Wellness guru influencer scientist who sells snake oil while telling people how to be healthy physically and mentally and preaching outside his purview and having gone around talking about a scientific study that not only didn’t happen, but couldn’t have happened, now also revealed to likely be a longtime serial liar who cheated a lot while supposedly running a lab that does who knows what actually.
Conspirituality Podcast – 163: The Huberman Paradox (w/Jonathan Jarry) – Jul 20 2023
Michelle Wong: The claim is: he said people had used sunscreen, stopped using them for 10 years and then they were finding sunscreen in people’s neurons. So I thought well Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, this is kind of his field, so I don’t see why I should doubt this. And then I started thinking more and going hang on, well I assume it’s sunscreen molecules. And all the sunscreen molecules that would be in someone’s brain, he is American, there’s only about I think eight common chemical sunscreens that could even get through skin and end up in the brain, but how would anyone test this? because sunscreen molecules aren’t just used in sunscreens they’re also used in lots of other products like say hand soap, so it’s used to protect the product from UV, it stops the colour change in hand soap. So I mean everyone goes to public toilets and uses hand soaps. How could you control for that? How could you make sure these people hadn’t used a hand soap? and then i started asking biologists, I’m a chemist by training, so biology and any sort of clinical studies is kind of a bit of mystery to me how any of that operates and they’re like, this would be very difficult to pass through an ethical review board. and how could you actually do this on let’s say cadavers? It’s just not possible. How could you make sure someone happened to stop using sunscreen 10 years before they died and their body got donated to science? There would be a lot of logistical difficulties. So yeah it’s just not a finding that’s possible. Derek Beres: Now here’s the thing about Michelle and her work, she spent something like a week reaching out to other scientists before coming to a conclusion regarding Huberman’s initial claim. And she’s not only addressing the chemicals in sunscreen but the entire scientific process of discovery necessary to make such a claim. And yet as I mentioned I recently heard huberman make the same exact claim again on another podcast. So here you have him, treated as an expert in neuroscience, and therefore considered an expert in related domains, this one being cosmetic chemistry and its effects on the brain. It seems like it should line up, given he knows a lot about what can cross the blood brain barrier, but as Michelle just pointed out, it doesn’t add up. And he’s repeating what he probably considers a throwaway claim, and in order to refute it, an actual chemist takes a week to reply, and then goes through the complexities of the scientific process, which takes time to unpack. And by that point Huberman and his listeners have likely moved on, having ingested these sunscreen crosses the blood brain barrier myth. And we know all too well what happens when we take something for truth. Julian Walker: I find it a particularly egregious example because as you’re saying, him being a professor of neurology lends an extra dose of authority. It’s a very specific and sensational claim. it’s made without citation and it’s specifically that molecules in some sunscreens have been found in people’s brains 10 years after they stopped using them like if you’re going to make a claim that specific citation should be fairly easy to provide because you’re you know it’s like that this is not just like a general throw away thing. it would be pretty easy to clear up and yet no response. and meanwhile i think the downstream effect is that his listeners will be hesitant to protect themselves from skin cancer because the guy that they look up to has said he doesn’t wear sunscreen.
Another Conspirituality Podcast episode, they mentioned that Andrew Huberman is often seen at the gym with RFK Jr.
Conspirituality Podcast – Brief: Yes, Huberman’s Behavior Matters Mar 29 2024
“Huberman, alongside Joe Rogan, and Russel Brand, had recently jumped on the confession of faith bandwagon. So here we have 3 secular coded heterodox bro-fluencers all pivoting towards Jesus as some kind of final boss of the content multiplayer video game.”