Speaker 1: I get a team. It's a new project. Doctor Bills back.
Speaker 1: I was going to say my absolute favorite, but that's
Speaker 1: probably not fair, but definitely in my top five favorites.
Speaker 1: And we have a lot of people here and appreciate you, sir.
Speaker 1: It's great to have you back. I love chatting with you.
Speaker 1: I was just pumping up your tires. Have you heard
Speaker 1: that expression pumping up your tires?
Speaker 2: No, but I can gather what it means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an Australian expression for kind of you know,
Speaker 1: telling you you're amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you're pumping up someone's tires, you're making
Speaker 1: them feel good. But it's you know, in this case,
Speaker 1: it's genuine how have you been?
Speaker 2: I've been great?
Speaker 3: And let me just say it's it's always a pleasure
Speaker 3: to come back to your podcast. It's you know, I
Speaker 3: really enjoy speaking with you.
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: What are you not necessarily about this one? But in general,
Speaker 1: like doing this is probably the easiest, and by easiest,
Speaker 1: I just mean the less, the least pressure, the most comfortable.
Speaker 1: This is almost the easiest way to do right.
Speaker 3: Probably most of the other interviews are more formal, and
Speaker 3: they play into my credentials in biomedicine, and the advice
Speaker 3: that I might be giving is, you know, more like
Speaker 3: standard of care type of thing.
Speaker 2: So it is a pleasure to.
Speaker 3: Come on here in a little more of an informal
Speaker 3: atmosphere and you know, just shoot the breeze about various topics.
Speaker 1: I used to work in television for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and by a little bit I mean a few years,
Speaker 1: but like a weekly thing, and my weekly thing was
Speaker 1: anywhere between five and seven minutes. So I'd literally leave home,
Speaker 1: drive into the city. You know, you've done it before,
Speaker 1: you've done television, and you go in and you get
Speaker 1: you sit in makeup, and they put stuff on you,
Speaker 1: and you get prepped and they wire you up and
Speaker 1: then and it's just this, it's a really impractical, impossible
Speaker 1: way to deliver quality information and build any kind of
Speaker 1: connection and rapport because you walk onto the TV set
Speaker 1: between ads, you sit down, they count you down, and
Speaker 1: then they kind of intro the show, and then they
Speaker 1: intro you, and then they talk to you for three
Speaker 1: or four minutes, and half the talking is them, and
Speaker 1: then it's like that's quite carperence, you know, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that we can't say, you know,
Speaker 1: we really it's a really difficult way to share genuine
Speaker 1: insight and helpful information because the practical reality of the
Speaker 1: situation is you've got almost no time to talk.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: You got time enough for maybe three or four bullet points,
Speaker 3: and you don't have time to discuss caveats or pitfalls
Speaker 3: with any of those. So your message really has to
Speaker 3: be filtered to a degree where sometimes it's almost meaningless.
Speaker 3: So it can be frustrating at times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, especially when especially the interviewer or interviewers have
Speaker 4: they've got a little b in their bonnet about a
Speaker 4: particular angle, or they want to know, they want to
Speaker 4: dive in on something, and they have an opinion and
Speaker 4: they almost want your endorsement when you're like, well.
Speaker 1: It isn't exactly that. And then but don't you think though,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you know, now, we're about opinion,
Speaker 1: we're not about science or information. But yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I love about this. I mean for me being able
Speaker 1: to talk. You know, you and I can talk for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, we can talk for an hour, We can
Speaker 1: go wherever we want to go. We don't need to
Speaker 1: throw to an ad we don't need to keep the
Speaker 1: sponsors happy. We have sponsors, but you know, there's no interruption,
Speaker 1: you know. So for me, the free range kind of
Speaker 1: capacity to be able to just conversationally go wherever we
Speaker 1: want is quite liberating in especially in a time twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five where everything is five second posts in ten
Speaker 1: second reels and sound bites and grabs. You know.
