November 9, 2025 • 69 mins
A conversation with Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD co-author of the book Trick or Treatment, The undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine. He's a long time physician that has decades of experience as a doctor and also as a researcher. He has served as chairman of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at the University of Vienna. He became director of complementary medicine of the Peninsula Medical School (PMS) in 2002. His writing appeared in a regular column in The Guardian, where he reviewed news stories about complementary medicine from an evidence-based medicine perspective.
Dr. Ernst discusses his history and his evolution away from alternative medicine after a long period of research and discovery.
We talk about what's called Naturopathy and it's fundamental claims and where such practitioners have gone array.
We have an exchange about the "Placebo Effect" and Dr. Ernst gives his response to the common retort that the Placebo Effect is "Still an Effect".
We talk about some of the commonly utilized modalities in health and fitness including acupuncture and cupping, their foundations and what does the imperical evidence show in regards to them.
Finally we discuss science, the scientific method and Dr. Ernst Gives his perspective on the argument that science can often "get things wrong".
Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD
https://edzardernst.com/
Trick or Treatment
https://a.co/d/0memoft
https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Dr-Dr-Simon-Singh/Trick-or-Treatment--Alternative-Medicine-on-Trial/1382322
Dr. Ernst discusses his history and his evolution away from alternative medicine after a long period of research and discovery.
We talk about what's called Naturopathy and it's fundamental claims and where such practitioners have gone array.
We have an exchange about the "Placebo Effect" and Dr. Ernst gives his response to the common retort that the Placebo Effect is "Still an Effect".
We talk about some of the commonly utilized modalities in health and fitness including acupuncture and cupping, their foundations and what does the imperical evidence show in regards to them.
Finally we discuss science, the scientific method and Dr. Ernst Gives his perspective on the argument that science can often "get things wrong".
Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD
https://edzardernst.com/
Trick or Treatment
https://a.co/d/0memoft
https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Dr-Dr-Simon-Singh/Trick-or-Treatment--Alternative-Medicine-on-Trial/1382322
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The intersection of endurance, sport, health, fitness, and life, following
the evidence where it leads with the science of self
propelled motion. This is the Endurance Experience podcast, powered by
event Horizon dot TV and hosted by Tony Rich.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Every season, I like to drop a podcast that touches
on the topic of health and health outcomes, something that
straddles the line between health and fitness. This is a
hot topic right now, especially in America and other regions,
(00:42):
as the question of the proliferation of misinformation of health
and medicine is viral in regions of the Internet as
well as from politicians, and I wanted to, as always,
(01:07):
talk to someone who could speak with experience and research.
And usually when I have these conversations, I will elect
to try to find someone who's a doctor, a PhD,
and a researcher, and so my guest on this podcast
has all of those. He's an MD, a physician as
(01:30):
well as a PhD. And he wrote a book called
Trick or Treatment, very good book with another researcher, Simon Singh.
Between the two of them they have three PhDs. The
book focuses on alternative medicine, or what they commonly call
complementary alternative medicine. Readers will get a healthy dose of
(01:55):
the scientific method and how we determine what actually has
efficacy in what doesn't. You'll hear doctor Ernst fully describe
his experience, his research agenda and his background high level.
He served as a chairman of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
at the University of Vienna and then he left that
(02:17):
position and set up his own department of Complementary Medicine
at the University of Exeter in England. So yeah, he
has decades of experience and also leading departments and deep
understanding of what has been traditionally called com medicine and
(02:46):
was even an early proponent of what's called alternative medicine,
but then reverse course after he found out more information
about the empirical underpendings of the efficacy of these modalities.
(03:08):
As you all know, this is a science and evidence
based podcast. And what largely is coming from regions of
the internet and even politicians these days that is seemingly
counter to empirical foundation is particularly in the health, health
(03:32):
and fitness space, is often grounded in the concept of
quote unquote naturalopathy or natureopathy. And I asked doctor Ernest
to give his description about what this is, but very
high level naturalopathy is the position that you don't need
(03:55):
modern medicine, western medicine, or much of modern medicine. All
you need is things that occur naturally in nature and
perhaps maybe a cocktail of supplements, things that grow out
of the ground, off trees, heat, cold, anything that is
(04:21):
occurring naturally. And I ask doctor ERNs to a pine
on naturalopathy and where it can go wrong. We talk
about alternative medicine and its relationship to placebo effect. Doctor
(04:43):
Ernst describes placebo effect and respond to the common retort
about placebo effect is still in effect. And then we
talk about some of the reoccurring modalities we see in health,
sport and fitness, acupuncture, cupping, dry needling, and whether or
not there's any new evidence empirical evidence showing efficacy of
(05:08):
these approaches. And then finally we talk about science and
people always asking well, why is science right? Why is
science the best way to go? Science has been wrong
in the past, and so I asked doctor Ernest to
respond to that retort. I've had a couple of podcasts
(05:31):
that touch on these topics, and this one here is
among the best of those podcasts, so I hope you
enjoy it. If you have any desire to go back
and listen to some of my other podcasts that touch
on these topics, you can go listen to in my
season one I forget which episode, but it's the podcast
(05:51):
with britt Marie Hermes, and then my podcast with Nicholas
Tiller in season five, we touch on these topics as well,
both PhDs or either PhDs or PhD candidates. So and
(06:13):
there's actually britt Marie Hermes who actually led me to
doctor edzard ERNs and so it's a great conversation. I
hope you enjoy it. I hope you get something out
of it. I'll have more to say in my afterward
to the podcast, and if you have comments, feel free
to reach out at contact at event Horizon dot TV.
(06:35):
Would be very interested in hearing what you think, agree
or disagree, and I will absolutely respond. Let us begin
with doctor exit Ernst. I am on with doctor edzard Ernst.
Thanks for joining me. Hey, so, I've known about the
(06:57):
book Trick or Treatment for quite some time and I
first heard about this book with you and doctor Simon
Singh from britt Marie Hermes. I don't know if you
remember that name, it was yeah, I know, yeah, Yeah.
(07:20):
She was the one that made me aware of this book.
And she told the story about how she went into
something called naturalopathy, and your book was the one that
shook her foundation and caused her to go into different directions.
And then I read the book, and I spent the
(07:41):
last couple of days going through it and looking at
some of the things that I've highlighted and underlined and
dog eared and things like that. So I wanted to
have a conversation with you because you might be aware
in the States having a bit of a of a
crisis in the area of medicine and science. I don't
(08:08):
know if you're familiar with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, unfortunately, yes, right,
So there is a bit of an epidemic there, even
before R. F. K Junior. There's a bit a bit
of an epidemic with just misinformation and disinformation of of
(08:30):
medicine and science. And when I hear a lot of it,
it's seemed to me to be grounded in parts. A
lot of it is the classical naturalpathy ideology, which we'll
talk about. A lot of it is grounded into anti
(08:53):
anti vaccination rhetoric, big farmer rhetoric, and it's all, you know,
tied in together. Some of it is alternative medicine and
supplement belief. It's all tied in together. So I thought
it would be timely, and I knew that you would
be one of the best persons to talk about that.
(09:16):
So I want to talk about that naturalpathy, alternative medicine,
placebo effect. I want to talk about some of the
things that we're seeing reoccurring in health and fitness, and
you know, some of the rebuttals of people who are
anti science or anti medicine. So but first, can you
(09:41):
I know you're an MD and a PhD double MD PhD.
But if you could just describe, summarize your experience for
someone who might not know about you, what would you
tell them?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Well, I was born in Germany mainten forty eight, so
not so long after after the war. I grew up
in in the rural environment, and as it happened, our
(10:14):
family doctor was a homeopath and from from for me,
home homeopathy was just one form of medicine, uh, and
it seemed a respectable form of medicine. It even seemed
to work. And I when whenever I at this or
(10:35):
that ament, I got better. So eventually I studied medicine
and quickly learned that homeopothy is not at all like
any other medicine. And when I had graduated, it so
happened that my very first job as a junior doctor
(10:58):
was in the only homeopathic hospital of Germany at the time.
So there I learned homeopathy, occupying tore many other alternative treatments,
and I'm not shamed to say I was impressed. Looking back,
(11:19):
I have to say I haven't met yet a junior
doctor who wasn't impressed with his first job in his
first patients, because it is impressive all of a sudden
to take over responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. So after
(11:41):
the homeopathic hospital, I pursued an entirely normal career, and
one day I had a complete break in my career
and went to London and beg camera scientists. For about
(12:02):
two years, I was working in the field of basic science,
and I mentioned that because it's I think it's important
to know that as a medical student, and possibly as
a doctor as well, you don't have the time, the inclination,
(12:25):
or the motivation to to think scientifically that sounds odd,
but I think it's true, and it's I've seen it
confirmed many many times. So for the first time I
began to question my own assumptions and back came these
(12:50):
ideas of alternative medicine and my experiences, et cetera, et cetera.
But I put that those aside and became a specialist
in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Became a professor first in Hanover, Germany,
(13:12):
and then became head of department in Vienna, Austria, physical
medicine and rehabilitation. Now, being head of a department, you
can a little bit at least direct what you're doing
in terms of research. And being able to do that,
(13:35):
I remembered all these questions that had occurred to me
about alternative medicine. In Vienna, I had a very large
team one hundred and twenty people working for me, and
we did quite a bit of research in this area.
