Internet expertise

What is it with people trusting random laypeople over experts?

Okay, yeah, I know experts can be wrong, and credentials are not an unshakable guarantee that the person in question knows what they're talking about.  But still.  Why is it so hard to accept that an actual scientist, who has a Ph.D. in the field and has done real research, in general will know more about the topic than some dude on the internet?

The topic comes up because of a conversation I had with my athletic trainer yesterday.  He is pretty knowledgeable about all things fitness-related -- so while he's not a researcher or a scientist (something he'd tell you up front), he's certainly Better Than The Average Bear.  And he ran into an especially ridiculous example of the aforementioned phenomenon, which he was itching to show me as soon as I got there.

Without further ado, we have: the woman who thinks that the amino acid L-glutamine is so named because it is important for developing your glutes:

And of course, it must be right because she heard it from "the TikTok Fitness Girls, and they don't lie."

The whole thing reminds me of something I heard every damn year from students, which is that the ingredient sodium erythorbate in hotdogs and other processed meat products is made from ground-up earthworms, because "earthworm" and "erythorbate" sound a little bit alike.  (Actually, sodium erythorbate is an antioxidant that is chemically related to vitamin C, and is added to meat products as a preservative and antibacterial agent.)

But to return to the broader point, why is it so hard to accept that people who have studied a subject actually... know a lot about the subject?  Instead, people trust shit like:

• Noted scientific researcher Gwyneth Paltrow recommending coffee consumption... which she wants to administer by squirting it up your ass.
• Another noted scientific researcher, Kim Kardashian, suggesting combating wrinkles and other visible signs of aging by withdrawing blood from your arm and injecting it under the skin on your face.
• A claim that chemotherapy actually causes cancer.
• A person who recommends using crystals to treat illness in dogs.
• Selling people charcoal-based "detoxifying juice cleanses" -- which have the unfortunate side-effect of absorbing important substances you may have ingested, like vitamins, minerals, and medications.
• A belief that you'll die if you eat more than seven bananas in a day, which started out as a joke told in an interview by British comedian Karl Pilkington that then got out way of hand.
• "Ear candling," which is sticking a lit candle in your ear in an attempt to suck out the earwax.  There are two confirmed cases of people falling asleep while ear candling and setting their houses on fire, and dozens of people who've ended up in the emergency room after dripping hot wax down their ear canals.
• The practice of "perineum sunning," which unfortunately is just what it sounds like.  You take off all your clothes and expose your butthole to direct sunlight, which is supposed to rotate the tires on your energy meridians or something, but in actuality risks a sunburn that I'd rather not even think about.

And I feel obliged to make my usual disclaimer that I am not making any of the above up.

I wonder how much of this attitude, especially here in the United States, comes from the egalitarian mindset being misapplied -- that "everyone should have the same basic rights" spills over into "everyone's opinion is equally valid."  I recall back when George W. Bush was running for president, there was a significant slice of voters who liked him because he came across as a "regular guy -- someone you could sit down and have a beer with."  He wasn't an "intellectual elite" (heaven knows that much was true enough).  

And I remember reacting to that with sheer bafflement.  Hell, I know I'm not smart enough to be president.  I want someone way more intelligent than I am to be running the country.  Why is "Vote Bush -- He's Just As Dumb As You Are" considered some kind of reasonable campaign slogan?

I think the same thing is going on here -- people hear about the new health miracle from Some Guy Online, and it sounds vaguely plausible, so they give more credence to him than they do to an actual expert (who uses big complicated words and doesn't necessarily give you easy solutions to your health problems).  If you don't have a background in biological science yourself, maybe it sounds like it might work, so you figure you'll give it a try.  After that, wishful thinking and the placebo effect do the rest of the heavy lifting, and pretty soon you're naked in the park sunning your nether orifice.

There's a willful part of this, though.  There comes a point where it crosses the line from simple ignorance into actual stupidity.  To go back to my original example, a thirty-second Google search would tell you that L-glutamine has nothing to do with your glutes.  (In fact, the two words don't come from the same root, even though they sound alike; glutamine comes from the Latin gluten, meaning "sticky," and glutes comes from the Greek γλουτός, meaning buttocks.)  To believe that L-glutamine will develop your glutes because the TikTok Fitness Girls say so, you need to be not only (1) ignorant, but (2) gullible, and (3) uninterested in learning any better.

