To the Nourished, Balanced, & Thriving
(and those still striving) –

As NBT’s resident performance psychologist, I focus on teaching skills to optimize mindset for health and performance, or how to get out of your own way when it matters. For this highlights email, rather than drill down into some obscure noggin-fix to unblock your mental toilet, I wanted to focus on something much more endemic – our tendency to cling to beliefs despite the evidence. As the famed British biologist, Thomas Huxley, pointed out: “The tragedy of science is a beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact.”

Here at the NBT HQ, we’re a bit like an island of misfit toys. We’ve all spent years in our respective trenches and towers grinding through the rule books of medicine, biochemistry, nutritional science, health coaching, neuroscience, strength and conditioning, computational science, psychology and behavior change, and we all realized that we have one humongous pet peeve in common – we’re frequently frustrated with the intellectual and clinical status quo that drives many recommendations that spout from our fields. Many recommendations are so baffling that we wonder how some practitioners can still claim certain things to be so (I feel a Top Ten list coming!), while some “should-know-betters” appear to be looking at the scientific evidence with horse-sized blinkers. At NBT, we discuss these controversies in our private Slack channel devoted to current topics in medicine and health science. We do this to fact-check and gut-check our own conclusions but, more importantly, so we can try to titrate fair, evidence-based advice through to you.

As a psychologist, I’m fascinated by the reasons we cling to questionable ideas and belief systems – especially those that aren’t intentionally deceitful. Virtually every human brain has the same kryptonite – belief perseverance – the curious yet predictable research finding that the longer we’ve held a belief, the harder it is to replace with a better ‘truth.’ The more you have skin in the game (meaning the more you have at stake should your belief be contested or falsified), it becomes even harder to shove aside the old and bring in the new.

Yes, yes, I hear you say, that’s what science is for – we use a systematic and consensus-built set of tools to test hypotheses, not just about what could be probable or improbable, but to audit, verify and ultimately trust the ways we acquire knowledge. Science is a remarkably robust system for pressure testing bullshit. The problem is that the human brain has evolved such a sophisticated web of subconscious shortcuts for difficult thinking (called cognitive biases), that it’s able to pull the wool over the eyes of even the most logical and, yes, scientific of minds. We distort, bend, filter and obfuscate in 104 subtle ways that we often don’t realize we’re doing it. And before you start nodding in agreement about how “they” are guilty of it – “them” also refers to you and us.

We all distort. Even you. It comes from having a head organ that is both immeasurably complex yet measurably flawed. And “we” doesn’t even have to have a pulse. Bias can emerge from a group, organization, or an institution, such as science itself. But is this just a problem of scale because questionable ideas – and how they perpetuate – still have the common rot that is flawed brains flocking together. Using this logic, if we could only eliminate the messiness of human logic entirely and replace biological neurons with artificial ones – ala artificial intelligence – surely we’d have less truthiness and more actual truth? Not so fast. It turns out that even AI methods are infected with bias. Oh Bugger.

Over the past few years, one field stands out as taking more of a beating than most. Welcome to the battlefield of nutrition – and nutritional epidemiology and dietetics in particular. There are many legitimate scientific reasons for some of the questionable findings in nutrition, but there have been plenty of “really,-that’s-what-you’re-sticking-with?” moments, too. Consider some of the stupefying expert opinions based on misreads of scientific evidence, or the recent scandal of research misconduct and data fabrication by a leading scholar of food science at Cornell. If you like your scandals juicer and more conspiratorial, then try the institutional stonewalling of scientific support for low-carbohydrate diets, which has led some to draw parallels with the Protestant Reformation.

We can debate ad nauseum the role of human intentionality in these distortions and untruths but what is almost certainly true is that the parties involve all probably believe themselves to be telling the ‘truth.’ The delicious irony that emerges from the study of decision making is that we tend to judge our own beliefs and behaviors in a different way than we judge those of others. For example, when it comes to questionable ethical practices we judge ourselves based on our internal motives, but judge others on their cold hard actions. In other words, we find ways to fit the evidence to our belief system, not the other way around. And critically, because I don’t have a front row seat to your motives, I simply judge you on what comes out of your mouth or what you do. But when we defend our own (biased) thinking or questionable behavior, we tend to trot out the extenuating circumstances or the “…but-this-is-different” explanations as if it was opening day of the Derby. If you want to read more about why we do this, then look no further than Robert Sapolsky’s, beautiful behemoth, Behave. It’s probably one of the best books I’ve ever read – and that includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

We all like to think that we’re objective thinkers – orbs of rationale sensibleness who hold beliefs lightly and examine evidence critically – yet this idea has been largely debunked by cognitive psychologists and behavioral economists. (And in my case, also by my wife). It turns out that our decision making is mostly biased, and sometimes appallingly so. So, don’t expect legions of status-quo scientists to step aside anytime soon amidst growing criticism over evidence and recommendations about dietary carbohydrate or fat, or mechanistic reasoning in lipidological theory.

Paradigm shifts in science occur not as peaceful interludes of baton-passing, but, in the words of acclaimed physicist and philosopher, Thomas Kuhn, as “intellectually violent revolutions.” There’s a lot at stake in nutritional science, including careers, reputations, and legacy – not just the humble fact.

Winter is coming.

If you enjoy listening to the debates we get into about topics like this, then why not become an NBT Patreon member by clicking here?  As an NBT Patron, you will have access to a smorgasbord of new podcasts unavailable on our regular channel, plus VIP access to our fab new NBT Forum! The Forum is a place where you can ask us questions directly – in real time – or see what other like-minded NBT’ers are doing to solve health complaints similar to yours. You can ask them questions too. So come on over, it’s getting cold outside.

Cheers,

Simon Marshall, PhD.