I would say that there's an overlap in physical medicine
(13:57):
and rehabilitation with alternative medicine. Anyway. We do spinal manipulation,
we did acupuncture, massage, helpy, some forms of meditation, et cetera,
et cetera. So that that was all in our in
in all in our toolbox, so to speak. So then
(14:20):
for reasons which would be another podcast, the Viennis got
on my nerves and I decided to look elsewhere. One
day I saw an advertisement University of Exeter was going
to establish the first chair for complimentary Medicine. I rushed
(14:43):
to the World Atlas and looked up where exeters and
so that's a nice part of the world, and it'd
be a quiet life to change career yet again and
become a researcher into alternative medicine. I applied, I got
the post. I established a team, multidisciplinary team doctors, scientists, pharmacologists, nurses,
(15:15):
so very multi disciplinary team. And our task was to
research alternative medicine, which is a huge task, and we
tackled it by doing clinical trials, meta analysis, et cetera,
et cetera. Our question was are the claims being made
(15:40):
for these treatments? Are they true? So we tested them
in clinical trials and also very important are these treatments
actually as safe and harmless as they are said to be?
So my team was extremely successful. We published over one
(16:07):
thousand papers in the medical literature, many books, one of
which you just mentioned, and Eventually I retired, not least
due to conflict with Prince Charles. At the time he
(16:29):
was Prince Charles. Now he's King Charles, who filed a
complaint about my activities and that led to an investigation
and my department basically fell apart and I went into retirement.
(16:50):
Since then, that's about thirteen years ago. Now. Since then,
I continue. I have a very very active blog. It's
at ANSD in one word dot com, and there you
can read over three thousand blog posts on all sorts
(17:12):
of subjects related to alternative medicine. Recently, also related quite
a lot to Robert F. Kennedy because he is really
something and I'm giving lectures and I'm enjoying life basically, Yeah, yeah,
(17:34):
that's my history.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, being from Boston and knowing about the Kennedys. The
Kennedys themselves are good people, have a great history. I
actually met his uncle twice in my life, Ted Kennedy,
But even his siblings take issue with Robert F. Kennedy
(17:57):
and some of the things he is saying now. And
Jay Bodichario, who is also an MD PhD. I'm very
surprised at him. His main issue has been just sort
of the COVID lockdowns. But the fact that he would
even stand with RFK is perplexing. But a lot of
(18:19):
what seems to be coming out from the administration and
some of the support that's going on in uh the
area's pockets of the internet, you know, is this sort
of acceptance of the concept of nature opathy that you
(18:42):
don't need modern medicine. Well, I'll let you describe it.
I'd like to hear your definition of naturalopathy and where
na naturalopathy fundamentally goes off the rails.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
A naturopathy means slightly different things in different countries, but
by definition, as the world says it, it means treating
with the means that nature provides, so that will be
(19:18):
herbal remedies or other natural remedies. Also will be heat,
cold water, et cetera, et cetera. In Germany, lots of
doctors subscribed to naturalpathy. In in the US, it's a
(19:45):
profession separate from from the medical profession. UH, and they
I believe, can call themselves doctors. So the consumer is
very very confused about what they really are and what
they do. The American natural paths, I believe they're poorly trained.
(20:10):
They're taught all sorts of fallacies, nonsense, and they come
out of their training entirely convinced that many of them
seem to be on a mission to convince the public
(20:32):
that pharmaceuticals are very bad, that you need to detox,
that electromagnetic graduation is bad, et cetera, et cetera. So
they're pursuing all these weird ideas, not least the idea
that vaccinations are bad. Just about everybody who knows about
(21:01):
vaccination knows that this is one of the greatest achievements
of science and medicine. And yet there we have those
weirdos who think that vaccinations clearly do more harm than good.
The opposite is true. And if we didn't have if
(21:28):
we hadn't had vaccinations in the last epidemic fairly quickly
and the research to generate them, millions of people would
have died. Millions more would have died. And now these
people say that is not true. And actually these vaccinations
(21:52):
have killed more people. The multiple vaccinations in particular, should
should kill everybody. It was predicted that we vaccinated folk
would all be dead. I had five COVID vaccinations and
I'm still able to talk to you. And there should
(22:13):
be five times over dead. So they're clearly wrong. They're
negating the evidence. That cherry picking the evidence. If you
cherry pick evidence, you can always find stuff that confirms
even the weirdest hypothesis. I'm sure that the members of
(22:34):
the Flat Earth Society can prove that the planet is
a disc. But when you speak of evidence, you normally
as a scientist, you speak of the best available evidence,
and not just one piece of evidence, but the totality
of the reliable evidence. And that clearly shows that vaccinations good,
(23:02):
not all totally harmless. Of course, nothing is totally harmless,
but the balance, the risk benefit balance is very very
clearly positive.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Right right, Yeah, they seem to be wetted the idea.
Like you said, to natural remedies, all you need is sunlight,
all you need is things that grow out of the ground.
They make classic type one error, right, they make the
(23:38):
false positive error. Like so, for instance, this issue with
thailando Thailand know and pregnant mothers, they're making a classic
correlation is not equal to causation error type one error.
We see it pervasive out in certain pockets of the internet,
and now it seems like they they're getting cover from
(24:02):
people who have power, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's very unfortunate. And it seems that the anti vaccine
agenda has become a political agenda. The anti wax has
always existed. They were a relatively small group, but now
(24:28):
they're coming out uh and supported by government, as you say,
and it's a it's an official policy now. And that
is extremely worrying because on my blog I said often enough,
(24:50):
it is worrying not just for the Americans. Of course,
for the Americans it's foremost worrying, but it's also worrying
for us. For for me personally, I imagine if a
pandemic occurred tomorrow and we will have another one, that's
(25:10):
pretty sure. We don't know when, but if it occurred
to tomorrow, with research being suppressed or halted in America
and Americans being anti vax vaccine, lots of Americans not vaccinated,
(25:34):
world travel, it will will take a fortnight for a
nasty infectious disease to arrive in Europe and we would
all have it. And lacking the American research base in
that area is significant because America was a leading power
(26:03):
when it comes to medical research. And if you suppress that,
you suppress a very important part of the torutality of research.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Right, right, So let's I want to talk about some
of these modalities, but before that, I wanted to get
your your description of placebo effect. Because a lot of
these modalities, herbal remedies, homeopathy, and certainly things like acupuncture,
(26:44):
dry needle and in cupping they work on placebo effect.
How would you describe it? And when I start talking
to people about placebo effect, the coming retort to me
is always, well, seeble effect is still an effect, and
(27:07):
I wanted to get your response to that. Right, People say, look,
what's the big deal of polaceible effect is still in effect.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, the placeive effect is. It is quite quite a
complicated phenomenon. Essentially, it describes the effect patient experiences when
(27:39):
taking a medicine that is totally in that a sugar
pill in its simplest form, So the patient gets gets
better even though he or she hasn't taken any active medication.
(28:05):
And that's just due to the fact that we are
all conditioned. Pavlov, the Russian physiologist, conditioned his dogs. He
rang a bell even each time he gave them food.
He rang a bell and measured gastric secretion and of course,
(28:35):
seeing the food, gastric secretion started. And he continued that
procedure long enough to condition his dogs such that he
only rang a bell there was no food involved, and
gastric secretion started. That is classic conditioning, and we are
(28:58):
all conditioned in the simplest fashion. We go to a
doctor and we are conditioned to somehow feel better, get
better whatever he or she does to us. The other,
(29:21):
perhaps more important element of the plassible fact is expectation.
You you go to your physician, you expect to get better.
You expect to get a medication that helps you, and
that expectation h makes you better, takes away your pain. Yeah.
(29:49):
Classic example, you go to your dentist because you have
you have pain. You're in the waiting room and you
already noticed that the pain is getting better or is
even gone. So the placebo effect is clearly complex, but
in simple in its simplest from It's based on conditioning
(30:12):
and expectation, and all treatments are associated with these elements.
We are conditioned regardless of what we what we get,
and we expect what is happening to us, So that
means the placebo effect is associated even with effective treatments.
(30:35):
By effective, I mean working beyond placebo. Uh. And that
means we don't need a placebo treatment in order to
generate a placebo effect. Any treatment that is administered with
kindness and empathy, et cetera, like any good doctor should have,
(31:03):
will generate a placebo effect. Only giving a placebo will
basically cheat you out of the specific effect of the treatment.
Only giving a placeble generates a placebo. Giving the effective
treatment generates a specific effect that helps you, and usually
(31:27):
it's more important than the placebo effect, which is also generated.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right, So you don't need a placeble to elicit a
placebo effect. That's it.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That's correctly.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
The other thing is that it may not be completely
ethical to give someone a placeble if you don't if
you're a doctor and you don't see any empirical evidence
that it has efficacy. And then not to mention that
these effects are not cheat often they are sometimes very expensive.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, the important ethical arguments against plus plus he wooton treatment.
