PZ Meyers’ comments on Kurzweil generated some controversy here recently on LW—see here. Apparently PZ doesn’t agree with some of Kurzweil’s assumptions about the human mind. But that’s besides the point—what I want want to discuss is this: according to another blog, Kurzweil has been selling bogus nutritional supplements. What does everyone think of this?
I would like a better source than a blog comment for the claim that Kurzweil has been selling bogus nutritional supplements. The obvious alternative possibility is that someone else, with less of a reputation to worry about, attached Kurzweil’s name to their product without his knowledge.
I would have preferred a more specific link than that, to save me the time of doing a detailed investigation of Kurzweil’s company myself. But I ended up doing one anyways, so here are the results.
That “Ray and Terry’s Longevity Products” company’s front page screams low-credibility. It displays three things: an ad for a book, which I can’t judge as I don’t have a copy, an ad for snack bars, and a news box. Neutral, silly, and, ah, something amenable to a quality test!
The current top headline in their Healthy Headlines box looked to me like an obvious falsehood (“Dirty Electricity May Cause Type 3 Diabetes”), and on a topic important to me, so I followed it up. It links to a blog I don’t recognize, which dug it out of a two year old study, which I found on PubMed. And I personally verified that the study was wrong—by the most generous interpretation, assuming no placebo effect or publication bias (both of which were obviously present), the study contains exactly 4 bits of evidence (4 case studies in which the observed outcome had a 50% chance of happening assuming the null hypothesis, and a 100% chance of happening assuming the conclusion). A review article confirmed that it was flawed.
That said, he probably just figured the news box was unimportant and delegated the job to someone who wasn’t smart enough to keep the lies out. But it means I can’t take anything else on the site seriously without a very time-consuming investigation, which is bad enough.
The bit about Kurzweil taking 250 nutritional supplements per day jumps out, too, since it’s an obviously wrong thing to do; the risks associated with taking a supplement (adverse reaction, contamination, mislabeling) scale linearly with the number taken, while the upside has diminishing returns. You take the most valuable thing first, then the second-most, by the time you get to the 250th thing it’s a duplicate or worthless. Which leads me to believe that he just fudged the number, by counting things that are properly considered duplicates like split doses of the same thing.
Kurzweil should be concerned that his name is associated with junk science, and the overall result, but I think its a little far-fetched to think the man is actually selling nutritional supplements that he thinks are bogus.
The state of medicine and nutrition today is such that we know there is so much we don’t know. The human body is supremely complex, to make an understatement. The evidence is pretty strong that most supplements, and even most multi-vitamins, don’t do much or even do harm.
However that is certainly not true in every case, and there are particular supplements where we have strong evidence for net positive effect (vitamin D and fish oil have very strong evidence for net benefit at this point—everyone should be on them) .
But if you are someone like Kurzweil, and you want to make it to the Singularity, you probably will do the research and believe you have some inside knowledge on optimizing the human body. I find it more likely that he actually does take a boatload of supplements.
I’m sure he does take a lot of them himself, but the problem is that Kurzweil taking supplements will still make people think he is delusional (because most people are instantly suspicious of people who do so, generally for good reasons).
So I’m curious, do you believe that typical supplements have net negative effect, vs just neutral?
It was my understanding that the weight of evidence points to most having neutral overall effect, which to me wouldn’t justify instant suspicion. I mean you may be wasting money, but you probably aren’t hurting yourself.
And if you really do the research, you probably are going to get some net positive gain, statistically speaking. Don’t you think? I know of at least 2 cases (vitamin D and fish oil, where the evidence for net benefit is strong—but mainly due to deficiency in the modern diet).
I think it is a mixed bag: Some supplements are potentially dangerous, but others (like the ones you mention) can be very helpful. The majority, however, probably have little to no effect whatsoever. As a result, I don’t think people should mess around with what they eat without it being subjected to rigorous clinical trials first; though there might be a positive net gain, one dose of something bad can kill you.
In any case, though, believing that something is helpful when it has not yet been tested is clearly irrational. (This is more what I concerned about with Best and Kurzweil.) Selling or promoting something that isn’t tested is even worse; it borders on fraud and charlatanry.
