warranted. And I think every scientist

49:40

has to cultivate something like that.

49:43

I also think that there's something out there that

49:45

people need to be aware of, but just about

49:47

every scientist has

49:49

bias of one form or another. And

49:51

there's nothing like wanting

49:54

your hypothesis to

49:56

turn out the way you want it to be. But

49:59

I think that...

49:59

it speaks to a lot about the integrity

50:02

that's in science. It's a self-correcting

50:05

mechanism, and

50:06

eventually the

50:08

truth that that's the right way to say it, or

50:10

the path gets lit up. Eventually, the

50:13

evidence comes in that, but sometimes

50:15

it takes a while. I still think

50:17

that

50:18

even nutritional science is not a particularly

50:20

old science by comparison to lots

50:22

of others, and nutritional

50:24

exercise science

50:26

is very young. As

50:29

always, buyer beware, but

50:32

learn to be skeptical, but open-minded,

50:35

but

50:36

not so open-minded that your brain falls out.

50:38

I think that's fantastic.

50:40

Thank you very much, both of you, for the time.

50:43

I appreciate it. Yeah, no, thank you, Stu. Thank you, Stu.

50:45

Thank you. We'll catch up another time. Down

50:47

the road on this topic later. Take

50:49

care. Thank you. Bye-bye.

50:50

So,

50:53

Nick, it was great to have Stu involved

50:55

in the conversation thus far, because

50:57

as I mentioned, people just go bonkers over

50:59

protein supplements and so on. You see that,

51:02

those debates raging on social

51:05

media and fights over

51:07

animal versus plant protein and so on. I've

51:09

tackled these topics in great depth with Stu

51:12

and Kevin Tipton and various

51:15

other researchers on this topic. I think

51:17

a lot of this stuff

51:19

sadly comes down to a number

51:21

of people who seem to be shouting louder

51:23

than others. I mentioned

51:25

at the beginning of this conversation that there might

51:28

be a number of ways in which we can tackle

51:30

some of this. You've discussed critical thinking.

51:32

My team and I have literally

51:34

just a few weeks ago published a paper

51:37

about essentially a framework for decision

51:39

making for evidence-based

51:41

practice in sports nutrition. I'm going to do a podcast

51:43

about that. I think a lot of what we talked about

51:46

today is just an essential part of that process.

51:48

It's just understanding that there might

51:51

be a

51:52

problem and you need

51:54

to wrestle with, tackle that knowledge,

51:57

that piece of data, that evidence before

51:59

you decide to do it.

51:59

use it or not. There's all sorts of thoughts. Of course,

52:02

we've talked about even placebos

52:04

and no seaboes. As a practitioner,

52:06

I've found that to be interesting where athletes

52:09

have had this firmly held belief in a particular

52:12

product, for example, a supplement. The fact

52:15

that you

52:16

suggest that what they're taking is

52:19

snake oil can have very negative impacts

52:21

on individuals. There is a weird two

52:24

sides to this

52:26

situation. In terms of

52:28

debunking, dealing

52:30

with other quotes

52:32

and quotes experts or clients

52:35

or whatever, what are your thoughts about the

52:38

concept of debunking these myths and

52:40

how maybe we can approach some

52:42

of that?

52:44

In reality, most of this stuff is happening

52:46

on social media. These are the platforms that are most

52:48

pervasive. I read your most

52:51

recent paper just before we started recording.

52:53

I thought it was great. I was really pleased to see that

52:55

you discussed social media in that

52:57

periodically, because it has such

53:00

an impact on the way that we communicate these days.

53:02

I think it's only going to

53:04

become more ingrained in society.

53:07

But corrective messaging, you

53:09

refer to it as debunking. I think a lot

53:11

of people will be familiar with that term.

53:13

But I guess we can call it corrective

53:15

messaging, which is essentially when you see

53:17

some kind of misinformation online. So

53:20

somebody has

53:21

given some advice or shared an article

53:23

that is not a good approximation

53:25

of what we know to be true, then

53:28

we can debunk that piece of advice

53:31

so that other people don't start

53:34

exhibiting these erroneous

53:36

practices.

53:37

I think this is really important.

53:39

This is a really important part of being

53:42

a good skeptic and being a good critical thinker,

53:45

is actually challenging these messages

53:48

when you see them online. Because if we're

53:50

not going to do it, then who is? There's

53:53

people like us who are standing between

53:55

the pseudoscientists who are essentially

53:57

making up these false claims, these erroneous claims.

