People love to clown on Sinclair, but the dude ran a legit lab at Harvard that has made important contributions to longevity science. Probably he made some unethical decisions to line his pockets, but at least he had some serious credentials.
Attia otoh is a glorified blogger with no scientific credentials who shills supplements and pushes overpriced concierge medicine.
Right. I guess I’m just failing to understand why Sinclair is consistently shamed anytime his name is brought up, yet Attia and Huberman seemingly get a pass despite promoting a product from a literal fraudster.
And Pendulum is probably a paid promotion as well I’m guessing?
I just listened to the podcast, I’ve been interested to the discussion on NR/NMN/NAD, I wonder why on one side these supplements are so popular and there is a belief of an almost granted efficacy, whereas the clinical trials on humans are just underwhelming, as I myself could realize.
So far, as much as I would like to, I cannot convince myself to put my money on such products, even reasoning on a pure expectation of cost/benefit ratio.
By the way, my admiration for Peter Attia stems form the fact that he was able to take some engineeristic rigor to the field of medicine, which is too often qualitative by nature. He has a degree in applied mathematics and aeroscience engineering, besides his degree in medicine.
He has also a brain which is superlatively fast, I’d like to have one tenth of his brain efficiency. This does not imply he’s infallible of course and some of his points are perfectly arguable. But he’s sure one of the sources to listen to, no matter what.
Listening to the Lifespan podcast with David Sinclair is what got me really fired up about longevity. I later learned to take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt.
For me the right way to benefit from these podcasters is:
to enjoy the podcasts that are entertaining,
to learn the names of chemicals and pathways to research and try to understand better
to hear about authors whose work might be of interest
to hear about studies that are adding evidence of value or harm or null results
If you listen to these podcasts and it motivates you to wear sunscreen, exercise more, and go to sleep a little earlier then you’re coming out way ahead. If you also get in touch with your PCP and make sure you are taking the interventions dictated by the guidelines, then you are also benefitting. If you want to go beyond that, it’s great, but then you really do need to take responsibility for following up with your own research; you shouldn’t trust anybody enough to take that risk on their say-so without an effort to justify the intervention from first principles.
Granted, I’m not finished listening so perhaps I’m being unfair, but I wanted to reach through my phone and bop Huberman on the nose!!! I don’t know about you all, but I kept thinking he must have a financial stake in NMN because every time Attia said it doesn’t work, he’d incessantly go on and on and on and on about it. Attia wasn’t having it.
Of all the influencers that I no longer listen to, huberman is the least qualified to have a global platform. I very much enjoyed his approach to podcasting. His focus on tools we can use was so exactly on point. But it turns out that there was a reason that more honest scientists couldn’t give exact solutions to the every day problems everybody faces…there aren’t any solutions that work like a light switch or like putting the hat back on the snowman.
I don’t think arguments can be biased, only the selection can be done by a biased process. Makes it probably easier to refute though since it’s probably weak. Just comes down to only looking at the evidence and arguments either way.
I don’t think that is in contradiction with what I said. You’re still looking at the data / evidence / argument / methods.
Saying the study is biased makes no sense, a study doesn’t have agency, the author might be biased. But just because the author is biased does not mean the study result is wrong… you just have to look at the methodology and results, once again.
I must say that you and I do not think alike.
From my experience in debate clubs, I can argue on either side of a topic. And when I am debating, I certainly bias my arguments towards the position I am taking.