That's absolutely clear. Uh. And and ye arguably giving a
placebo is an ethical and really depends a lot on
(32:29):
on on the on the situation. Muh. For instance, Uh,
you go to a doctor and you get a treatment.
Before you get a treatment, there's such a thing h
(32:50):
called informed consent. That is an ethical imperative. You always
have to receive as a doctor, informed consent from the patient,
which means you have to convey certain information about the treatment,
(33:10):
about the diagnosis, about the prognosis, et cetera. So if
I'm a homeopath, for instance, I would need to say
I'm giving you that treatment. It contains absolutely no active ingredient.
The scientific evidence doesn't show that it works, but I'm
(33:33):
giving it to you anyway. So I'm giving it to
you because lots of people get better with the placebo effect. Now,
if that sort of informed consent would be extracted from
(33:57):
a patient in a homeopathic surgery, the patient would start running.
Of course, that's one of the reasons why alternative practitioners
usually neglect this ethical imperative. What I'm trying to say,
(34:19):
really is that medical ethics are being violated every day
a million times in alternative medicine.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah. Yeah, and that's the danger. And there's a seduction
effect where the patient is potentially seduced down the pathway
of averting actual real medicine. Someone has cancer, they are
there now seduced down to say, non proven remedies, Eastern
(34:54):
remedies to treat cancer. And of course there's a long
list of people, well known people who have done this
and have succumbed.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yes, that that is the sad end of the story
that alternative practitioners very often don't know the limits of
that treatment. If you treat a common code with an
alternative treatment, you arguably cannot do very much damage. If
(35:30):
you claim that a life threatening disease can be treated
with this or that alternative treatment, you can do a
lot of damage. In fact, you can hasten the death
of your patient.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, yep, we've seen it. And it's very interesting because
in reading the book Trick or Treatment. Yeah, these placebo effects.
Placebo effect can be very powerful. You know, someone you
mentioned in the book that someone simply wearing a white coat,
a white laboratory coat can have in a placebo effect
(36:07):
versus someone who doesn't wear a white lab coat.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yes, yes, And that there's some evidence that red pills
have different types of red placebos have different types of
responses and blue ones or white ones.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
And the size you said that, I think in the
so that.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Has all to do with the expectation if I expect
a red pill to stimulate me in some sort of way,
then presumably I'm being stimulated, even if the red pill
doesn't contain anything. If I expect the white pill to
(36:52):
take my pain away, then my pain will diminish, even
if the white pill doesn't contain anything.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Right, Yeah, exactly. And then and then you said that
a small a small pill for some reason, seems to
elicit a response versus a larger pill.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yes, and of course slightly invasive treatments are bound to
have stronger placebo response then non invasive treatments. And alluding
to acupuncture, of course, which which is hands on that
also is powerful, powerful promoter of placebo effects. It's exotic,
(37:35):
another promoter, it's it's invasive. You stick an legle in
into the skin of the patient. So all this accumulates
and produces a powerful placebo effect with acupuncture, for instance.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Let's talk about that, because that is so. We we
work with athletes, we train and coach athletes in health
and fitness, where science and evidence. So many times, this
probably is the number the handful of things we hear.
We hear acupuncture when treating treating injuries, were either trying
(38:13):
to expedite recovery or even enhance performance. People generally go
to acupuncture, dry needling, and cupping. Of course, you remember Olympics.
Some Olympics back, we all saw Michael Phelps when he
(38:35):
was racing. He had the cups on his cup marks
on his back, which are basically you know, blood vessels.
But these are the ones we see. Let's look talk
about those and what is the newest evidence on these
and is there still lacking empirical evidence that these have
(38:59):
any efficacy.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Well, there are plenty of trials now on copying, not
least because as you mentioned, athletes this displayed these cupping marks,
and lots of people, including my team, looked into the
evidence for against cupping therapy, and the evidence is very mixed.
(39:29):
Some trials seem to indicate it works, some seem to
indicate it doesn't work. And if you then try to
figure out what is happening there and how to explain
these contradictions, you're bound to find that the more rigorous
(39:49):
trials are negative while the less vigorous trials are positive.
In other words, if you, as far as possible, will
exclude bias from the trials, uhh, the effect disappears Now
with physical medicines, it's physical therapies, it is difficult to
(40:17):
exclude bias completely because with a pill you have it's
easy to you. You give a placebo pill and you
have control over the placebo effect somehow. But what is
a good placebo for cupping? What is a good placible
for dry needling? These are difficult questions, and by and
(40:44):
large people end up doing heavily biased trials and produce
positive results which are fault positive because of the bias.
If you exclude the buyers, which is, as I said, tricky,
you end up with a negative result.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Right right. And in the case of acupuncture and and coupying,
these both rely on a concept called chi is that
or or sort of energy healing.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Cupping actually is UH is prevalent in many other cultures
as well, so and and and in cultures that do
not rely on on these Chinese concepts. But let's talk
about chi and and and life energy and and meridians
(41:44):
and and these are assumptions uh made by the Chinese,
uh some two thousand years ago, when we had absolutely
no idea how the body functions. So uh, yeah, they
(42:06):
created a philosophy of life forces of two life forces
that have to be in balance, and if they're out
of balance, you fall ill. That that philosophy is quite
pretty but has nothing to do with reality. Uhm, we
(42:29):
have moved on. We we understand how the body works.
We understand that there aren't two life forces that create
a balance, and if the balance is in jeopardy, we
(42:49):
uh fall ill. We know that the meridians don't don't exist,
and we know that acupuncture points our fantasy. All this
is built on an ancient Chinese philosophy and has no
(43:13):
bearing with facts, with anatomy, with physiology, and with our
understanding of our bodies work.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Right. So in the book, you say, our definition of
an alternative medicine is any therapy that is not accepted
by the majority of mainstream doctors. And typically this also
means that these alternative therapies have mechanisms that lie outside
the current understanding of modern medicine. In the language of science,
(43:49):
alternative therapies are said to be biologically implausible, or, as
I like to say, alternative medicine that has pical evidence
has a name. It's called medicine.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yes, for a long time, I'm quoting it now. So
called alternative medicine for the reason that if it doesn't work,
it can't be an alternative, and if it does work,
it is evidence based medicine. So I feel that so
called alternative medicine is a much better name for it.
(44:26):
And as it happens, it abbreviates into scam.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Right. Yeah, but it makes sense. If there were empirical evidence,
strong empirical evidence, meta analysis, systematic reviews that demonstrated this work,
it would become medicine. It would be subsumed into medicine
and become medicine. Right, and sort of test in the
(44:51):
book you talk about testing it. You create a control
group and you would try to test the hypothesis of
the Meridians. It's blind or hopefully it's blind or single blind, right,
and you try to see if you can put the
needles into random places to see if there is any effect,
(45:15):
or you have a needle that retract, doesn't go in,
it retracts. Yeah, And that's the way we test it.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
We developed a placebo needle and that's uh. It touches
to the skin um hmm with a little sticky thing
(45:45):
and the acupuncture needle. Then it's pushed into the skin. Well,
the placebo needle just h retract like a stage dagger,
and it doesn't penetrate the skin age hole. We have
(46:08):
tested that properly in the sense that firstly, it is
physiologically inarth that needle doesn't have uh effects on on
the on on the physiology of the patient. It doesn't
(46:28):
have heads effects on its own in other words, And
and secondly, the patient cannot distinguish the placebo needle from
the real needle. That is also important because you do
placebos in order to essentially fool the patient, the patient
(46:52):
mustn't know that he or she's getting a placebo. And
and this criterion was also fulfilled. So we think it's
a pretty good device for placebo controlled acupuncture trials. And
most of the trials that were conducted by us or
(47:15):
other people with such needles failed to show that acupuncture
works not just for pain, but for any condition. Acupuncture,
like so many alternative treatments, is promoted as a cure all.
We use it a lot against pain, but in traditional
(47:39):
Chinese medicine it's virtually used for everything. As I said earlier,
when your life forces are out of balance, you need
to put them back into balance, and acupuncture achieves that
regardless of the symptoms or the conditions that the patient
(47:59):
is suffering from.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Right, yeah, and so yeah, with knowledge from your book.
I recently explained this to someone who a very smart
person PhD in psychology. She said, Tony, I understand what
you're saying. But when I got the acupuncture, then I
left the practice, and then I went into I went
(48:23):
into my car, and then I just started bawling, crying uncontrollably.
It had an effect. So this was the sort of
argument from experience or a person I had a personal experience,
but it seems to override the knowledge of Okay, this
has been tested empirically. It's been tested double blind or
(48:44):
single blind. The argument from experience that people have is enough,
I guess with some people, not me.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
But yeah, well, ow. Necdotes are very powerful. They they
happened to you or to somebody close to you. They're
hugely powerful, and they're almost automatically neutralize any sort of
scientific evidence. But you have to see it in perspective.
(49:19):
Anecdotes never, never, ever, ever prove causal relationship. That that's
just is a fact. However powerful these anecdotes are, they
are prone to be due to lots of other things, coincidences, expectation, conditioning, whatever.
(49:50):
They often coincidence.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Right, yeah, things going on in a person's personal life,
and things like that. As they say, an equals one. Right,
So let's talk about you know, you know, people hearing
Some people who who accept these modalities would be hearing
this conversation, and they would say, I can almost hear
(50:14):
it right now. Well, what about science? Science doesn't know everything.