54:00

to sell product and the mainstream

54:02

who don't have the understanding of the science in

54:04

order to challenge those claims. So

54:06

we're sort of the gatekeepers here. And if

54:09

we're not going to be the ones who are challenging this

54:11

bad advice, then nobody else

54:13

is going to do it.

54:15

But there are ways to challenge

54:17

this bad advice.

54:20

There are ways to administer corrective messages.

54:22

And I talked about this at length in the article in

54:24

Skeptical Inquirer.

54:26

And essentially, one of the ways is to firstly be

54:28

respectful.

54:30

There's no point getting into an

54:32

argument with somebody online because you're not

54:34

going to convince anybody by hurling abuse

54:36

at them. So be respectful. It's

54:39

also important that you provide some

54:41

kind of evidence to support your claim. This

54:43

sounds obvious, sounds intuitive, but a lot of the

54:45

time, people will just reply to something

54:48

they've seen online and say, well, this is nonsense. This

54:50

doesn't work. This is absolute BS.

54:53

And okay, well, this isn't, it may be, but

54:55

that's not not a particularly helpful response. So

54:58

be polite, be respectful, provide some evidence-based

55:01

resources, so some valid resources

55:03

that you can use to support your statements.

55:06

And try not to

55:09

restate the false claim.

55:11

So rather than if you're going to retweet something, don't

55:13

just retweet the false headline,

55:16

and then state your corrective messaging. Just

55:18

focus on the good advice. So

55:20

don't restate the bad advice because the more

55:22

times the certain thing is restated,

55:25

we can give some examples from

55:28

modern political culture, but the more

55:30

times something is stated and restated,

55:33

the more chance that it's going to become

55:35

embedded in the mainstream belief and

55:37

understanding. So don't just restate

55:39

the false claim, focus on the

55:41

good advice and your evidence.

55:44

And corrective messaging is super important.

55:47

The research shows that it works. If you actually

55:49

can challenge the misinformation in the pseudoscience,

55:52

then it's less likely to be disseminated

55:54

to people who don't necessarily have

55:56

the same skill set to be able to challenge

55:58

that bad advice. That's a really important part. It's not

56:01

the only thing that we have to do as skeptics

56:03

and critical thinkers, but debunking

56:05

practice is an important part of it.

56:08

You also, there's another paper you

56:10

wrote that I had read where

56:13

you're dealing with the questionable research

56:16

practices that exist in kinesiology.

56:18

It was really interesting.

56:21

I don't think that it would be rare,

56:23

I would say, but it does happen when researchers

56:26

do deliberately

56:28

go about producing a study

56:30

that has a

56:31

biased end result.

56:34

You talk about

56:35

this concept of

56:37

an ostrich effect. I love that

56:40

visualization, but it does actually happen.

56:43

Could you just tell us a bit more about that? Because I think that's

56:45

important as well about

56:47

some of the stuff that's going on and this

56:49

ostrich behavior that goes on, on all

56:51

sides actually. Yeah,

56:53

well, so you're referring to a paper that is just

56:56

about to be published. Just about, yeah. Yeah,

56:59

we have

57:00

the postprint that's up on

57:03

a postprint server and the full title is Overcoming

57:06

the Ostrich Effect, a narrative review on the

57:08

incentives and consequences

57:10

of questionable research practices in kinesiology.

57:13

This term, the ostrich effect that we can attribute to

57:16

Paddy Ekakakis, who's my co-author on the paper,

57:19

that was his term, but it really encapsulates

57:21

one of the problems that we have in kinesiology, this

57:24

idea that we have a lot of poor

57:26

practice, a lot of questionable research practice,

57:28

a little bit of misconduct as well, and

57:31

a really profound replication

57:33

crisis. This is not new stuff. We

57:35

all know this, but we're burying

57:37

our heads in the sand and we're not actually confronting the

57:40

issues. Hence, we are exhibiting an

57:42

ostrich effect. It really

57:44

comes back to something that Stu mentioned earlier

57:48

about how we have this overemphasis

57:50

on quantitative research metrics,

57:54

not just in kinesiology in all facets

57:56

of science, but we're talking about kinesiology

57:58

and sports science here. It's

58:01

this idea that we have constant publication

58:03

pressures, we have funding pressures,

58:06

we have competition to publish studies.

