Seth's Blog

What surprised me most about my self-experimental discoveries was that they were outside my area of expertise (animal learning). I discovered how to sleep better but I’m not a sleep researcher. I discovered how to improve my mood but I’m not a mood researcher. I discovered that flaxseed oil improved brain function but I’m not a nutrition researcher. And so on. This is not supposed to happen. Chemistry professors are not supposed to advance physics.  Long ago, this rule was broken. Mendel was not a biologist, Wegener (continental drift) was not a geologist. It hasn’t been broken in the last 100 years. As knowledge increases, the “gains due to specialization” — the advantage of specialists over everyone else within their area of expertise — is supposed to increase. The advantage, and its growth, seem inevitable. It occurs, say economists, because specialized knowledge (e.g., what physicists know that the rest of us, including chemists, don’t know) increases. My theory of human evolution centers on the idea that humans have evolved to specialize and trade. In my life I use thousands of things made by specialists that I couldn’t begin to make myself.

Here we have two things. 1. A general rule (specialists have a big advantage, within their specialty, over the rest of us) that is overwhelmingly true. 2. An exception (my work). How can this be explained? What can we learn from it? I’ve tried to answer these questions but I can add to what I said in that paper. The power of specialization is clearly enormous. Adam Smith, who called specialization “division of labor”, was right. The existence of an exception to the general rule suggests  there are forces pushing in the opposite direction (toward specialists being worse than the rest of us in their area of expertise) that can be more powerful than the power of specialization. Given the power of specialization, the countervailing forces must be remarkably strong. Can we learn more about them? Can we harness them? Can we increase them? The power of specialization has been increasing for thousands of years. How strong the countervailing forces may become is unclear.

The more you’ve read this blog, the more you know what I think the countervailing forces are. Some of them weaken specialists: 1. Professors prefer to be useless rather than useful (Veblen).  2. A large fraction (99%?) of health care workers have no interest in remedies that do not allow them to make money. 3. Medical school professors are terrible scientists. 4. Restrictions on research. Some of them strengthen the rest of us: 1. Data storage and analysis have become very cheap. 2. It is easier for non-scientists to read the scientific literature. 3. No one cares more about your health than you. These are examples. The list could be much longer. What’s interesting is not the critique of health care, which is pretty obvious, but the apparent power of these forces, which isn’t obvious at all.

I want to learn more about this. I want learn how to use these opposing forces and, if possible, increase them. One way to do this is find more exceptions to the general rule, that is, find more people who have improved their health beyond expert advice. I have found some examples. To find more, to learn more about them, and to encourage this sort of thing (DIY Health), I offer the opportunity to guest-blog here.

I think the fundamental reason you can improve on what health experts tell you is that you can gather data. Health experts have weakened their position by ignoring vast amounts of data. Three kinds of data are helpful:  (a) other people’s experiences, (b) scientific papers and (c) self-measurement (combined with self-experimentation). No doubt (c) is the hardest to collect and the most powerful. I would like to offer one or more people the opportunity to guest-blog here about what happens when they try to do (c). In plain English, I am looking for people who are measuring a health problem  and trying to improve on expert advice. For example, trying to lower blood pressure without taking blood pressure medicine. Or counting pimples to figure out what’s causing your acne. Or measuring your mood to test alternatives to anti-depressants. I don’t care what’s measured, so long as it is health-related. (Exception: no weight-loss stories) and you approach these measurements with an open mind (e.g., not trying to promote some product or theory). I am not trying to collect success stories. I am trying to find out what happens when people take this approach.

Guest-blogging may increase your motivation, push you to think more (“I blog, therefore I think“) and give you access to the collective wisdom of readers of this blog (in the comments). If guest-blogging about your experiences and progress (or lack of it) might interest you, contact me with details of what you are doing or plan to do.

When Clinton was President, Ryan Holiday writes in Trust Me I’m Lying (copy sent me by publisher, Ryan is a friend),

[Matt] Drudge accused prominent journalist and Clinton adviser Sidney  Blumenhthal of a shocking history of spousal abuse — and one covered up by the White House, no less. Except that none of it was true. . . . An anonymous Republican source had whispered into Drudge’s ear to settle a political score against Blumenthal. . . . [Drudge] refused to apologize for the pain caused by his recklessness.