Speaker 3: Now, it's really refreshing to be able to go deeper
Speaker 3: on some of these issues and you get at the
Speaker 3: nuance of some of these topics. And the other bonus
Speaker 3: is that when you post these on your Facebook, Craig,
Speaker 3: your listeners are fantastic. They ask some intelligent questions or
Speaker 3: ask for resources, and it's great to be able to
Speaker 3: have that venue to follow up on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And if you are a listener and you don't,
Speaker 1: you're not part of the Facebook group. So it's just
Speaker 1: the You Project podcast Facebook group. And yeah, we post
Speaker 1: every episode that goes up, We talk about it and
Speaker 1: feel free to jump in there. And if you've got
Speaker 1: a question or you've got any thoughts on potential guests,
Speaker 1: hit us up and we'll see how we go. But
Speaker 1: we love having that community, and I love creating something
Speaker 1: that's you know, thankfully for the most part, very positive.
Speaker 1: We have very very little negativity in that space, which
Speaker 1: is just a little bit of a light in the
Speaker 1: the social media darkness sometimes. So I'm very grateful to
Speaker 1: that for all of that from all of our listeners.
Speaker 1: Speaking of such things, I was looking at something on
Speaker 1: something came across my social media landscape, and that was
Speaker 1: some guy being hysterical about the fact that this new
Speaker 1: study is out and we're not going to dive into
Speaker 1: the study. I just want to talk about this thing.
Speaker 1: This where you know, there's there's apparently that the COVID
Speaker 1: vaccine is causing all this cancer and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a new research study. It's out from
Speaker 1: South Korea. And I thought, well, one, either that's crap,
Speaker 1: or two they're you know, they're misinterpreting something or or
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist right. And quite often these things when
Speaker 1: you go to try to find that research, the research
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. Anyway, the paper does exist, and I had
Speaker 1: a look at it, and yes, the video clip was
Speaker 1: quite misrepresentative to say the least, But does that frustrate
Speaker 1: you being a researcher and being someone who's only interested
Speaker 1: in truth and facts and science where you see things
Speaker 1: or things get brought to your attention which are super
Speaker 1: duper misleading and very very incomplete.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it concerns me on a number of levels
Speaker 3: because when and just full disclaimer, I have not read
Speaker 3: that study. In fact, Craig was one of the first
Speaker 3: to bring it to my attention today. It's brand new,
Speaker 3: so I don't have you know, I can't speak one
Speaker 3: way or the other on it. All I can tell
Speaker 3: you is there's a lot of other studies that have
Speaker 3: been done that's say, the exact opposite, absolutely no link
Speaker 3: between COVID nineteen and increased cancer. So it's probably a
Speaker 3: red herring. But the upshot of the question boils down
Speaker 3: to this sensationalism or you know, a study that comes
Speaker 3: out that may bolster someone's by or preconceived notions gets
Speaker 3: a lot more press than the many other studies that
Speaker 3: are that show the opposite result. And this is known
Speaker 3: as confirmation bias. And when you're cherry picking data and
Speaker 3: just representing one side of the story that happens to
Speaker 3: align with whatever your personal beliefs might be, that does
Speaker 3: a disservice to the entire biomedical community. It does a
Speaker 3: disservice to your listeners. I think it's irresponsible to not,
Speaker 3: you know, weigh both sides of the equation with you know,
Speaker 3: an equal you know, an equal amount that correlates with
Speaker 3: the amount of evidence that's out there. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're going to say this one study shows this, I
Speaker 3: think it's responsible to say there are many other studies, however,
Speaker 3: that do.
Speaker 2: Not show this effect.
Speaker 3: I think that is just giving the audience fair and
Speaker 3: balanced information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally great. And even the ULSA is in that pipe,
Speaker 1: which that the highlight real thing that I saw on
Speaker 1: social media didn't mention this. Authors basically say this doesn't
Speaker 1: in any way reflect causation and it may not. Like
Speaker 1: there's lots of more research that needs to be done,
Speaker 1: so they actually weren't claiming anything but that paper if
Speaker 1: people want to look at it, it is one year.