58:09

Journals really would prefer to publish

58:12

sensational findings to

58:14

the extent that I've had several papers, and I'm

58:16

sure there are people listening to this, that

58:19

have had papers declined for publication

58:22

because they didn't find statistically

58:25

significant outcomes, which I think

58:27

is an absurd reason to reject the paper

58:29

because if something doesn't

58:32

exert a statistical significance, that is an important

58:34

finding, and it's important that we know that.

58:36

But it was an interventional study, and I had

58:39

one study that was bounced from four different

58:41

journals on the basis that we

58:44

didn't talk about statistically significant outcomes,

58:46

and I'm thinking this is ludicrous because

58:48

people need to know if something doesn't work. The

58:52

publication bias is a real effect. Again,

58:55

none of this is new. We all know this,

58:58

but we're not doing anything about it,

59:01

and this is the profound problem. So this

59:03

paper that's coming up, it will be published in

59:05

Kinesiology Review. It's been accepted. It's just

59:07

in the editorial process now,

59:10

and there's a bit of a backlog. So

59:12

I hope to be able to share that with people, but you can Google

59:15

it and you'll find the postprint online, and it really

59:17

does talk about this subject in much

59:19

more detail and about how we can overcome

59:22

the ostrich effect because it's

59:24

garbage in garbage out, right? Not that all sports

59:26

science research is garbage. There's a lot of good stuff,

59:29

but a lot of it is garbage. And

59:32

if we're feeding that stuff into the algorithm,

59:35

then the stuff that we're following, the evidence-based

59:37

practice is, you know, you're probably more qualified to talk

59:39

about this having just written about it. But

59:41

the evidence-based practice is going to be garbage as

59:43

well if the science itself doesn't

59:46

stand up to scrutiny. So we've got to look

59:48

at being skeptical, not

59:50

just at the end phase of the process, where

59:52

we're looking at the commercial iterations

59:54

and the supplements and the diets and things

59:57

that people are buying into, but

59:59

being skeptical of the science.

59:59

research that's going into the machine at

1:00:02

the top end.

1:00:03

Yeah, it's tricky stuff, Nick,

1:00:06

in our paper. We'll talk about it when we

1:00:08

do our podcast in the near future on this. If

1:00:11

there's one word that I

1:00:13

would have to use, it

1:00:14

would be appropriateness.

1:00:16

I have another word that I use all the time on the podcast.

1:00:19

Well, I used to say context all the time,

1:00:21

but actually my new word's relevant. Is

1:00:23

it relevant? But we changed that

1:00:26

word for the paper into appropriateness

1:00:28

because that's a language they use in evidence-based

1:00:30

practice research. Is it appropriate?

1:00:33

It's not an easy thing to

1:00:35

think about that. Is it appropriate?

1:00:37

What have you thrown into your decision-making

1:00:40

framework, your process to

1:00:42

arrive at that? Yeah,

1:00:43

it's appropriate. For you, you'll be

1:00:45

doing this yourself when it comes to your research,

1:00:48

when it comes to your work as

1:00:50

a personal trainer.

1:00:53

I used to be a personal trainer, as I mentioned, and we've got

1:00:55

loads of personal trainers listening. Obviously, that's not

1:00:58

an issue, but it is funny how people make assumptions

1:01:00

also. It hates me as a personal trainer

1:01:02

as well, but it's just not what I do now. How can

1:01:05

you still not know what I do is more the point. Yeah,

1:01:08

but going to the concept of appropriateness,

1:01:11

because I remember talking... It might have been Stu

1:01:13

and

1:01:13

Kev, actually, when we talked about this stuff quite

1:01:16

a few years ago.

1:01:17

When we're talking about pseudoscience,

1:01:20

there is, of course, aspects to

1:01:22

this, which is, at some point,

1:01:25

what is now considered science

1:01:27

was, at some point, considered pseudoscience

1:01:29

before the evidence got to a point. I

1:01:31

think Boxers, for

1:01:34

example, who love to go out and do their early

1:01:36

morning fasted runs that they did forever, and

1:01:38

then I remember James Morton saying, actually,

1:01:41

we've only just got to a point where we're understanding

1:01:44

why there may be a point to that. Of

1:01:46

course, now, there's

1:01:47

some reversals on that thinking too,

1:01:49

which is a podcast coming up. But for

1:01:52

you, that concept of appropriateness

1:01:54

and how that

1:01:55

belief and all that stuff goes into

1:01:58

it, is there any particular angles there that... you

1:02:00

feel they're necessary to take?