Science often gets things wrong, so on and so forth.
What's your best response?
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Yeah, well, I'm sure here that's true. Science got it
wrong in so many instances, and therefore sciences is not almighty.
Some say science is just a belief system, like any
(50:51):
other belief system. Science is rubbish and unreliable. Well, how
do we know that science did get it wrong? We
got We know it because we did more science, we
did better science. So the fact that science got it
wrong in that way is a proof that science is right.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Right right, Yes, exactly, Yeah, and yeah. They use the
same example all the time. They'll say, Oh, one day
you'll see a study and coffee is good for you.
Next time you'll see a study, coffee is bad for you.
So it's fifty to fifty right. And you can tell
(51:34):
this a bit of group think because they always use
the same example about coffee. Right. And then there is
the but it's ancient wisdom. What's your response to the
ancient wisdom retort as if something ancients should have validity?
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, my favorite, My favorite story about ancient wisdom is
blood letting. Virtually in all cultures, blood letting was the
dominant intervention U for all thinkable treatments. So somebody had
(52:23):
pneumonia and uh, the doctor at the time, the barber
was called and blood letting was commenced. If the patient
didn't get better, then blood letting was continued. Uh. And
(52:46):
in many instances people were basically killed by blood letting.
Millions of people must have died through blood letting. We
know today that blood letting can be in a few
fairly rare diseases life saving, but it's certainly not a
(53:10):
cure all, and it's certainly dangerous for many many other
conditions where people need their strengths, and just pulling out
the blood of a vein means losing strengths. One person
that all Americans know who has been hastened into death
(53:35):
is George.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Washington, Right, Yes, exactly so, so much for ancient ancient wisdom.
There are many things that are ancient that are clearly
don't have any efficacy. Now, what about the big pharma response.
(53:55):
Science is just deliberately withholding the natural cure for cancer
because of profit motive. This one most I can't believe.
I mean, this is sort of a cardboard way of
looking at it. But it's easy to refute. But what
would you say?
Speaker 3 (54:17):
Well, yeah, and I often hear that oncologists cancer specialists
are suppressing alternative treatments because they know they're so damn
effications that they wouldn't be selling their expensive chemotherapy if
(54:40):
the public knew, Well, what happens if a cancer specialists
falls ill with cancer?
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Right?
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Does he cure himself with healing crystals? Does he cure
himself with spiritual healing? Does he cure himself with homeopathy? No,
he doesn't. It takes chemotherapy like everybody. Uh, this is
just a miss. Surely the pharmaceutical industry is not is
(55:13):
not populated by angels. I mean, there's some some nasty
people everywhere, but uh, and I'm not going to defend
pharmaceutical industry. But on the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry
isn't the devil.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Either, right, yeah, exactly. I mean you can criticize things like,
for instance, opioids, the the ease that people can get
opioids and things like that, but to say this that
they're there are there's worldwide collusion over generations, it's just yeah,
(55:50):
it's just unbelievable thinking that.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Research. I'm glad you mentioned opioids because arguably that's a
natural treatment.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Right right, Yeah. I mean just to think that there
there aren't people in the researchers and doctors that also
get impacted by cancer that they wouldn't want to they
wouldn't want to disk cure it to manifest itself. They're
high deliberately hiding it and colluding to do it over
(56:21):
over multi generations. It's this is sort of fake moon
landing level of.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
Consider that's conspiracy. It's worse because it potentially is very
harmful when it's when this sort of thinking sets in
to the mind of the public.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Yeah, as I said, the pharmaceutical industry, Uh, they aren't angels,
but they are on the devils.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Either, right. Okay, So finishing up, how do we get
out of this? I mean, what would you be able
to offer as an MD, as a PhD. What would
you be able to offer people about the truth in
(57:14):
how we discern the truth in the best way that
people should look at finding out what the truth is
in a sea of misinformation and disinformation.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Well, a few things. Firstly, I often say, if something
sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So
living by this maximum is I think wise. I do
sympathize with the man or the woman in the street
(57:54):
hearing conflicting information, lots and more and more information and
not knowing what is what's been totally confused. I think
the way out of this is reading my books, looking
(58:21):
looking up at my blog, which is which is of
course three. You don't need to buy the book to go,
in more general terms, to go to reliable sources, to
check your sources about reliability, which in itself is quite
(58:42):
a task, and often the consumer is unable to judge
the reliability of information. This is why probably the most
important thing in the long run would be to further
critical thinking in not just in medicine, in in in
(59:07):
all feares of life, politics in particular, and watching from
the outside what is happening in America at present. Is
the opposite of furthering critical thinking. So for America, I'm
seeing pretty black. But at least the Americans can uh
(59:36):
try to find reliable sources. What's coming out of Kennedy
at present is everything but reliable.
Speaker 2 (59:46):
My one of my favorite quotes by Carl Carl Sagan.
Science it works. It's not perfect, it can be misused.
It is only a tool, but it's by far the
best tool we have, self correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.
It has two rules. First, there are no sacred truths.
(01:00:07):
All assumptions must be critically examined. Arguments from authority are worthless. Second,
whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.
We must understand the cosmos as it is and not
confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
(01:00:28):
The obvious is sometimes false, the unexpected is sometimes true.
Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Yeah, very good. He was a great man and I
like that coach just as much as you do.
Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Yeah, ex excellent. Well, thanks for your time. So I'm
going to put the link to the book in the
show notes. I want everyone to go get trick or treatment.
There's other books, but this is the one that is
really good. In my opinion, and I will put the
link as well to the blog so that you can
(01:00:59):
look at doctor ernst blog posts. Thanks again for your time.
I really appreciate.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
It my pleasure. It was good fun.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Thanks again to doctor edzit Ernst. It was good to
finally get a chance to talk to him. I've been
following him for years and also reading his books and content.
And again you can go find that content links to
the content the book, specifically in the show notes. And
(01:01:32):
if this is a topic that is interesting to you
or important to you, I highly recommend the book Trigger Treatment.
And even if you're someone who is listening to this
and shouting at us through the airways with your retorts
or dissents, I challenge you to give this book a read.
(01:01:53):
I am sure that you will come away with a
great understanding of science, the empirical process behind determining whether
or not something has efficacy or does it. Then all
(01:02:15):
of the things that we were talking about is a
healthy dose of understanding things like place Ebo effect for
some of these modalities that we were talking about. I
do share doctor Ernst's concerns and pessimism about some of
the things that we're hearing from either so called experts,
(01:02:35):
or certain regions of the Internet where people claim to
be knowledgeable about health and giving advice. I would be
skeptical of the buzzwords that you hear frequently, people calling
themselves quote unquote holistic practitioners or integrative practitioners. These are
(01:02:59):
all cold words for some of the unproven methodologies and
modalities that doctor Ernst has spoken about. For instance, if
you hear someone fear mongering about something as benign as
(01:03:20):
food coloring in foods, or at least we know empirically
that food coloring in food is relatively benign, no impact
health wise, but yet at the same time they're promoting
cocktails of supplements that could have anything in them or
(01:03:40):
nothing in them, then that's a good indication that the
person claiming to be an expert has willingly bought into
a fundamentalist or ideological dogma. Simply put, they are not
utilizing the scientific method in their approach to evaluation. And
(01:04:03):
why should we focus on science? Well, the answer to that,
as you heard in the conversation, quite simply it works.
And insofar as science has been wrong, the answer to
that has always been better science leading us to where
we are today. And so when we look at the
earliest humans, it's a couple hundred thousand to a few
(01:04:26):
hundred thousand years ago. You died by the age of
thirty years old, and that stayed the same for hundreds
of thousands of years, all the way up until the
nineteenth century. You go to the nineteenth century, somewhere between
(01:04:51):
eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, we only picked up about
a handful of years. Right now, you died by the
a age of somewhere between thirty five and forty. That's
in the nineteenth century. So for all those hundreds of
thousands of years, everyone was living and eating quote unquote
(01:05:14):
natural and eating organic right. There was no industrialization, there
was no agriculture yet, food environment that we see today,
no pollution so called technological radiation, and you still died
(01:05:39):
at thirty to thirty five years old. These high mortality
rates were largely driven in deaths in the infancy and
in the teenage years. This was the perilous period that
many humans just didn't survive. The point being here is
(01:05:59):
that wisdom quote unquote ancient wisdom didn't help us. The
idea that a demon was possessing your body when you
sneezed that didn't help, right, lack of understanding of germs,
disease and other pathologies that didn't help. And unfortunately, only
(01:06:23):
eating things that you could catch and kill or things
that grew out of the ground or grew off trees.
Even that didn't help. But what did help. Science and
medicine helped in the late nineteenth century epidemiology, the study
(01:06:46):
of disease that helped vaccination, probably the greatest discovery in
the history of medicine that helped, Antibiotics, medical image, insulin,
you can go on and on. These are all things
that helped increase the life expectancy from thirty thirty five
(01:07:10):
years to eighty five plus years. What we're seeing with
some of this information coming out of regions and pockets
of the internet, as well as from some politicians, is
a shocking display of Dunning Krueger effect, which is to
(01:07:33):
say that they speak with very high confidence, but as
you hear the words that are coming out of their mouth,
it's clear that that is paired with very low understanding
and knowledge of what it is they profess to speak about.