Speaker 1: Risks of Cancer associated with COVID nineteen vaccination was published
Speaker 1: September twenty six. But if you want to save yourself
Speaker 1: some time, I had a scan this morning and it's
Speaker 1: relatively inert. It doesn't really say a whole lot more
Speaker 1: than what we've just spoken about. Speaking about things that
Speaker 1: might affect our body. There has been will definitely affect
Speaker 1: our body. There was a bit of controversy about what's
Speaker 1: called thailand ol in the States, and we call it paracetamol,
Speaker 1: and an alleged link between that and autism. And I
Speaker 1: might get some of this wrong. I'm not all over it,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure RFK, who for some reason is
Speaker 1: like the health minister or something. What is his job?
Speaker 1: How the fun did you get that job?
Speaker 3: That's a really great question. Well, he got that job
Speaker 3: because he's a Trump loyalist. Basically, he is woefully unqualified
Speaker 3: to be the Secretary of HHS, which is the American
Speaker 3: Health and Human Services. This is a guy who literally said,
Speaker 3: no one should be taking medical advice from me. But
Speaker 3: that's his freaking job. It's to give medical advice. So
Speaker 3: your question is really on point. How in the world
Speaker 3: did we come to this point. It's an excellent question,
Speaker 3: and it boils down to politics. Unfortunately, it does not
Speaker 3: boil down to what's in the public's best interest.
Speaker 1: Hmmm. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like me being a direct
Speaker 1: point of the creative director of the bolsho or ballet
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. It's like, no, Craig, you're
Speaker 1: not a good bit for that. You have no talent,
Speaker 1: you're not creative, you can't dance. So the allegation or
Speaker 1: the message was that it causes potentially there's a lot
Speaker 1: doesn't cause, but there's a potential link to increased rates
Speaker 1: of autism with women, pregnant women, was it? I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: pregnant women using tailanol. Where did that claim come from?
Speaker 1: And what's the actual skinny on it? What's the truth?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So this this was a disastrous press conference on a
Speaker 3: number of different levels. First of all, they completely mischaracterized
Speaker 3: what autism really is as a you know, as a condition,
Speaker 3: and very insensitively painted everyone on the spectrum with a
Speaker 3: very wide, you know, a very broad brush, and it
Speaker 3: really misrepresented and offended a lot of people with who
Speaker 3: are on the ASD spectrum. It's autism spectrum disorder. But
Speaker 3: getting to the point about the drug, a set of
Speaker 3: menafin or what we call tailanol in the States, paracetamol,
Speaker 3: I guess is what you guys referred to it as
Speaker 3: all the same drug, same molecule, And this press conference
Speaker 3: pointed to a series of very dubious studies that were
Speaker 3: summarized in a review article suggesting that there may be
Speaker 3: a link between people who are pregnant taking tylenol and
Speaker 3: then having children who have an increase increased risk for
Speaker 3: developing autism. So there was no nuance provided here and
Speaker 3: no mention of studies that proved otherwise. So it was
Speaker 3: a really irrespondsible announcement. Just unbelievable that this came from
Speaker 3: an HHS secretary in the States, because that position commands
Speaker 3: a great deal of attention worldwide. You know, many people
Speaker 3: outside of the US pay attention to what our Human
Speaker 3: and Health Services Office states. So this has the potential
Speaker 3: to be, you know, quite devastating for families because what
Speaker 3: it might end up doing is steering pregnant people away
Speaker 3: from taking a medication that could be very important with
Speaker 3: respect to curing pain and fever during a pregnancy. Pain
Speaker 3: and fever are known to produce miscarriage, stillbirths, birth defects,
Speaker 3: and wait for it, autism. So by discouraging people from
Speaker 3: taking this medication, you actually may be increasing the risk
Speaker 3: of autism. So it boils down to your question, where
Speaker 3: did this come from? Well, it came from this one
Speaker 3: dubious review article that cherry picks studies that showed a
Speaker 3: very tiny risk which was not emphasized in this press conference.