In spite of knowing this, I still read Matt Drudge. I don’t have to. There are a zillion other things to read. That may or may not make me a horrible person but it illustrates the depth of the problem that Ryan writes about: Spreading lies pays.

A more mundane example is press releases. Bloggers love press releases, Ryan says (speaking from experience working at American Apparel). All the work is done for them. So what if press releases are profoundly dishonest in the way they present a half truth (positive stuff about the product) as if it is a whole truth? It’s an easy way to get a few thousand clicks. “I recall sending e-mails to Gawker and Jezebel on several occasions over matters of factual errors and not receiving a response,” writes Ryan. “My anonymous tips seem to arrive in their inboxes just fine — it’s the signed corrections that run into issues.” A car site published a rumor that turned out to be false. A friend of Ryan’s complained that the headline wasn’t fixed:

[Ryan's friend:] Why keep the headline up since we now know it’s not true?
[Car site:] You guys are so funny.

Taking the headline down would generate fewer clicks than leaving it up. Shameless.

“That way lies madness,” I told a friend who worried about how much traffic his blog attracted. Bloggers who will do anything for a click do so, of course, because their salary depends on it, whereas my friend did not get significant income from his blog. Sure, paying bloggers by the click pushes them to write stuff that people want to read — which sounds good, aren’t snobs bad? — except what if people don’t care that much about the truth?

I think of science. Who do professional scientists more closely resemble? 1. Bloggers who will do anything for a click. 2. Disinterested seekers of truth. Well, it’s a job, not a hobby. Science and job are not a good fit (as I’ve written), just as factory food and health are not a good fit. We can see the consequences of the bad fit between factory food and health in the obesity epidemic (which I believe is caused by eating calorie-dense quickly-digested food that tastes exactly the same each time — factory food is much more standardized than food you make yourself) and the epidemic of digestive problems (caused by too-sterile food — factory food is more sterile than food you make yourself). We can see the consequences of the bad fit between science and job in the failure to find solutions to one growing problem after another (obesity, Crohn’s disease, autism, depression, poor sleep, etc.). Trust Me I’m Lying is about the consequences of the poor fit between being paid by the click and caring about the truth of what you write.

Michael Ellsberg has written another fascinating article about how the American Dietetics Association is trying to make it illegal to compete with their members — that is, make it illegal to give nutritional advice without board certification. (His earlier article.) State boards have threatened several bloggers with jail if they continue to provide nutritional advice.

Thanks to Dr. B G.

A blog called Adventures in Nutritional Therapy (started March 2011) is about what the author learned while trying to solve her health problems via nutrition and a few other things. She usually assumed her health problems were due to too much or too little of some nutrient. She puts it like this: “using mostly non-prescription, over-the-counter (OTC) supplements and treatments to address depression, brain fog, insomnia, migraines, hypothyroidism, restless legs, carpal tunnel syndrome, and a bunch of other annoyances.” In contrast to what “the American medical establishment” advises. Mostly it is nutritional self-experimentation about a wide range of health problems.

Interesting things I learned from the archives:

1. Question: Did Lance Armstrong take performance-enhancing drugs? I learned that LiveStrong (Armstrong’s site) is a content farm. Now answer that question again.

2. “If you return repeatedly to a conventional doctor with a problem they can’t solve, they will eventually suggest you need antidepressants.”

3.  “When I mentioned [to Dr. CFS] the mild success I’d had with zinc, he said it was in my mind: I wanted it to work and it did. When I pointed out that 70% of the things I tried didn’t work, he changed the subject. Dr. CFS’ lack of basic reasoning skills did nothing to rebuild my confidence in the health care system.” Quite right. I have had the same experience. Most things I tried failed. When something finally worked, it could hardly be a placebo effect. This line of reasoning has been difficult for some supposedly smart people to grasp.

4. A list of things that helped her with depression. “Quit gluten” is number one.

5. Pepsi caused her to get acne. Same here.

6. 100 mg/day of iron caused terrible acne that persisted for weeks after she stopped taking the iron.