1:02:03

Well, I think this idea that

1:02:05

there are lots of sports that have a very rich history

1:02:08

and a very rich tradition. You mentioned

1:02:10

boxing is a great example. Martial

1:02:13

arts is another, soccer, lots of professional

1:02:15

team sports. A lot of the time,

1:02:17

the coaches of today are the athletes

1:02:20

of yesterday who were

1:02:22

in turn coached by people

1:02:24

who were athletes. Most

1:02:26

of their knowledge and understanding of the

1:02:28

subject, of the sport, comes

1:02:31

from it's been handed down from

1:02:34

the previous generations.

1:02:36

It's almost like in the same way that ancient

1:02:38

Chinese medicine has been handed down

1:02:40

from generation to generation and

1:02:42

has been relatively well insulated

1:02:45

from the

1:02:47

objective influence of scientific

1:02:49

progress and understanding. So a lot

1:02:51

of the time we are passing down things for no other

1:02:53

reason than it's just what we've always done.

1:02:55

So we do it because it's what we've done

1:02:58

and it's what we've done because that's

1:03:00

just the way that it is. And that's not

1:03:02

a good reason to continue to do something. That's the

1:03:04

absence of a reason. As people

1:03:07

who want to focus on evidence-based

1:03:09

practice, something needs to be implemented because

1:03:11

it works. And we know that it

1:03:13

works. And these days we have the

1:03:15

tools and the processes

1:03:18

and protocols to determine if something works.

1:03:21

So if you're going out the night

1:03:23

before a big race or the morning of

1:03:25

a soccer match or whatever it happens to be and you're

1:03:27

eating your three steaks and five

1:03:29

eggs or you're drinking the raw egg yolks

1:03:32

you saw in Rocky because that's just

1:03:34

something that is so quintessentially just

1:03:37

associated with being a

1:03:40

boxer in the 1980s or whatever. Okay,

1:03:43

does it now we know okay rich in protein,

1:03:45

protein is good, whatever.

1:03:47

But there actually has to be some

1:03:49

kind of merit to the to the process.

1:03:52

And if the thing doesn't stand up to scrutiny,

1:03:55

then we shouldn't just continue to do it because of tradition.

1:03:58

So the product the intervention has. to stand

1:04:00

on its own merit. That's essentially

1:04:02

what the scientific process

1:04:04

is, is determining if things actually work.

1:04:08

Sentiment is overrated. I don't

1:04:10

believe in just continuing something, because it's what

1:04:12

you've always done. It needs

1:04:14

to actually work. That's why we

1:04:16

need to all be good scientists, be

1:04:19

good skeptics, and

1:04:20

just put our hands up and say, okay, if

1:04:23

this thing doesn't work, let's just trash

1:04:26

it. We've

1:04:28

got to have the guts to be able to do that. Yes.

1:04:31

Well, and that's how you end your

1:04:33

paper there about it's important to have

1:04:35

the courage to confront health and wellness

1:04:37

pseudoscience. Altar the

1:04:39

paradigm and reverse the current emphasis

1:04:41

on marketing over science, a great

1:04:44

way to end that paper. Also, generally,

1:04:46

I think

1:04:47

this conversation

1:04:50

is neither the start nor the end of this, obviously.

1:04:52

It was important to me for us to have this conversation.

1:04:55

It's

1:04:56

underpinned a lot of things that have led

1:04:58

me to get to where I am and having

1:05:01

been experienced both

1:05:03

sides of that myself. Where's

1:05:05

next, Nick? Where does all this need to go next,

1:05:07

do you think? What are you going to be doing next? Well,

1:05:10

I think the overarching aim is to get

1:05:13

better critical thinking education integrated

1:05:16

into higher education, because at

1:05:18

the moment, there is very little emphasis on critical

1:05:20

thinking in school, college, or university.

1:05:24

Again, we wrote about this in the paper, but we

1:05:26

teach research methods.

