I don’t think linking to a page by Bryan Johnson is a good introduction for him. When it comes to his relationship to science, the important thing is to know that we was running a scientific study for his supplements where participants paid money to participate. As part of the participation he promised to release the full data of the study for “open source science”.
The New York Times has an article about negative side effects appearing during the study. Then he decided himself not to release the full data and just write a tweet summarizing the results. The tweet has an embarrassing mistake that looks like it has not been proofread by anyone with domain knowledge.
His olive oil is also an interesting story. Raw at his factory he reports more polyphenols then the polyphenols in the bottles you usually buy elsewhere. However, polyphenols degrade over time. If you measure them at the factory and deliver them to customers months later, they will have less when the bottles arrive. Normally, bottles of olive oil have the harvest written on them, so that you can tell how fresh they are. Bryan Johnson delivers olive oil bottles without a harvest date on them so that you can’t tell how fresh they are.
He talks about the importance of toxicity-testing. To to toxicity testing properly (they way a German supermarket like ALDI does) you need to test every batch. On his website Bryon Johnson often shows one testing page per product, so either he doesn’t to regular testing or is doing the testing and hold back date while pretending to be more transparent then competition because he released on testing sheet.
He does lots of these things, were he can talk about how important toxicity testing is, show you one test result and that looks good if you aren’t thinking more deeply about what’s going on. It takes a bit more reasoning to see the problem then with the Vitamin B guy you describe but the problems are there. It also feels quite sad, because doing the job properly wouldn’t be that much more expensive then what Bryon Johnson does.
The more credible of the B12 recipients reported feeling energized immediately after the shot.
When I hear people getting energized, I would also ask for what’s actually going on. There are probably a lot of poisonous injections that make your heart rate and stress levels go up and can be perceived as being more “energized”.
When I hear people getting energized, I would also ask for what’s actually going on. There are probably a lot of poisonous injections that make your heart rate and stress levels go up and can be perceived as being more “energized”.
This is no doubt true, however I think the median case of people reporting being energized is: a) After an oral supplement b) There is no conceivable mechanism of action which would work so fast.
So, for me when I hear people getting energized, I’m more inclined to ask: “Do you have any emprical data, or hypothetical mechanism of action that would achieve this effect?”. In the median case I expect my interlocutor to have no tenable answer.
I don’t think linking to a page by Bryan Johnson is a good introduction for him. When it comes to his relationship to science, the important thing is to know that we was running a scientific study for his supplements where participants paid money to participate. As part of the participation he promised to release the full data of the study for “open source science”.
The New York Times has an article about negative side effects appearing during the study. Then he decided himself not to release the full data and just write a tweet summarizing the results. The tweet has an embarrassing mistake that looks like it has not been proofread by anyone with domain knowledge.
His olive oil is also an interesting story. Raw at his factory he reports more polyphenols then the polyphenols in the bottles you usually buy elsewhere. However, polyphenols degrade over time. If you measure them at the factory and deliver them to customers months later, they will have less when the bottles arrive. Normally, bottles of olive oil have the harvest written on them, so that you can tell how fresh they are. Bryan Johnson delivers olive oil bottles without a harvest date on them so that you can’t tell how fresh they are.
He talks about the importance of toxicity-testing. To to toxicity testing properly (they way a German supermarket like ALDI does) you need to test every batch. On his website Bryon Johnson often shows one testing page per product, so either he doesn’t to regular testing or is doing the testing and hold back date while pretending to be more transparent then competition because he released on testing sheet.
He does lots of these things, were he can talk about how important toxicity testing is, show you one test result and that looks good if you aren’t thinking more deeply about what’s going on. It takes a bit more reasoning to see the problem then with the Vitamin B guy you describe but the problems are there. It also feels quite sad, because doing the job properly wouldn’t be that much more expensive then what Bryon Johnson does.
When I hear people getting energized, I would also ask for what’s actually going on. There are probably a lot of poisonous injections that make your heart rate and stress levels go up and can be perceived as being more “energized”.
This is no doubt true, however I think the median case of people reporting being energized is:
a) After an oral supplement
b) There is no conceivable mechanism of action which would work so fast.
So, for me when I hear people getting energized, I’m more inclined to ask: “Do you have any emprical data, or hypothetical mechanism of action that would achieve this effect?”. In the median case I expect my interlocutor to have no tenable answer.