(01:07:56):
I recognize that oftentimes that this is not done deliberately
or purposefully. Sometimes it's just the case that the individuals
have confused the difference between what's true and what they
(01:08:17):
want to be true, which are two entirely different things.
And so the inoculation for this is the scientific method,
and that conjures up Fineman's principle. The great physicist Richard
Feinmann about the scientific method once remarked, the first principle
(01:08:39):
is that you must not fool yourself, and you are
the easiest person to fool. Hope this helps and thank
you for your time.
Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Follow Event Horizon and Durance Sport on Instagram, Facebook, Threads,
and x for training and nutrition programs and on demand learning.
To become a member of our Endurance Institute, or for
complete archive of podcasts, log on to our website Event
(01:09:15):
Horizon dot tv.
The intersection of endurance, sport, health, fitness, and life, following
the evidence where it leads with the science of self
propelled motion. This is the Endurance Experience podcast, powered by
event Horizon dot TV and hosted by Tony Rich.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Every season, I like to drop a podcast that touches
on the topic of health and health outcomes, something that
straddles the line between health and fitness. This is a
hot topic right now, especially in America and other regions,
(00:42):
as the question of the proliferation of misinformation of health
and medicine is viral in regions of the Internet as
well as from politicians, and I wanted to, as always,
(01:07):
talk to someone who could speak with experience and research.
And usually when I have these conversations, I will elect
to try to find someone who's a doctor, a PhD,
and a researcher, and so my guest on this podcast
has all of those. He's an MD, a physician as
(01:30):
well as a PhD. And he wrote a book called
Trick or Treatment, very good book with another researcher, Simon Singh.
Between the two of them they have three PhDs. The
book focuses on alternative medicine, or what they commonly call
complementary alternative medicine. Readers will get a healthy dose of
(01:55):
the scientific method and how we determine what actually has
efficacy in what doesn't. You'll hear doctor Ernst fully describe
his experience, his research agenda and his background high level.
He served as a chairman of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
at the University of Vienna and then he left that
(02:17):
position and set up his own department of Complementary Medicine
at the University of Exeter in England. So yeah, he
has decades of experience and also leading departments and deep
understanding of what has been traditionally called com medicine and
(02:46):
was even an early proponent of what's called alternative medicine,
but then reverse course after he found out more information
about the empirical underpendings of the efficacy of these modalities.
(03:08):
As you all know, this is a science and evidence
based podcast. And what largely is coming from regions of
the internet and even politicians these days that is seemingly
counter to empirical foundation is particularly in the health, health
(03:32):
and fitness space, is often grounded in the concept of
quote unquote naturalopathy or natureopathy. And I asked doctor Ernest
to give his description about what this is, but very
high level naturalopathy is the position that you don't need
(03:55):
modern medicine, western medicine, or much of modern medicine. All
you need is things that occur naturally in nature and
perhaps maybe a cocktail of supplements, things that grow out
of the ground, off trees, heat, cold, anything that is
(04:21):
occurring naturally. And I ask doctor ERNs to a pine
on naturalopathy and where it can go wrong. We talk
about alternative medicine and its relationship to placebo effect. Doctor
(04:43):
Ernst describes placebo effect and respond to the common retort
about placebo effect is still in effect. And then we
talk about some of the reoccurring modalities we see in health,
sport and fitness, acupuncture, cupping, dry needling, and whether or
not there's any new evidence empirical evidence showing efficacy of
(05:08):
these approaches. And then finally we talk about science and
people always asking well, why is science right? Why is
science the best way to go? Science has been wrong
in the past, and so I asked doctor Ernest to
respond to that retort. I've had a couple of podcasts
(05:31):
that touch on these topics, and this one here is
among the best of those podcasts, so I hope you
enjoy it. If you have any desire to go back
and listen to some of my other podcasts that touch
on these topics, you can go listen to in my
season one I forget which episode, but it's the podcast
(05:51):
with britt Marie Hermes, and then my podcast with Nicholas
Tiller in season five, we touch on these topics as well,
both PhDs or either PhDs or PhD candidates. So and
(06:13):
there's actually britt Marie Hermes who actually led me to
doctor edzard ERNs and so it's a great conversation. I
hope you enjoy it. I hope you get something out
of it. I'll have more to say in my afterward
to the podcast, and if you have comments, feel free
to reach out at contact at event Horizon dot TV.
(06:35):
Would be very interested in hearing what you think, agree
or disagree, and I will absolutely respond. Let us begin
with doctor exit Ernst. I am on with doctor edzard Ernst.
Thanks for joining me. Hey, so, I've known about the
(06:57):
book Trick or Treatment for quite some time and I
first heard about this book with you and doctor Simon
Singh from britt Marie Hermes. I don't know if you
remember that name, it was yeah, I know, yeah, Yeah.
(07:20):
She was the one that made me aware of this book.
And she told the story about how she went into
something called naturalopathy, and your book was the one that
shook her foundation and caused her to go into different directions.
And then I read the book, and I spent the
(07:41):
last couple of days going through it and looking at
some of the things that I've highlighted and underlined and
dog eared and things like that. So I wanted to
have a conversation with you because you might be aware
in the States having a bit of a of a
crisis in the area of medicine and science. I don't
(08:08):
know if you're familiar with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, unfortunately, yes, right,
So there is a bit of an epidemic there, even
before R. F. K Junior. There's a bit a bit
of an epidemic with just misinformation and disinformation of of
(08:30):
medicine and science. And when I hear a lot of it,
it's seemed to me to be grounded in parts. A
lot of it is the classical naturalpathy ideology, which we'll
talk about. A lot of it is grounded into anti
(08:53):
anti vaccination rhetoric, big farmer rhetoric, and it's all, you know,
tied in together. Some of it is alternative medicine and
supplement belief. It's all tied in together. So I thought
it would be timely, and I knew that you would
be one of the best persons to talk about that.
(09:16):
So I want to talk about that naturalpathy, alternative medicine,
placebo effect. I want to talk about some of the
things that we're seeing reoccurring in health and fitness, and
you know, some of the rebuttals of people who are
anti science or anti medicine. So but first, can you
(09:41):
I know you're an MD and a PhD double MD PhD.
But if you could just describe, summarize your experience for
someone who might not know about you, what would you
tell them?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Well, I was born in Germany mainten forty eight, so
not so long after after the war. I grew up
in in the rural environment, and as it happened, our
(10:14):
family doctor was a homeopath and from from for me,
home homeopathy was just one form of medicine, uh, and
it seemed a respectable form of medicine. It even seemed
to work. And I when whenever I at this or
(10:35):
that ament, I got better. So eventually I studied medicine
and quickly learned that homeopothy is not at all like
any other medicine. And when I had graduated, it so
happened that my very first job as a junior doctor
(10:58):
was in the only homeopathic hospital of Germany at the time.
So there I learned homeopathy, occupying tore many other alternative treatments,
and I'm not shamed to say I was impressed. Looking back,
(11:19):
I have to say I haven't met yet a junior
doctor who wasn't impressed with his first job in his
first patients, because it is impressive all of a sudden
to take over responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. So after
(11:41):
the homeopathic hospital, I pursued an entirely normal career, and
one day I had a complete break in my career
and went to London and beg camera scientists. For about
(12:02):
two years, I was working in the field of basic science,
and I mentioned that because it's I think it's important
to know that as a medical student, and possibly as
a doctor as well, you don't have the time, the inclination,
(12:25):
or the motivation to to think scientifically that sounds odd,
but I think it's true, and it's I've seen it
confirmed many many times. So for the first time I
began to question my own assumptions and back came these
(12:50):
ideas of alternative medicine and my experiences, et cetera, et cetera.
But I put that those aside and became a specialist
in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Became a professor first in Hanover, Germany,
(13:12):
and then became head of department in Vienna, Austria, physical
medicine and rehabilitation. Now, being head of a department, you
can a little bit at least direct what you're doing
in terms of research. And being able to do that,
(13:35):
I remembered all these questions that had occurred to me
about alternative medicine. In Vienna, I had a very large
team one hundred and twenty people working for me, and
we did quite a bit of research in this area.
I would say that there's an overlap in physical medicine
(13:57):
and rehabilitation with alternative medicine. Anyway. We do spinal manipulation,
we did acupuncture, massage, helpy, some forms of meditation, et cetera,
et cetera. So that that was all in our in
in all in our toolbox, so to speak. So then
(14:20):
for reasons which would be another podcast, the Viennis got
on my nerves and I decided to look elsewhere. One
day I saw an advertisement University of Exeter was going
to establish the first chair for complimentary Medicine. I rushed
(14:43):
to the World Atlas and looked up where exeters and
so that's a nice part of the world, and it'd
be a quiet life to change career yet again and
become a researcher into alternative medicine. I applied, I got
the post. I established a team, multidisciplinary team doctors, scientists, pharmacologists, nurses,
(15:15):
so very multi disciplinary team. And our task was to
research alternative medicine, which is a huge task, and we
tackled it by doing clinical trials, meta analysis, et cetera,
et cetera. Our question was are the claims being made
(15:40):
for these treatments? Are they true? So we tested them
in clinical trials and also very important are these treatments
actually as safe and harmless as they are said to be?