Speaker 3: The risk is extremely small of autism being developed, and
Speaker 3: they failed to mention two studies that were much larger,
Speaker 3: much better controlled, and did what we call a sibling
Speaker 3: pair analysis, which controlled for a confounding variable of genetics,
Speaker 3: because that is the main driver of autism. If you
Speaker 3: talk to anyone with a medical or scientific background, it
Speaker 3: boils down to genetics. But this paper, what this press
Speaker 3: conference was trying to say, Actually, I think I have
Speaker 3: a quote here from Trump, who had to chime in,
Speaker 3: of course. He said tail and all is quote not good,
Speaker 3: quite like hell, not to take it, and even admonished
Speaker 3: women to just tough it out. You know, just you
Speaker 3: have a fever of one hundred and five, just tough
Speaker 3: it out. You're going to tell the fetus to tough
Speaker 3: it out too, you know. It was extraordinarily insensitive and
Speaker 3: irresponsible from from a biomedical scientist's position. And we can
Speaker 3: we can go over some of the data which I
Speaker 3: think might help your listeners understand a little bit better
Speaker 3: where I'm coming from.
Speaker 2: But does everything make sense so far? Great?
Speaker 1: Plain? Yeah, Yeah, I just I know Trump has no filter,
Speaker 1: but it just to me, I'm like, even he must
Speaker 1: realize sometimes surely, surely you're not the guy to comment
Speaker 1: and even if you think something, you don't know it
Speaker 1: and I don't anyway. Yep, all right, give us give
Speaker 1: us some of the stuff. Anton.
Speaker 3: I actually that that reminds me of something, Craig. I
Speaker 3: would love to hear your interpretation, you know, as being
Speaker 3: a representative of all of Australia, which I'm sure you are. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what you what your country thinks of what has happened
Speaker 3: with respect to you know, this press conference and so on,
Speaker 3: How how your government agencies responded. I'm sure they refuted
Speaker 3: the claims and encouraged your medical professions to continue giving
Speaker 3: paracetamol during pregnancy for pain and fever, as did like
Speaker 3: every other worldwide uh medical organization. So we can circle
Speaker 3: back to that at the end, because I'd love to hear,
Speaker 3: you know, an outsider's perspective on how you're perceiving the US.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, let's let's get to that light. But definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean they're just my thoughts, but yeah, so give us,
Speaker 1: give us the deeper kind of understanding of what we're
Speaker 1: not understanding with this tile now autism kind of issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, so, first, a little bit of common sense,
Speaker 3: you know, that can dispel it pretty quickly. Two thirds
Speaker 3: of pregnant women in the US take Thailand all for
Speaker 3: pain and fever, and the standard of care is to
Speaker 3: give as little as possible for as short as possible. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's that's just the standard of care. That's not a
Speaker 3: great revelation that RFK made. So when you consider the
Speaker 3: sheer number of pregnant women in the US taking Thailand
Speaker 3: all already, and the fact that two thirds of our
Speaker 3: kids do not have ASD you know, it's actually less
Speaker 3: than one it's actually less than three percent, and only
Speaker 3: one fourth of that three percent have the severe and
Speaker 3: profound autism that RFK misled people to believe that's what
Speaker 3: everybody with autism is like, gross misrepresentation. You can see
Speaker 3: right off the bat that these number don't make any sense.
Speaker 3: They don't align, you know, in any meaningful way. Many
Speaker 3: people use thailanol without incident. Autism cases have been documented
Speaker 3: prior to the introduction of tailanol. It wasn't mass marketed
Speaker 3: until the late fifties, but there's plenty of cases in
Speaker 3: the literature for autism, spectrum disorder, and even profound autism.