7. “In September 2008 I started a journey that serves as a good example of the limits of the American health care system, where you can go through three months, 15 doctor visits, $7,000 in medical tests, three prescriptions and five over-the-counter medications trying to treat your abdominal pain, and after you lose ten pounds due to said pain, you are asked by the “specialists” if you have an eating disorder.” I agree. Also an example of the inability of people within the American health care system to see those limits.  If they recognized that people outside their belief system might have something valuable to contribute, apparently something awful would happen.

8. Acupuncture relieved her sciatica, but not for long. “By the time I left [the acupuncturist's office] the pain was gone, but it crept back during my 30-minute drive home.”

9. Pointing out many wrongs does not equal a right. She praises a talk by Robert Lustig about evil fructose. I am quite sure that fructose (by itself) did not cause the obesity epidemic. For one thing, I lost a lot of weight by drinking it. (Here is an advanced discussion.) In other words, being a good critic of other people’s work (as Lustig may be) doesn’t get you very far. I think it is hard for non-scientists (and even some scientists) to understand that all scientific work has dozens of “flaws”. Pointing out the flaws in this or that is little help, unless those flaws haven’t been noticed. What usually helps isn’t seeing flaws, it is seeing what can be learned.

10. A list of what caused headaches and migraines. One was MSG. Another was Vitamin D3, because it made her Vitamin B1 level too low.

She is a good writer. Mostly I found support for my beliefs: 1. Of the two aspects of self-experimentation (measure, change),  change is more powerful. She does little or no self-tracking  (= keeping records) as far as I could tell, yet has made a lot of progress. She has done a huge amount of trying different things. 2. Nutritional deficiencies cause a lot of problems. 3. Fermented food is overlooked. She never tries it, in spite of major digestive problems. She does try probiotics. 4. American health care is exceedingly messed-up. As she puts it, “the American medical establishment has no interest in this approach [which often helped her] and, when they do deign to discuss it, don’t know what the #%@! they’re talking about.” 5. “Over the years I’ve found accounts of personal experiences to be very helpful.” I agree. Her blog and mine are full of them.

Thanks to Alexandra Carmichael.

More Her latest post mentions me (“The fella after my own heart is Seth Roberts, who after ten years of experimenting . . . “). I was unaware of that when I wrote the above.

• During the Foxconn suicide epidemic, several media outlets said the suicide rate was lower than expected. “Members of the media have been killing off their own credibility at an alarming rate.”
• Fascinating blog about quality control in China. “Factory workers are paid by the number of pieces they make. Sometimes they see they are working on defective goods, but they keep working instead of sending the bad pieces back to the previous operation.”
• The unsustainability of higher education.
• the Dear Abby of math problems. “The next bubble to burst is higher education. . . . It’s too much one-size-fits-all.” And that one size fits the professor.
• BBC radio documentaries
  
• Raw food leaders no longer raw or vegan

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

• Fire Larry Summers Now — a blog by “Thorstein Veblen”. An especially good post. Greg Mankiw distances himself from reality when he calls Veblen “cowardly”. My view of Summers. Nassim Taleb says “short US Treasury bonds as long as Summers is in charge.”
• Chinese museums. I fondly remember the Tap Water Museum.
• The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results is now accepting manuscripts. Better name: Journal of Unexpected Results.
• Philip Weiss on web journalism: “You see someone’s mind in action rather than through 100 corporate filters.”

Thanks to Oskar Pearson and Dave Lull.

Andrew Gelman’s blog has lasted longer than this blog (and was responsible for this blog.) Recently Andrew looked back. It seemed like a good idea so I will follow his lead.

The two big surprises have been how easy it is and how helpful it is. In the beginning it wasn’t easy to find interesting things to say. Somehow it got easier and easier. Partly because I had more ideas — about omega-3, the umami hypothesis and fermented foods, the effect of animal fat on sleep. Partly because readers sent me interesting stuff. Partly because I started teaching at Tsinghua and moved to Beijing part of the year. Partly because the Shangri-La Diet produced results that I wanted to brag about. And — a very big part of it — because there are enough comments here and elsewhere to make me think people are reading it. I think everyone has an innate desire to be listened to. As our concerns and knowledge become more and more specialized, it becomes harder and harder to find an audience. When Spy magazine was around I read every issue three times. I was dying to talk about it with other fans. I couldn’t. I couldn’t find them.