So my team was extremely successful. We published over one
(16:07):
thousand papers in the medical literature, many books, one of
which you just mentioned, and Eventually I retired, not least
due to conflict with Prince Charles. At the time he
(16:29):
was Prince Charles. Now he's King Charles, who filed a
complaint about my activities and that led to an investigation
and my department basically fell apart and I went into retirement.
(16:50):
Since then, that's about thirteen years ago. Now. Since then,
I continue. I have a very very active blog. It's
at ANSD in one word dot com, and there you
can read over three thousand blog posts on all sorts
(17:12):
of subjects related to alternative medicine. Recently, also related quite
a lot to Robert F. Kennedy because he is really
something and I'm giving lectures and I'm enjoying life basically, Yeah, yeah,
(17:34):
that's my history.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, being from Boston and knowing about the Kennedys. The
Kennedys themselves are good people, have a great history. I
actually met his uncle twice in my life, Ted Kennedy,
But even his siblings take issue with Robert F. Kennedy
(17:57):
and some of the things he is saying now. And
Jay Bodichario, who is also an MD PhD. I'm very
surprised at him. His main issue has been just sort
of the COVID lockdowns. But the fact that he would
even stand with RFK is perplexing. But a lot of
(18:19):
what seems to be coming out from the administration and
some of the support that's going on in uh the
area's pockets of the internet, you know, is this sort
of acceptance of the concept of nature opathy that you
(18:42):
don't need modern medicine. Well, I'll let you describe it.
I'd like to hear your definition of naturalopathy and where
na naturalopathy fundamentally goes off the rails.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
A naturopathy means slightly different things in different countries, but
by definition, as the world says it, it means treating
with the means that nature provides, so that will be
(19:18):
herbal remedies or other natural remedies. Also will be heat,
cold water, et cetera, et cetera. In Germany, lots of
doctors subscribed to naturalpathy. In in the US, it's a
(19:45):
profession separate from from the medical profession. UH, and they
I believe, can call themselves doctors. So the consumer is
very very confused about what they really are and what
they do. The American natural paths, I believe they're poorly trained.
(20:10):
They're taught all sorts of fallacies, nonsense, and they come
out of their training entirely convinced that many of them
seem to be on a mission to convince the public
(20:32):
that pharmaceuticals are very bad, that you need to detox,
that electromagnetic graduation is bad, et cetera, et cetera. So
they're pursuing all these weird ideas, not least the idea
that vaccinations are bad. Just about everybody who knows about
(21:01):
vaccination knows that this is one of the greatest achievements
of science and medicine. And yet there we have those
weirdos who think that vaccinations clearly do more harm than good.
The opposite is true. And if we didn't have if
(21:28):
we hadn't had vaccinations in the last epidemic fairly quickly
and the research to generate them, millions of people would
have died. Millions more would have died. And now these
people say that is not true. And actually these vaccinations
(21:52):
have killed more people. The multiple vaccinations in particular, should
should kill everybody. It was predicted that we vaccinated folk
would all be dead. I had five COVID vaccinations and
I'm still able to talk to you. And there should
(22:13):
be five times over dead. So they're clearly wrong. They're
negating the evidence. That cherry picking the evidence. If you
cherry pick evidence, you can always find stuff that confirms
even the weirdest hypothesis. I'm sure that the members of
(22:34):
the Flat Earth Society can prove that the planet is
a disc. But when you speak of evidence, you normally
as a scientist, you speak of the best available evidence,
and not just one piece of evidence, but the totality
of the reliable evidence. And that clearly shows that vaccinations good,
(23:02):
not all totally harmless. Of course, nothing is totally harmless,
but the balance, the risk benefit balance is very very
clearly positive.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Right right, Yeah, they seem to be wetted the idea.
Like you said, to natural remedies, all you need is sunlight,
all you need is things that grow out of the ground.
They make classic type one error, right, they make the
(23:38):
false positive error. Like so, for instance, this issue with
thailando Thailand know and pregnant mothers, they're making a classic
correlation is not equal to causation error type one error.
We see it pervasive out in certain pockets of the internet,
and now it seems like they they're getting cover from
(24:02):
people who have power, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's very unfortunate. And it seems that the anti vaccine
agenda has become a political agenda. The anti wax has
always existed. They were a relatively small group, but now
(24:28):
they're coming out uh and supported by government, as you say,
and it's a it's an official policy now. And that
is extremely worrying because on my blog I said often enough,
(24:50):
it is worrying not just for the Americans. Of course,
for the Americans it's foremost worrying, but it's also worrying
for us. For for me personally, I imagine if a
pandemic occurred tomorrow and we will have another one, that's
(25:10):
pretty sure. We don't know when, but if it occurred
to tomorrow, with research being suppressed or halted in America
and Americans being anti vax vaccine, lots of Americans not vaccinated,
(25:34):
world travel, it will will take a fortnight for a
nasty infectious disease to arrive in Europe and we would
all have it. And lacking the American research base in
that area is significant because America was a leading power
(26:03):
when it comes to medical research. And if you suppress that,
you suppress a very important part of the torutality of research.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Right, right, So let's I want to talk about some
of these modalities, but before that, I wanted to get
your your description of placebo effect. Because a lot of
these modalities, herbal remedies, homeopathy, and certainly things like acupuncture,
(26:44):
dry needle and in cupping they work on placebo effect.
How would you describe it? And when I start talking
to people about placebo effect, the coming retort to me
is always, well, seeble effect is still an effect, and
(27:07):
I wanted to get your response to that. Right, People say, look,
what's the big deal of polaceible effect is still in effect.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, the placeive effect is. It is quite quite a
complicated phenomenon. Essentially, it describes the effect patient experiences when
(27:39):
taking a medicine that is totally in that a sugar
pill in its simplest form, So the patient gets gets
better even though he or she hasn't taken any active medication.
(28:05):
And that's just due to the fact that we are
all conditioned. Pavlov, the Russian physiologist, conditioned his dogs. He
rang a bell even each time he gave them food.
He rang a bell and measured gastric secretion and of course,
(28:35):
seeing the food, gastric secretion started. And he continued that
procedure long enough to condition his dogs such that he
only rang a bell there was no food involved, and
gastric secretion started. That is classic conditioning, and we are
(28:58):
all conditioned in the simplest fashion. We go to a
doctor and we are conditioned to somehow feel better, get
better whatever he or she does to us. The other,
(29:21):
perhaps more important element of the plassible fact is expectation.
You you go to your physician, you expect to get better.
You expect to get a medication that helps you, and
that expectation h makes you better, takes away your pain. Yeah.
(29:49):
Classic example, you go to your dentist because you have
you have pain. You're in the waiting room and you
already noticed that the pain is getting better or is
even gone. So the placebo effect is clearly complex, but
in simple in its simplest from It's based on conditioning
(30:12):
and expectation, and all treatments are associated with these elements.
We are conditioned regardless of what we what we get,
and we expect what is happening to us, So that
means the placebo effect is associated even with effective treatments.
(30:35):
By effective, I mean working beyond placebo. Uh. And that
means we don't need a placebo treatment in order to
generate a placebo effect. Any treatment that is administered with
kindness and empathy, et cetera, like any good doctor should have,
(31:03):
will generate a placebo effect. Only giving a placebo will
basically cheat you out of the specific effect of the treatment.
Only giving a placeble generates a placebo. Giving the effective
treatment generates a specific effect that helps you, and usually
(31:27):
it's more important than the placebo effect, which is also generated.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right, So you don't need a placeble to elicit a
placebo effect. That's it.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That's correctly.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
The other thing is that it may not be completely
ethical to give someone a placeble if you don't if
you're a doctor and you don't see any empirical evidence
that it has efficacy. And then not to mention that
these effects are not cheat often they are sometimes very expensive.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, the important ethical arguments against plus plus he wooton treatment.
That's absolutely clear. Uh. And and ye arguably giving a
placebo is an ethical and really depends a lot on
(32:29):
on on the on the situation. Muh. For instance, Uh,
you go to a doctor and you get a treatment.
Before you get a treatment, there's such a thing h
(32:50):
called informed consent. That is an ethical imperative. You always
have to receive as a doctor, informed consent from the patient,
which means you have to convey certain information about the treatment,
(33:10):
about the diagnosis, about the prognosis, et cetera. So if
I'm a homeopath, for instance, I would need to say
I'm giving you that treatment. It contains absolutely no active ingredient.
The scientific evidence doesn't show that it works, but I'm
(33:33):
giving it to you anyway. So I'm giving it to
you because lots of people get better with the placebo effect. Now,
if that sort of informed consent would be extracted from
(33:57):
a patient in a homeopathic surgery, the patient would start running.