And that, I find incomprehensible.

I'll end with the famous quote from Isaac Asimov, which seems to sum up the whole bizarre thing about as well as anyone could: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

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Bleach supplement

New from the A Little Bit of Knowledge Is Dangerous department, we have a guy in the UK who is selling a health supplement that contains "stabilized negative ions of oxygen."

The product is named, with no apparent irony intended, "Aerobic Oxygen."  Presumably to distinguish it from all of that anaerobic oxygen floating around out there.  The company that produces it, Vitalox, says that their product is "the foundation of good health," and that sixty drops of their product consumed per day, "in any cold drink," plus another few added to your toothpaste and mouthwash, will bring you to the peak of health.  "Cellulite," we're told, is what happens "when fat cells are starved of oxygen."  (Never mind that "cellulite" is simply fat in which the connective tissue surrounding it has developed minor hernias, but otherwise is indistinguishable from regular old fat.  But why start trying to be scientifically accurate now?)

Oh, and consuming "Aerobic Oxygen" will reduce your likelihood of developing cancer, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

You might be wondering what's in this miracle drug.  I know I was.  The ingredients list reads as follows: "Contains purified ionised water, sodium chloride 1.6 micrograms per serving, Stabilised Oxygen molecules."  Which doesn't tell us much beyond what their sales pitch said.  What sort of additive would provide "stabilized oxygen?"  It's not simply dissolved oxygen; that would diffuse out as soon as you opened the bottle, and in any case the solubility of oxygen in water is low enough that you can't dissolve enough in it to make a difference to anyone but a fish.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So a chemist named Dan Cornwell, from Kings College - London, decided to test "Aerobic Oxygen" to see what was really there.  And what he found was that the "stabilized oxygen" in the solution is coming from a significant quantity of either sodium chlorite or sodium hypochlorite.

For the benefit of any non-chemistry types, sodium chlorite is not the same as sodium chloride.  Sodium chloride is table salt.  Sodium chlorite (and sodium hypochlorite as well) are highly alkaline, reactive compounds whose main use in industry is as a bleach.  Cornwell found that not only is "Aerobic Oxygen" a bleach solution, it has the same pH as Drano.

"The two main conclusions I can draw is that the Vitalox solution has a pH of about 13, putting it in the same region as concentrated household bleach – which contains sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide – or an oven cleaner," Cornwell said.  "And when it combined with the potassium iodide it produced iodine, which shows that there’s a strong oxidizing reaction.  I’m not 100% sure of the nature of the oxidizing agent, but since it has a basic pH and gave a positive result with the iodine test it’s reasonable to say it’s probably sodium chlorite or something similar."

David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College - London, was even more unequivocal. "You don’t absorb oxygen through your stomach," Colquhoun said.  "There’s not the slightest reason to think it works for anything...  A few drops in a glass of water probably won't actually kill you, but that's a slim marketing claim."

But don't worry if the "Aerobic Oxygen" doesn't quite live up to its claims; Vitalox also has a "Spirituality Page," wherein we find out that "Our spirit is real and we all have one, like it or not.  Recognise it or not.  It needs feeding too or it will get sick and may even die."  One of the features of the "Spirituality Page" is a "A Radio Stream to Wet [sic] Your Appetite," which is an odds-on contender for the funniest misspelling I've seen in ages.

So the whole "Aerobic Oxygen" thing is not only bullshit, it's potentially dangerous bullshit.  The site boils down to "drink our expensive bleach solution, and even if it doesn't kill you, your spirit won't be sick."  The take-home message here is, don't be taken in by fancy-sounding sort-of-sciencey-or-something verbiage and fatuous promises.  Do your research, and find out what you're thinking of ingesting before you buy it.  And that goes double when someone tells you they're selling you "aerobic oxygen."

Imaginary cure-alls

If yesterday's post, about enhancing your diet by consuming rotten meat, was not enough, today we have:  buying expensive vitamins to combat a disease that doesn't, technically, exist.

