Haters going to hate.
Picture Sinclair enjoying his 1 g of NMN with his yoghurt, forever. With a side dish of resveratrol.
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I think a lot of this (maybe not all) is the thing where nobody really can agree on what they mean by the word āagingā. Can you say you reversed aging if you reverse a specific measure that tends to get worse with age? Is it enough to reverse epigenetic age? Or do you need to reverse every change within an organism to where they are indistinguishable from a young organism. How much age do you have to reverse before youāve reversed aging. Thereās ambiguity in the term and a lot of disagreement comes from that ambiguity.
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I donāt know, but Gary Taubes in Bad Science says that bad scientists never get it right. Seems harsh since as my father taught me āeven a blind sow finds an acorn now and thenā I mean eventually he has to get a hit. But Taubes says no.
Iām not a hater, it makes no difference to me. If I could eat carbs, Iād be popping popcorn.
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I think thatās true for the layperson more than the scientist. Semantics does enter into it though. See this example of Rich Miller objecting to people using the term BioMarkers of Aging and insisting that for the ITP it should be āaging rate indicatorsā.
āIn the analogy he used the aging rate indicators are a kind of āspeedometerā, whereas conventional biomarkers measure the damage that mice accumulated during aging akin to an āodometerā. A mouse that ages at a slower speed will accumulate less damage and hence live longer.ā
The whole article is kind of an interesting read if youāre not overly familiar with it.
https://www.vitadao.com/blog-article/the-mouse-longevity-chronicles-unraveling-aging-with-dr-richard-miller-during-the-aging-science-podcast-by-vitadao
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What impresses me about Dr. Sinclair is his work regrowing optical nerves and restoring sight to the blind.
Other examples are the ICE system or the NCC assays developed by the Sinclair lab. These are important contributions to aging science, and if weāre going to really crack aging, these are the types of developments we need.
As always, follow the science, not the spin.
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Not sure why anyone at this point would supplement with either NMN or Nicotinamide Riboside - theyāre both expensive as hell and both are converted into Nicotinic Acid in the body anyway - so why not just supplement with cheap, low-dose Niacin instead?
Iāve listened to Brenner in a few interviews and he never really explained why you should buy his pricey TruNiagen products instead of Niacin if you wanna boost NADā¦
Niacin Increases NAD+ Significantly in Human Trial:
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Just to clarify, Dr. K is upset because Dr. Sinclair uses the term āreversalā, when in reality the protocol promotes more like an ageing delay?
My dog, Flapjack, has been on the Sinclair protocol for 4 years now, and heās 16 (boxer-pit mix). I started him on Rapa about 1.5 years ago. His ageing has not reversed in any visible way, but his lifespan and healthspan have clearly improved. His vet said most pits donāt make to 16, let alone running and playing fetch. He does have arthritis and hip dysplasia, but they have not advanced as fast. Maybe Dr. Sinclair should just say it slows down ageing, which in my experience, seems to be whatās happening to Flapjack. Heās by no means acting like a puppy, but heās not acting like a 16 yr old dog either.
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Yes, I think what upsets the scientists like Matt Kaeberlein is that they feel like Sinclair is crossing the line between scientist and promoter/salesman. Since Sinclair has invested a lot of money and time into companies there is certainly a conflict of interest problem. How seriously you critique his ethics will depend on your view of the intersection between science and business, profit and funding.
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Indeed. Sinclair has always been overly optimistic about research results. Itās not the first time I hear this type of criticism as to his professionalism (or lack thereof). The difference is that this time Dr. K completely severed any association with Sinclairā¦ that alone speaks volumes. I think Sinclairās optimism, for lack of a better word, is actually one of the reasons he became so famous. People want to believe we are already there, at the point of reversalā¦ Bryan Johnson certainly thinks so, and also claims he has reversed his age.
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He did the right thing. But what took him so long? Dr. Sinclair has a long trail of such unethical behavior.
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If nothing else, Sinclair got me really interested in this area, which wasnāt really on my radar.
The commercialization, where things are being sold, and things are being stated with much more confidence than any data supports, continues to contribute to the skepticism of the public in those with formal credentials and training.
Those with the most aberrant approaches get the greatest attention and undermine a sensible conservative evidence based approach.
I love Sinclairās optimism - I hope it ends up working out and there are real evidence based outcomes that benefit me and my family - and everyone else.
Itāll be interesting how things change with Dr. K as he appears to be moving into a company with commercial interests. Hopefully he sticks to a conservative approach. Iām enjoying his optispan podcast.
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To be fair Sinclair 's presentations also drew my attention and he does say some useful and well evidenced things.
I think the essential difficulty is that there is not a 1 to 1 relationship between clickbait and truth.
Hence what attracts attention may actually be wrong. A more nuanced and truthful approach would not attract that much attention.
Aubrey de Grey has also attracted a lot of attention. I think he is honest, but I think a lot of what he says is wrong as well.
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People sacrifice their souls on the chase for money.
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I think on balance David Sinclair has done more for raising the awareness of the field of Longevity than anyone. I donāt think that excuses some of the language that he uses, but unfortunately it takes a lot to turn heads these days. I doubt things would be as far a long as they are.
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Good for Matt. Heās the epitome of a responsible scientist. David Sinclair, though I appreciate his contributions to the field, seems more and more to be revealed as less than responsible.
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I donāt hate Sinclair. I think his reputation is increasingly being downgraded by his actions, which seem more motivated by profit than science.
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No - I think Dr. K is upset because there were no significant differences between groups in changes in measured activity and instead they used the owner-reported Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Rating (CCDR) results showed no difference in the dogs (see graph below, without error bars as is normal in a study like this).
In other words, they ignored their actual test results and claimed āreversal of agingā based on some owners perceptions, which may or may not have been significant.
Full paper here:
2024.02.26.581616v1.full.pdf (2.1 MB)
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Not to be overly cynical, but theyāre not selling this product to the dogs, theyāre selling it to the owners and many of the owners seemed pleased with the results. And they will tell you that they know their dogs better than anyone. So while this study may not contribute much to the science, it may be beneficial to the company. And letās face it, this is becoming more common, scientists, doctors and other professionals are getting involved in new companies - the companies fund studies and then use those studies to promote their products. The only difference here is that David Sinclair is a very prominent scientist.
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Fair enough call.
The other component to this, is that āscienceā does a great job of finding things that consistently result in a certain outcome. What if we have a complete range of responses, some massively positive and others not, based on genetic or epigenetic causes?
The issue on whether some benefit or not becomes a matter of conjecture. Those who think their dogs did better - placebo effect or not ā¦ they are happy with the results, and with being separated from their cash.
I worry a bit more when we are dealing with people, which is what this ends up translating into, as a natural effect of anything that happens in animal studies. People think the science is settled, and it isnāt.
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When i was in grad school, half the biochem professors had their own startups. But they spoke like scientists, not promoters.
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