1:05:30

At several institutions where I've taught

1:05:32

sports science over the years, we

1:05:34

throw critical thinking

1:05:37

into the research methods class,

1:05:39

but actually, it has been quite

1:05:41

well studied.

1:05:43

Critical thinking education helps to reduce

1:05:46

belief in pseudoscience and bad science, whereas

1:05:49

research methods actually doesn't. Research

1:05:51

methods is

1:05:53

aimed at future producers of science,

1:05:55

but it's not appropriate for future consumers

1:05:58

of science. It's a different skill set.

1:06:00

So we really need to get people to understand,

1:06:03

and papers like the ones we've written, I'm

1:06:06

hoping people are starting to understand that critical

1:06:08

thinking is an independent skill set.

1:06:11

So we need to be becoming good critical

1:06:13

thinkers ourselves, and then independently

1:06:16

integrating critical thinking classes

1:06:18

into school, college, and university, so

1:06:21

that we

1:06:23

can start producing the graduates

1:06:25

of tomorrow with these skills ingrained,

1:06:27

regardless of whether they work

1:06:29

in kinesiology or health and wellness, or whatever

1:06:32

walk of life, whatever career path they follow, critical

1:06:34

thinking is an absolutely essential

1:06:37

skill, regardless of whether you work

1:06:39

in science or not,

1:06:41

or you're going to politics or any

1:06:44

form of education, being a good critical

1:06:46

thinker is absolutely paramount. So that's kind

1:06:48

of the overarching aim. In

1:06:50

the short term, I want to keep communicating

1:06:53

good scientific practice and critical thinking

1:06:56

at a local level, trying to raise consciousness

1:06:59

within exercise science and being given

1:07:01

platforms like this. Thank you, Lauren,

1:07:04

for fighting the good fight and giving platforms

1:07:06

to messages like this so that we can reach more

1:07:08

kinesiologists, because that's something

1:07:10

that we've got to do. And

1:07:13

keep up with those corrective messages so

1:07:15

that we can reduce the flood of mis

1:07:17

and disinformation that is just so

1:07:20

evident in health and wellness.

1:07:22

We've talked for an hour and a quarter

1:07:24

or so about snake oil,

1:07:26

pseudoscience, critical thinking and so on. That,

1:07:29

of course, is not the only area

1:07:31

that you're involved in. In fact, you were on

1:07:33

the podcast a while ago now, I can't believe how much

1:07:36

time flies, where we talked about

1:07:38

nutrition for multistage

1:07:40

ultra-insurance racing. So I'll link

1:07:43

to that podcast because that was three and a half years

1:07:45

ago. Time flies. No, no, that's terrible.

1:07:47

I

1:07:48

can't believe it. And

1:07:50

that's a caveat. If people do listen to that, it

1:07:52

was one of the first podcasts

1:07:54

that I was invited onto as a guest. So

1:07:57

I remember my microphone was terrible.

1:08:00

The fan on

1:08:01

my laptop kept firing up. It sounded like

1:08:03

I was going to be blasted into outer space. So

1:08:05

that's my fault. I apologize in advance for the

1:08:07

total audio. Hopefully I've made up for

1:08:09

it. Nick, you've now got your sort of, well, now

1:08:12

that you're thoroughly absorbing

1:08:14

the US focus on

1:08:17

standards, the Hollywood standard. I

1:08:20

love it. I love it. Well, listen, look, it's been great

1:08:22

to have you

1:08:23

back on We Do Science. Loved

1:08:26

having this conversation. I'm certain

1:08:28

that the listeners will get a lot out of it. It's

1:08:30

important stuff that we talked about. Even

1:08:33

more important would be to read

1:08:35

the various papers that we discuss,

1:08:38

I'll link to all of those. And if they want

1:08:40

to find you social media, where's

1:08:43

the best place to find you, Nick?

1:08:45

Yeah, probably Twitter is where I post

1:08:47

most of my professional content at NB

1:08:50

Tiller. And all of my work, especially

1:08:52

in skepticism, ultra marathon can be found on my

1:08:54

website, which is NB Tiller.com.

1:08:57

Great, I'll put links to that. Well, look, thank you. It's

1:09:00

been great to have you here

1:09:02

and we'll bring you back soon, Nick, hopefully.

1:09:04

Repeat offender, love it. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks

1:09:07

so much.

1:09:07

No, thank you, thank you so much.