Speaker 3: So that doesn't make any sense. The studies that they
Speaker 3: were citing were correlational, just like the South Korean study
Speaker 3: that you mentioned claiming a correlation between the COVID vaccine
Speaker 3: and certain cancers. It's not causation. There's a wonderful meme
Speaker 3: that circulates that illustrates the dangers of drawing conclusions from
Speaker 3: correlative studies.
Speaker 2: You can make a.
Speaker 3: Graph of rising autism diagnoses and the amount the popularity
Speaker 3: of organic foods in marketplace and low and hold they correlate. Okay,
Speaker 3: both of those graphs go up in the same direction.
Speaker 3: So what RFK might have you believe if he was
Speaker 3: reading this graph based on his interpretation of this data,
Speaker 3: is that, oh, organic foods cause autism. So correlation doesn't
Speaker 3: mean anything unless you have a biological mechanism, So we
Speaker 3: have to keep that limitation in mind. The association, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned before, is also very small. It's one point
Speaker 3: one times more. That translates to less than ten percent
Speaker 3: greater risk. To put that in perspective, let's consider the
Speaker 3: increased risk that smoking does for lung cancer. That's a
Speaker 3: ten to twenty times greater risk, which translates to almost
Speaker 3: a thousand percent greater risk. So these studies that they
Speaker 3: were citing were marginal at best. Okay, no dose dependent
Speaker 3: effect was ever recorded, which means, like you would expect
Speaker 3: that the more tail and all taken during pregnancy, the
Speaker 3: higher the risk or more severe autism should show up.
Speaker 3: That's not the case. There's that that doesn't hold up,
Speaker 3: and there's no mechanism that's been proposed. If you're going
Speaker 3: to tell me Thailand all causes autism, I want you
Speaker 3: to tell me at a molecular level how that's happening.
Speaker 3: And nothing like that exists. Same with the COVID nineteen
Speaker 3: vaccine and this cancer link. Okay, fine, tell me how
Speaker 3: in the world that can possibly happen. I haven't heard
Speaker 3: any plausible model. So those are the things that I
Speaker 3: need in place before my government makes some kind of
Speaker 3: you know, sledge hammer demand that we should stop using
Speaker 3: a seat of menafin during during pregnancy.
Speaker 2: I've got yeah, go ahead, ask a question.
Speaker 1: I'm just sorry, I'm just I'm being completely silly here,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking about correlation versus causation, right, I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a graph. In fact, I probably
Speaker 1: might do this on social media because I'm a fucking idiot.
Speaker 1: But like in the last ten years, we've seen both
Speaker 1: electric cars, the use of electric cars go through the roof,
Speaker 1: and diabetes.
Speaker 3: Now I'm not obviously Craig, you know those electric cars
Speaker 3: are causing diabetes.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that can't just be a coincidence, Professor
Speaker 1: Bill Happy, I mean.
Speaker 2: Go publish it, Go publish it.
Speaker 1: I think I think I've just solved the type two
Speaker 1: diabetes crisis. We just got to, I think, go back
Speaker 1: to internal combustion engines, get rid of electric cars. Problem solved.
Speaker 1: You welcome world. That sounds ridiculous, but it's not that
Speaker 1: far away, is it.
Speaker 2: No principle, that's exactly what's happening here.
Speaker 3: Because what you need to think about in these studies
Speaker 3: tailan al. They're claiming there's an association with autism. There's
Speaker 3: no plausible mechanism for how that can happen, at least
Speaker 3: nothing that I've read. So what that might be indicating
Speaker 3: to us is that it's an indirect effect. What are
Speaker 3: these pregnant people taking the tilenol for. Is it an infection?