It will probably come as no surprise to those of you who keep abreast of health news to find out that this is the brainchild of that renowned medical researcher, Gwyneth Paltrow.

And this is hardly Paltrow's first bizarre idea.  She was, you may recall, the person who recommended "vaginal steaming" for women to improve the health of their hoo-has.  This time, though, in partnership with one Dr. Alejandro Junger, she's peddling vitamin supplements to combat something she calls "adrenal fatigue:"

When Gwyneth Paltrow started showing signs of adrenal fatigue—feeling completely depleted of energy, with dark under-eye circles and brain fog—she turned to her trusted friend and physician, Alejandro Junger, MD. He knew exactly what her body needed because it was something he had experienced himself years ago. 

“Adrenal fatigue is a world epidemic that’s not tested by Western doctors until it’s so extreme that it requires hospitalization—but there’s a whole spectrum of intensity to get there, which is where most people fall,” Dr. Junger says. 

Since there was no established protocol for the condition, he developed one himself—and it came in handy years later, when Paltrow came to him for advice. “She tried this formula herself,” Dr. Junger adds. 

Now, Paltrow’s sharing a way to prevent or treat adrenal fatigue more broadly with today’s launch of Goop Wellness, a supplement line created by the star-turned-lifestyle tastemaker—and the MDs she’s personally worked closely with.

Well, the reason there's "no established protocol for the condition" is because the condition doesn't exist.  In a paper in the Journal of Endocrine Disorders whose title should win the "World's Bluntest Title for an Academic Paper" award -- "Adrenal Fatigue Does Not Exist: A Systematic Review" -- Flavio Cadegiani and Claudio Kater, of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo Department of Medicine, were pretty unequivocal:

The term “adrenal fatigue” (“AF”) has been used by some doctors, healthcare providers, and the general media to describe an alleged condition caused by chronic exposure to stressful situations.  Despite this, “AF” has not been recognized by any Endocrinology society, who claim there is no hard evidence for the existence.

And after a thorough review of the available evidence, Cadegiani and Kater concluded the following:

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review made by endocrinologists to examine a possible correlation between the HPA axis and a purported “adrenal fatigue” and other conditions associated with fatigue, exhaustion or burnout.  So far, there is no proof or demonstration of the existence of “AF”...  This systematic review proves that there is no substantiation that “adrenal fatigue” is an actual medical condition.  Therefore, adrenal fatigue is still a myth.

But a little thing like a peer-reviewed paper based on evidence never stops anyone like Paltrow, who is happy to sell you her vitamin supplements to combat your nonexistent adrenal fatigue, for $90 per month.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

To make up for the fact that she has zero scientific credibility, she's done the next best thing: given her supplements cutesy names.  Thus you can choose from "Why Am I So Effing Tired," "High School Genes," "The Mother Load," and (I kid you not) "Balls in the Air."

To me, that last one sounds like a completely different medical problem, and one that probably is worth a visit to a doctor.  But maybe I'm misinterpreting.

On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't take anything for granted.  Paltrow herself says that "High School Genes" almost got named "FUPA Blaster," where "FUPA" stands for "fat upper pubic area."

The whole thing brings up something that is a never-ending source of puzzlement for me; why we tend to trust celebrities more than trained scientists on topics of health and medicine.  Myself, if I'm going to spend $90 a month on a medical supplement, I want it to be (1) for a legitimate medical condition, and (2) a treatment that will resolve the symptoms of said medical condition.  Here, on the other hand, we have useless vitamin tablets being sold at great cost to treat an imaginary disorder.

Worst of all, the symptoms that Paltrow calls "adrenal fatigue" -- low energy, poor sleep, "brain fog" -- could well be the harbingers of something far more serious.  And if you choose to self-medicate with expensive celebrity vitamins instead, you might well fail to seek out help from a trained medical professional.

And lest you think that people would never do something that stupid, allow me to point out that just last week a woman in California died after being given an intravenous injection of turmeric to combat her eczema.

So caveat emptor, as usual.  Not to mention cavete Paltrowam.