PZ Meyers’ comments on Kurzweil generated some controversy here recently on LW—see here. Apparently PZ doesn’t agree with some of Kurzweil’s assumptions about the human mind. But that’s besides the point—what I want want to discuss is this: according to another blog, Kurzweil has been selling bogus nutritional supplements. What does everyone think of this?
I would like a better source than a blog comment for the claim that Kurzweil has been selling bogus nutritional supplements. The obvious alternative possibility is that someone else, with less of a reputation to worry about, attached Kurzweil’s name to their product without his knowledge.
Ok, I’ve found some better sources. See the first three links.
I would have preferred a more specific link than that, to save me the time of doing a detailed investigation of Kurzweil’s company myself. But I ended up doing one anyways, so here are the results.
That “Ray and Terry’s Longevity Products” company’s front page screams low-credibility. It displays three things: an ad for a book, which I can’t judge as I don’t have a copy, an ad for snack bars, and a news box. Neutral, silly, and, ah, something amenable to a quality test!
The current top headline in their Healthy Headlines box looked to me like an obvious falsehood (“Dirty Electricity May Cause Type 3 Diabetes”), and on a topic important to me, so I followed it up. It links to a blog I don’t recognize, which dug it out of a two year old study, which I found on PubMed. And I personally verified that the study was wrong—by the most generous interpretation, assuming no placebo effect or publication bias (both of which were obviously present), the study contains exactly 4 bits of evidence (4 case studies in which the observed outcome had a 50% chance of happening assuming the null hypothesis, and a 100% chance of happening assuming the conclusion). A review article confirmed that it was flawed.
That said, he probably just figured the news box was unimportant and delegated the job to someone who wasn’t smart enough to keep the lies out. But it means I can’t take anything else on the site seriously without a very time-consuming investigation, which is bad enough.
The bit about Kurzweil taking 250 nutritional supplements per day jumps out, too, since it’s an obviously wrong thing to do; the risks associated with taking a supplement (adverse reaction, contamination, mislabeling) scale linearly with the number taken, while the upside has diminishing returns. You take the most valuable thing first, then the second-most, by the time you get to the 250th thing it’s a duplicate or worthless. Which leads me to believe that he just fudged the number, by counting things that are properly considered duplicates like split doses of the same thing.
Kurzweil should be concerned that his name is associated with junk science, and the overall result, but I think its a little far-fetched to think the man is actually selling nutritional supplements that he thinks are bogus.
The state of medicine and nutrition today is such that we know there is so much we don’t know. The human body is supremely complex, to make an understatement. The evidence is pretty strong that most supplements, and even most multi-vitamins, don’t do much or even do harm.
However that is certainly not true in every case, and there are particular supplements where we have strong evidence for net positive effect (vitamin D and fish oil have very strong evidence for net benefit at this point—everyone should be on them) .
But if you are someone like Kurzweil, and you want to make it to the Singularity, you probably will do the research and believe you have some inside knowledge on optimizing the human body. I find it more likely that he actually does take a boatload of supplements.
I’m sure he does take a lot of them himself, but the problem is that Kurzweil taking supplements will still make people think he is delusional (because most people are instantly suspicious of people who do so, generally for good reasons).
On a related note, Ben Best also sells supplements on his website, and many of them look pretty questionable.
So I’m curious, do you believe that typical supplements have net negative effect, vs just neutral?
It was my understanding that the weight of evidence points to most having neutral overall effect, which to me wouldn’t justify instant suspicion. I mean you may be wasting money, but you probably aren’t hurting yourself.
And if you really do the research, you probably are going to get some net positive gain, statistically speaking. Don’t you think? I know of at least 2 cases (vitamin D and fish oil, where the evidence for net benefit is strong—but mainly due to deficiency in the modern diet).
I think it is a mixed bag: Some supplements are potentially dangerous, but others (like the ones you mention) can be very helpful. The majority, however, probably have little to no effect whatsoever. As a result, I don’t think people should mess around with what they eat without it being subjected to rigorous clinical trials first; though there might be a positive net gain, one dose of something bad can kill you.
In any case, though, believing that something is helpful when it has not yet been tested is clearly irrational. (This is more what I concerned about with Best and Kurzweil.) Selling or promoting something that isn’t tested is even worse; it borders on fraud and charlatanry.
Edit: No, let me amend that: it is charlatanry.