Speaker 3: Is it some kind of pain disorder. Maybe that's what's
Speaker 3: causing the autism. You know, that's a study that's worth
Speaker 3: following up on. But you don't come out and say,
Speaker 3: Thailand All's causing it, because that could be a total
Speaker 3: red herring, meaning it could be totally an indirect effect,
Speaker 3: and you're going to miss out on what the direct
Speaker 3: effect is. Okay, you can, you can take away tailand
Speaker 3: all from pregnant women, but still not fix this problem
Speaker 3: because that wasn't the issue to begin with. So that's
Speaker 3: that's why these these types of reckless announcements are just
Speaker 3: so dangerous and not serving the public well. And the
Speaker 3: biggest sin that they committed at this press conference was
Speaker 3: that bigger and better studies have been done and there's
Speaker 3: no link whatsoever between the use of a set of
Speaker 3: menace and during pregnancy and the risk of autism. And
Speaker 3: what those studies have found point to the confounding variable
Speaker 3: of genetics, and the way they do that is they
Speaker 3: compare siblings, which is something these other studies never did.
Speaker 3: And when you compare siblings, which rules out the genetic
Speaker 3: factor or you know, allows it to be considered, there's
Speaker 3: no link whatsoever that the set of metaphemetic medication was
Speaker 3: not a player here. So what are these two studies? Well,
Speaker 3: there was one in Sweden conduct in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: It's the largest study on this topic ever conducted to date.
Speaker 3: It involved two point five million children monitored over twenty
Speaker 3: six years. You couldn't ask for a better and more
Speaker 3: comprehensive study, and they found no link when they did
Speaker 3: disibling pair analysis. And if one study is not good
Speaker 3: enough for you, well in Japan there was another study
Speaker 3: done just this year two hundred thousand children. It's not
Speaker 3: in the millions, but two hundred thousands in appreciable study.
Speaker 3: I would call that a good size. Again, found absolutely
Speaker 3: no link when the sibling pair when genetics was considered.
Speaker 3: All the scientific and medical societies that I'm aware of,
Speaker 3: including the American Academy for Pediatrics, American College of Obgyn,
Speaker 3: and the World Health Organization, all of them denounced this
Speaker 3: press conference and reiterated that tailanol is absolutely safe to
Speaker 3: give for pain and fever during pregnancy, and in fact
Speaker 3: it should be given because that can cause complications if
Speaker 3: you don't treat it, and there's no other medicine that's safer,
Speaker 3: and there's no compelling evidence of the link, you know,
Speaker 3: based on these two very large recent studies that have
Speaker 3: been conducted. The AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics characterized
Speaker 3: this press conference as quote filled with dangerous claims and
Speaker 3: misleading information. And that's just inexcusable in our government officials.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting is that like the actual lack
Speaker 1: of transparency and scientific kind of integrity, Like they're standing
Speaker 1: up there going, this is the real science. This is
Speaker 1: what they don't want you to know. And it's really
Speaker 1: just a it's just as you were talking about before.
Speaker 1: It's really just confirmation bias playing out where we're looking
Speaker 1: at this thing which is not a very well run
Speaker 1: study with this dodgy what we call an Australia dodgy
Speaker 1: evidence or whatever interpretation of results versus these mega studies
Speaker 1: that we're not talking about that actually contradict what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. I mean, it's the funny thing about science
Speaker 1: and scientists is that every scientist has got an opinion
Speaker 1: and emotions and an identity and a brand. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I'm doing a PhD. So I'm not throwing
Speaker 1: me and you under the bus. But the problem is
Speaker 1: that it's so hard to find people who are truly
Speaker 1: truly I mean especially in the public space. I mean
Speaker 1: perhaps where they don't care about the outcome. They just
Speaker 1: want the outcome, like whatever that is, Like they don't
Speaker 1: have an emotional or a financial or a career kind
Speaker 1: of interest.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, how do we just get to truth without
Speaker 1: putting all the bullshit, without putting all the confirmation bias
Speaker 1: and the intolerance and the agendas. And yeah, that's and
Speaker 1: for the average punter who listens to this, who isn't
Speaker 1: a scientist or a researcher, or a medical professional or
Speaker 1: a health professional, no wonder, it's confusing and no wonder.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we don't know. It's like we've got more information
Speaker 1: than ever and more confusion than ever. It's tricky, I
Speaker 1: think for the average person to know who to trust,
Speaker 1: who to pay attention to. You know, even with us
Speaker 1: and we're not pointing people in a direction, We're trying
Speaker 1: to have a rational conversation about something that's been big news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that doesn't bid well for the future, not
Speaker 3: just the US, but globally. And you know, I think
Speaker 3: this is a global trend as we become more and
Speaker 3: more saturated with information, and we have a bunch of
Speaker 3: non experts or adjacent experts getting out there and just
Speaker 3: saying a bunch of stuff that is not true, or
Speaker 3: is downright misleading, or is a flat out lie. And
Speaker 3: they're doing this for attention or for money, and it's
Speaker 3: or maybe they think they are doing it for a
Speaker 3: good cause. But what it boils down to at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, like you said, the public is
Speaker 3: not getting the information they need. You know, we can't
Speaker 3: be experts in everything. We rely on experts to tell
Speaker 3: us what's up and to give us evidence based policy
Speaker 3: and guidelines so that we can protect ourselves and our families.