Of course, that's one of the reasons why alternative practitioners
usually neglect this ethical imperative. What I'm trying to say,
(34:19):
really is that medical ethics are being violated every day
a million times in alternative medicine.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah. Yeah, and that's the danger. And there's a seduction
effect where the patient is potentially seduced down the pathway
of averting actual real medicine. Someone has cancer, they are
there now seduced down to say, non proven remedies, Eastern
(34:54):
remedies to treat cancer. And of course there's a long
list of people, well known people who have done this
and have succumbed.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yes, that that is the sad end of the story
that alternative practitioners very often don't know the limits of
that treatment. If you treat a common code with an
alternative treatment, you arguably cannot do very much damage. If
(35:30):
you claim that a life threatening disease can be treated
with this or that alternative treatment, you can do a
lot of damage. In fact, you can hasten the death
of your patient.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, yep, we've seen it. And it's very interesting because
in reading the book Trick or Treatment. Yeah, these placebo effects.
Placebo effect can be very powerful. You know, someone you
mentioned in the book that someone simply wearing a white coat,
a white laboratory coat can have in a placebo effect
(36:07):
versus someone who doesn't wear a white lab coat.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yes, yes, And that there's some evidence that red pills
have different types of red placebos have different types of
responses and blue ones or white ones.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
And the size you said that, I think in the
so that.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Has all to do with the expectation if I expect
a red pill to stimulate me in some sort of way,
then presumably I'm being stimulated, even if the red pill
doesn't contain anything. If I expect the white pill to
(36:52):
take my pain away, then my pain will diminish, even
if the white pill doesn't contain anything.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Right, Yeah, exactly. And then and then you said that
a small a small pill for some reason, seems to
elicit a response versus a larger pill.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yes, and of course slightly invasive treatments are bound to
have stronger placebo response then non invasive treatments. And alluding
to acupuncture, of course, which which is hands on that
also is powerful, powerful promoter of placebo effects. It's exotic,
(37:35):
another promoter, it's it's invasive. You stick an legle in
into the skin of the patient. So all this accumulates
and produces a powerful placebo effect with acupuncture, for instance.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Let's talk about that, because that is so. We we
work with athletes, we train and coach athletes in health
and fitness, where science and evidence. So many times, this
probably is the number the handful of things we hear.
We hear acupuncture when treating treating injuries, were either trying
(38:13):
to expedite recovery or even enhance performance. People generally go
to acupuncture, dry needling, and cupping. Of course, you remember Olympics.
Some Olympics back, we all saw Michael Phelps when he
(38:35):
was racing. He had the cups on his cup marks
on his back, which are basically you know, blood vessels.
But these are the ones we see. Let's look talk
about those and what is the newest evidence on these
and is there still lacking empirical evidence that these have
(38:59):
any efficacy.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Well, there are plenty of trials now on copying, not
least because as you mentioned, athletes this displayed these cupping marks,
and lots of people, including my team, looked into the
evidence for against cupping therapy, and the evidence is very mixed.
(39:29):
Some trials seem to indicate it works, some seem to
indicate it doesn't work. And if you then try to
figure out what is happening there and how to explain
these contradictions, you're bound to find that the more rigorous
(39:49):
trials are negative while the less vigorous trials are positive.
In other words, if you, as far as possible, will
exclude bias from the trials, uhh, the effect disappears Now
with physical medicines, it's physical therapies, it is difficult to
(40:17):
exclude bias completely because with a pill you have it's
easy to you. You give a placebo pill and you
have control over the placebo effect somehow. But what is
a good placebo for cupping? What is a good placible
for dry needling? These are difficult questions, and by and
(40:44):
large people end up doing heavily biased trials and produce
positive results which are fault positive because of the bias.
If you exclude the buyers, which is, as I said, tricky,
you end up with a negative result.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Right right. And in the case of acupuncture and and coupying,
these both rely on a concept called chi is that
or or sort of energy healing.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Cupping actually is UH is prevalent in many other cultures
as well, so and and and in cultures that do
not rely on on these Chinese concepts. But let's talk
about chi and and and life energy and and meridians
(41:44):
and and these are assumptions uh made by the Chinese,
uh some two thousand years ago, when we had absolutely
no idea how the body functions. So uh, yeah, they
(42:06):
created a philosophy of life forces of two life forces
that have to be in balance, and if they're out
of balance, you fall ill. That that philosophy is quite
pretty but has nothing to do with reality. Uhm, we
(42:29):
have moved on. We we understand how the body works.
We understand that there aren't two life forces that create
a balance, and if the balance is in jeopardy, we
(42:49):
uh fall ill. We know that the meridians don't don't exist,
and we know that acupuncture points our fantasy. All this
is built on an ancient Chinese philosophy and has no
(43:13):
bearing with facts, with anatomy, with physiology, and with our
understanding of our bodies work.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Right. So in the book, you say, our definition of
an alternative medicine is any therapy that is not accepted
by the majority of mainstream doctors. And typically this also
means that these alternative therapies have mechanisms that lie outside
the current understanding of modern medicine. In the language of science,
(43:49):
alternative therapies are said to be biologically implausible, or, as
I like to say, alternative medicine that has pical evidence
has a name. It's called medicine.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yes, for a long time, I'm quoting it now. So
called alternative medicine for the reason that if it doesn't work,
it can't be an alternative, and if it does work,
it is evidence based medicine. So I feel that so
called alternative medicine is a much better name for it.
(44:26):
And as it happens, it abbreviates into scam.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Right. Yeah, but it makes sense. If there were empirical evidence,
strong empirical evidence, meta analysis, systematic reviews that demonstrated this work,
it would become medicine. It would be subsumed into medicine
and become medicine. Right, and sort of test in the
(44:51):
book you talk about testing it. You create a control
group and you would try to test the hypothesis of
the Meridians. It's blind or hopefully it's blind or single blind, right,
and you try to see if you can put the
needles into random places to see if there is any effect,
(45:15):
or you have a needle that retract, doesn't go in,
it retracts. Yeah, And that's the way we test it.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
We developed a placebo needle and that's uh. It touches
to the skin um hmm with a little sticky thing
(45:45):
and the acupuncture needle. Then it's pushed into the skin. Well,
the placebo needle just h retract like a stage dagger,
and it doesn't penetrate the skin age hole. We have
(46:08):
tested that properly in the sense that firstly, it is
physiologically inarth that needle doesn't have uh effects on on
the on on the physiology of the patient. It doesn't
(46:28):
have heads effects on its own in other words, And
and secondly, the patient cannot distinguish the placebo needle from
the real needle. That is also important because you do
placebos in order to essentially fool the patient, the patient
(46:52):
mustn't know that he or she's getting a placebo. And
and this criterion was also fulfilled. So we think it's
a pretty good device for placebo controlled acupuncture trials. And
most of the trials that were conducted by us or
(47:15):
other people with such needles failed to show that acupuncture
works not just for pain, but for any condition. Acupuncture,
like so many alternative treatments, is promoted as a cure all.
We use it a lot against pain, but in traditional
(47:39):
Chinese medicine it's virtually used for everything. As I said earlier,
when your life forces are out of balance, you need
to put them back into balance, and acupuncture achieves that
regardless of the symptoms or the conditions that the patient
(47:59):
is suffering from.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Right, yeah, and so yeah, with knowledge from your book.
I recently explained this to someone who a very smart
person PhD in psychology. She said, Tony, I understand what
you're saying. But when I got the acupuncture, then I
left the practice, and then I went into I went
(48:23):
into my car, and then I just started bawling, crying uncontrollably.
It had an effect. So this was the sort of
argument from experience or a person I had a personal experience,
but it seems to override the knowledge of Okay, this
has been tested empirically. It's been tested double blind or
(48:44):
single blind. The argument from experience that people have is enough,
I guess with some people, not me.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
But yeah, well, ow. Necdotes are very powerful. They they
happened to you or to somebody close to you. They're
hugely powerful, and they're almost automatically neutralize any sort of
scientific evidence. But you have to see it in perspective.
(49:19):
Anecdotes never, never, ever, ever prove causal relationship. That that's
just is a fact. However powerful these anecdotes are, they
are prone to be due to lots of other things, coincidences, expectation, conditioning, whatever.
(49:50):
They often coincidence.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Right, yeah, things going on in a person's personal life,
and things like that. As they say, an equals one. Right,
So let's talk about you know, you know, people hearing
Some people who who accept these modalities would be hearing
this conversation, and they would say, I can almost hear
(50:14):
it right now. Well, what about science? Science doesn't know everything.
Science often gets things wrong, so on and so forth.
What's your best response?
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Yeah, well, I'm sure here that's true. Science got it
wrong in so many instances, and therefore sciences is not almighty.
Some say science is just a belief system, like any
(50:51):
other belief system. Science is rubbish and unreliable. Well, how
do we know that science did get it wrong? We
got We know it because we did more science, we
did better science. So the fact that science got it
wrong in that way is a proof that science is right.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Right right, Yes, exactly, Yeah, and yeah. They use the
same example all the time. They'll say, Oh, one day
you'll see a study and coffee is good for you.
Next time you'll see a study, coffee is bad for you.
So it's fifty to fifty right. And you can tell
(51:34):
this a bit of group think because they always use
the same example about coffee. Right. And then there is
the but it's ancient wisdom. What's your response to the
ancient wisdom retort as if something ancients should have validity?
