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The biggest limitation to this website is that I have not (yet) completed a master’s, PhD, or medical degree in human health. I am currently working towards a Masters in Biomedical Sciences, but for the time being, I have little understanding on the underlying physiology and related processes. With this page, I wanted to address that, as well as explain my reasoning for citing my sources.
Within the past few years there has been an explosion of health information online with the rise of podcasts and short form content on YouTube and TikTok. With the number of chronic illnesses diagnoses rising, increased access to health information can be blessing, but it also presents a challenge. Like many others without a professional degree or the time and resources to investigate claims thoroughly, I rely on influencers and personal research for information. With a lot of trial and error, while falling victim to junk data, I wanted to share my thought process for finding the most credible teams online.
After perusing through many health sources, four channels stood out from the rest as they are aligned with my goals and values: Dr. Peter Attia, Simon Hill (Master’s in Nutrition and Australian Physiotherapist), Dr. Layne Norton (PhD in nutrition with an additional interest in exercise physiology) and Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Peter is a medical doctor specializing in longevity science, so by extension, is well versed in the diseases that most often limit our life and health span: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and metabolic disease. His book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, was an excellent exploration of the factors that contribute to these diseases, as well as how to prevent them using behaviors such as exercise, nutrition, sleep hygiene, and mental health. Simon Hill’s channel has similar goals, but with a larger focus on nutrition. Dr. Layne Norton received his PhD in nutrition, and his channel often discusses conclusions within nutrition. Dr. Huberman is a professor within the Stanford School of Medicine who teaches neuroscience and ophthalmologist, who runs one of the most popular health podcasts on the internet, and covers a wide range of topics, but mostly discusses neuroscience.
Each of their respective teams scour the published data to draw conclusions, but in addition to that, their podcast guests (especially Dr. Attia and Simon Hill) are often among the top career researchers in their respective fields. I find it profoundly important to be interviewing these folks - they have an incredible understanding of the underlying processes, as well as an ability to decipher the nuance amongst the research and trials within the field. There is a night and day difference in the quality of discussions between a semi-qualified influencer reading research papers, and an expert who lives and breathes their field.
With this page, I wanted to write about my understanding of what makes good science good and bad science bad. Dr. Attia, Dr. Norton, and Simon Hill have an exceptional ability to describe what quality research looks like, and because we are in an age with misinformation, it is incredibly important to know.
First, this TED-Ed talk defines some important terms, and introduces ideas also found on this page.
I’d also like to share Dr. Attia’s podcast on the topic. It is two hours long, but I think it’s a fantastic educational video for learning to pick the signal from noise when listening to research. Additionally, it covers many of the biases and fallacies I write about below. In his longevity book, he also rips into nutritional epidemiology (specifically food questionnaires), as he does in this podcast.
This podcast that made me cast strong doubt with this site, as it would be impossible for me to thoroughly examine and confidently approve findings without more time, education, and experience. As he discusses, the process to understand a study is a lengthy one, and you need to understand the experimental numbers, statistical methods, power values, risk assessment, and story of the data to say you truly understand the findings.
Dr. Attia also wrote a couple of articles on this topic in 2018.
His weekly newsletter also gives demonstrations of deciphering quality research.
In this podcast, Attia and Huberman discuss their process for reviewing papers. It was noted that they emphasizes the importance of asking four key questions when reading a paper: (1) What is the question being asked (both general and specific)? What is the primary outcome (this is important for statistics)? (2) What was the approach used to test that question? How did the researchers gather data? (3) What did they find? (4) Are the conclusions drawn by the authors supported by their findings? Attia agrees with his methodology in trying to read the paper figures first, and then going back to the introduction and methods. Reading papers effectively is a skill that can be developed over time and different papers may require different approaches.