Some of the stuff people have sent me has been incredibly helpful. Most of the examples involve trying my ideas. Taking omega-3 (via flaxseed oil or fish oil). Tyler Cowen’s experience, for example. Tim Lundeen’s results. The effect on sports injuries. Or eating more fermented food. Tucker Max’s experience. Not only does it make the whole subject much easier to talk about, it convinces me I’m on the right track. Some of the examples involve telling me about other more conventional data related to my ideas. For example, I’m very glad to know about hormesis, which supports my ideas about fermented food. Knowing about radiation hormesis makes me stop worrying about the small dose of radiation I get from my cell phone. The recent comment about two morning faces being better than one might turn out to be really helpful and important.

I haven’t read She Stoops to Conquer, an 18th century play, but the title is brilliant. My self-experimenation, I now think, had a dose of that because I was willing to do something as humble as study myself whereas most scientists wouldn’t stoop to that. Too low-status. Blogging has a lot of that. How many Berkeley professors blog? Uh, Brad DeLong? And someone else, rarely. Blogging is beneath them. Whereas half of Tsinghua students have blogs. They aren’t worried about appearing undignified. The phrase keeping up with the Joneses means your car has to be at least as expensive as your neighbor’s car, and so on. A kind of arms race. Such an arms race goes on in science: What you must do to appear high status takes up more and more of your resources, leaving less and less to actually make progress. So less and less progress is made. Self-experimentation breaks out of that vicious cycle. Blogging is the same thing more generally. Supposedly professors, especially at a place like Berkeley, have interesting things to say. But the demands of status, as Veblen described in the last chapter of The Theory of the Leisure Class, make it harder and harder for them to say them. Blogging breaks out of that vicious cycle.

When I taught introductory psychology I found I could often weave whatever I’d been thinking about into my next lecture. It’s good to start a lecture by saying “Something interesting happened to me a few days ago . . . ” Now I can just blog about it.

Google “Climategate” you get 31 million hits. “Obama” returns 40 million. Yet mainstream media, such as the New York Times, have said little about it. The New Yorker has said nothing about it. Given so much interest, that will change.

Some of my prior beliefs — that empirical support for the view that man has caused global warming is weaker than we’re told, that bloggers are a powerful force for truth — are stronger. But here are a few things I didn’t think of until now:

1. The truth leaks out before it gushes out. Laurie David’s children’s book — its egregious mistake, her blithe dismissal of that mistake — is an example of the truth leaking out. In the Ranjit Chandra case, little facts implied he was a fraud long before this became utterly clear. An example is the claim in one of his papers (published in The Lancet!) that everyone asked agreed to be in his experiment.

2. Teaching is even better done via scandals than via stories. The number of hits for Climategate is an indication of how much people are learning from it. As I blogged earlier, they’re learning a lot about science. A mere story about science would never attract so much attention. I should think more about how to use scandals to teach stuff. When Nassim Taleb is scathing about this or that, he has the right idea. Spy was the perfect example. It taught me a lot about New York City.

3. Jane Jacobs was wrong. Or at least missed something very important. In Dark Age Ahead, her last book, she pointed to a number of disturbing signs. One was the rise of crappy science. She was quite right about that  — as scientists have become more professional they have become more status-oriented and less truth-oriented. She didn’t foresee that the Internet would be an enormously powerful corrective force, as is happening now. Climategate is a (relatively) small example of even bigger force: the rise of the power of sophisticated amateurs/hobbyists. Who, unlike professionals, with jobs and status to protect, have complete freedom. The first big example was printed non-fiction books, as I blogged earlier (which are written with great freedom, usually); but now the Internet provides another great outlet, much faster, cheaper, and more accessible than books, for independent thought.

Emily Nussbaum, the brains behind New York‘s The Approval Matrix, which I read religiously, blogs about television here.

Other magazine journalists I wish would blog: David Owen, Lauren Collins, Mark Singer, Adam Sternbergh.

Interview with Nussbaum.

In his blog, Bryan Caplan makes some amusing and reasonable points about Barbara Ehrenreich’s criticism of some happiness research. My eyes widened as I read. This is so much betterthan what’s usually in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications. It reminded me of Spy, except the level of thought is deeper. It’s as if blogs allow and encourage intelligent people to say what they really think about stuff. Whereas in any mainstream venue there are tremendous constraints.