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, my favorite, My favorite story about ancient wisdom is
blood letting. Virtually in all cultures, blood letting was the
dominant intervention U for all thinkable treatments. So somebody had
(52:23):
pneumonia and uh, the doctor at the time, the barber
was called and blood letting was commenced. If the patient
didn't get better, then blood letting was continued. Uh. And
(52:46):
in many instances people were basically killed by blood letting.
Millions of people must have died through blood letting. We
know today that blood letting can be in a few
fairly rare diseases life saving, but it's certainly not a
(53:10):
cure all, and it's certainly dangerous for many many other
conditions where people need their strengths, and just pulling out
the blood of a vein means losing strengths. One person
that all Americans know who has been hastened into death
(53:35):
is George.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Washington, Right, Yes, exactly so, so much for ancient ancient wisdom.
There are many things that are ancient that are clearly
don't have any efficacy. Now, what about the big pharma response.
(53:55):
Science is just deliberately withholding the natural cure for cancer
because of profit motive. This one most I can't believe.
I mean, this is sort of a cardboard way of
looking at it. But it's easy to refute. But what
would you say?
Speaker 3 (54:17):
Well, yeah, and I often hear that oncologists cancer specialists
are suppressing alternative treatments because they know they're so damn
effications that they wouldn't be selling their expensive chemotherapy if
(54:40):
the public knew, Well, what happens if a cancer specialists
falls ill with cancer?
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Right?
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Does he cure himself with healing crystals? Does he cure
himself with spiritual healing? Does he cure himself with homeopathy? No,
he doesn't. It takes chemotherapy like everybody. Uh, this is
just a miss. Surely the pharmaceutical industry is not is
(55:13):
not populated by angels. I mean, there's some some nasty
people everywhere, but uh, and I'm not going to defend
pharmaceutical industry. But on the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry
isn't the devil.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Either, right, yeah, exactly. I mean you can criticize things like,
for instance, opioids, the the ease that people can get
opioids and things like that, but to say this that
they're there are there's worldwide collusion over generations, it's just yeah,
(55:50):
it's just unbelievable thinking that.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Research. I'm glad you mentioned opioids because arguably that's a
natural treatment.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Right right, Yeah. I mean just to think that there
there aren't people in the researchers and doctors that also
get impacted by cancer that they wouldn't want to they
wouldn't want to disk cure it to manifest itself. They're
high deliberately hiding it and colluding to do it over
(56:21):
over multi generations. It's this is sort of fake moon
landing level of.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
Consider that's conspiracy. It's worse because it potentially is very
harmful when it's when this sort of thinking sets in
to the mind of the public.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Yeah, as I said, the pharmaceutical industry, Uh, they aren't angels,
but they are on the devils.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Either, right. Okay, So finishing up, how do we get
out of this? I mean, what would you be able
to offer as an MD, as a PhD. What would
you be able to offer people about the truth in
(57:14):
how we discern the truth in the best way that
people should look at finding out what the truth is
in a sea of misinformation and disinformation.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Well, a few things. Firstly, I often say, if something
sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So
living by this maximum is I think wise. I do
sympathize with the man or the woman in the street
(57:54):
hearing conflicting information, lots and more and more information and
not knowing what is what's been totally confused. I think
the way out of this is reading my books, looking
(58:21):
looking up at my blog, which is which is of
course three. You don't need to buy the book to go,
in more general terms, to go to reliable sources, to
check your sources about reliability, which in itself is quite
(58:42):
a task, and often the consumer is unable to judge
the reliability of information. This is why probably the most
important thing in the long run would be to further
critical thinking in not just in medicine, in in in
(59:07):
all feares of life, politics in particular, and watching from
the outside what is happening in America at present. Is
the opposite of furthering critical thinking. So for America, I'm
seeing pretty black. But at least the Americans can uh
(59:36):
try to find reliable sources. What's coming out of Kennedy
at present is everything but reliable.
Speaker 2 (59:46):
My one of my favorite quotes by Carl Carl Sagan.
Science it works. It's not perfect, it can be misused.
It is only a tool, but it's by far the
best tool we have, self correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.
It has two rules. First, there are no sacred truths.
(01:00:07):
All assumptions must be critically examined. Arguments from authority are worthless. Second,
whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.
We must understand the cosmos as it is and not
confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
(01:00:28):
The obvious is sometimes false, the unexpected is sometimes true.
Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Yeah, very good. He was a great man and I
like that coach just as much as you do.
Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Yeah, ex excellent. Well, thanks for your time. So I'm
going to put the link to the book in the
show notes. I want everyone to go get trick or treatment.
There's other books, but this is the one that is
really good. In my opinion, and I will put the
link as well to the blog so that you can
(01:00:59):
look at doctor ernst blog posts. Thanks again for your time.
I really appreciate.
Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
It my pleasure. It was good fun.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Thanks again to doctor edzit Ernst. It was good to
finally get a chance to talk to him. I've been
following him for years and also reading his books and content.
And again you can go find that content links to
the content the book, specifically in the show notes. And
(01:01:32):
if this is a topic that is interesting to you
or important to you, I highly recommend the book Trigger Treatment.
And even if you're someone who is listening to this
and shouting at us through the airways with your retorts
or dissents, I challenge you to give this book a read.
(01:01:53):
I am sure that you will come away with a
great understanding of science, the empirical process behind determining whether
or not something has efficacy or does it. Then all
(01:02:15):
of the things that we were talking about is a
healthy dose of understanding things like place Ebo effect for
some of these modalities that we were talking about. I
do share doctor Ernst's concerns and pessimism about some of
the things that we're hearing from either so called experts,
(01:02:35):
or certain regions of the Internet where people claim to
be knowledgeable about health and giving advice. I would be
skeptical of the buzzwords that you hear frequently, people calling
themselves quote unquote holistic practitioners or integrative practitioners. These are
(01:02:59):
all cold words for some of the unproven methodologies and
modalities that doctor Ernst has spoken about. For instance, if
you hear someone fear mongering about something as benign as
(01:03:20):
food coloring in foods, or at least we know empirically
that food coloring in food is relatively benign, no impact
health wise, but yet at the same time they're promoting
cocktails of supplements that could have anything in them or
(01:03:40):
nothing in them, then that's a good indication that the
person claiming to be an expert has willingly bought into
a fundamentalist or ideological dogma. Simply put, they are not
utilizing the scientific method in their approach to evaluation. And
(01:04:03):
why should we focus on science? Well, the answer to that,
as you heard in the conversation, quite simply it works.
And insofar as science has been wrong, the answer to
that has always been better science leading us to where
we are today. And so when we look at the
earliest humans, it's a couple hundred thousand to a few
(01:04:26):
hundred thousand years ago. You died by the age of
thirty years old, and that stayed the same for hundreds
of thousands of years, all the way up until the
nineteenth century. You go to the nineteenth century, somewhere between
(01:04:51):
eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, we only picked up about
a handful of years. Right now, you died by the
a age of somewhere between thirty five and forty. That's
in the nineteenth century. So for all those hundreds of
thousands of years, everyone was living and eating quote unquote
(01:05:14):
natural and eating organic right. There was no industrialization, there
was no agriculture yet, food environment that we see today,
no pollution so called technological radiation, and you still died
(01:05:39):
at thirty to thirty five years old. These high mortality
rates were largely driven in deaths in the infancy and
in the teenage years. This was the perilous period that
many humans just didn't survive. The point being here is
(01:05:59):
that wisdom quote unquote ancient wisdom didn't help us. The
idea that a demon was possessing your body when you
sneezed that didn't help, right, lack of understanding of germs,
disease and other pathologies that didn't help. And unfortunately, only
(01:06:23):
eating things that you could catch and kill or things
that grew out of the ground or grew off trees.
Even that didn't help. But what did help. Science and
medicine helped in the late nineteenth century epidemiology, the study
(01:06:46):
of disease that helped vaccination, probably the greatest discovery in
the history of medicine that helped, Antibiotics, medical image, insulin,
you can go on and on. These are all things
that helped increase the life expectancy from thirty thirty five
(01:07:10):
years to eighty five plus years. What we're seeing with
some of this information coming out of regions and pockets
of the internet, as well as from some politicians, is
a shocking display of Dunning Krueger effect, which is to
(01:07:33):
say that they speak with very high confidence, but as
you hear the words that are coming out of their mouth,
it's clear that that is paired with very low understanding
and knowledge of what it is they profess to speak about.
(01:07:56):
I recognize that oftentimes that this is not done deliberately
or purposefully. Sometimes it's just the case that the individuals
have confused the difference between what's true and what they
(01:08:17):
want to be true, which are two entirely different things.
And so the inoculation for this is the scientific method,
and that conjures up Fineman's principle. The great physicist Richard
Feinmann about the scientific method once remarked, the first principle
(01:08:39):
is that you must not fool yourself, and you are
the easiest person to fool. Hope this helps and thank
you for your time.
Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Follow Event Horizon and Durance Sport on Instagram, Facebook, Threads,
and x for training and nutrition programs and on demand learning.
To become a member of our Endurance Institute, or for
complete archive of podcasts, log on to our website Event
(01:09:15):
Horizon dot tv.
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