Speaker 2: And if we.
Speaker 3: Destroy that system of trust, you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: where we go as a species moving forward. We're going
Speaker 3: to implode because people will be making decisions that just
Speaker 3: aren't based in reality and that can be absolutely devastating
Speaker 3: for them and their family. And that's what really breaks
Speaker 3: my heart. You know, I've been studying, like, you know,
Speaker 3: biomedicine for thirty some years now, and then people come
Speaker 3: and show some YouTube video to me of someone who
Speaker 3: has absolutely no experience or hasn't been in the trenches
Speaker 3: on this and they ask me what I think, and like,
Speaker 3: why would you even consider taking this person's advice?
Speaker 2: What credentials do they have?
Speaker 3: You know, what have they done in their lives to
Speaker 3: contribute to biomedicine.
Speaker 2: And it's just such a.
Speaker 3: Misorientation of you know, of what we should be paying
Speaker 3: attention to.
Speaker 2: And it's quite scary.
Speaker 3: You know, I was not caught car mechanic to do
Speaker 3: heart surgery on me, and vice versa. We have to
Speaker 3: be able to trust and rely on experts. And when
Speaker 3: you have a government telling you not to trust the experts,
Speaker 3: you've got a real serious problem in your hands.
Speaker 1: That's true. I feel like for you, I feel your pain,
Speaker 1: Like I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, you know
Speaker 1: and you're not You're not perfect, but you know a
Speaker 1: lot and this is your field and you are an expert,
Speaker 1: and I think it must be must be frustrating for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not at your level, will probably never be at
Speaker 1: your level in anything. But you know, I've owned multiple gyms,
Speaker 1: I've worked in the fitness industry in my whole life.
Speaker 1: I've trained thousands of humans, work with tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of bodies, and sometimes you know when people are talking
Speaker 1: about training or something that I absolutely know, not I
Speaker 1: think or I guess. It's like no, I know this
Speaker 1: for certain because I've been in the middle of this
Speaker 1: thousands of times and somebody says something and it's completely untrue.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, it's a little bit wrong, it's
Speaker 1: completely wrong, but they say it with such conviction, right
Speaker 1: or Probably the most misused phrase on the Internet in
Speaker 1: regards to science or alleged science or health or wellness
Speaker 1: information is research tells us. All somebody's got to do
Speaker 1: is preface any fucking statement with research tells us, and
Speaker 1: then people think that's science. I'm like, research doesn't tell
Speaker 1: us that. Or when people go, oh, I've done my
Speaker 1: own research, I go, what does that mean? Tell me
Speaker 1: what your research entailed, because no, disrespect, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: you've done no research. Maybe you jumped on the internet
Speaker 1: and looked at things that isn't research.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you don't need a lab code to do that.
Speaker 1: No no?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh well, so is there any light at the end
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, Like what is the what is the panacea?
Speaker 1: Like how do we is it just people like you
Speaker 1: and me talking about this publicly and like pushing back
Speaker 1: a little bit and trying to shine a lot on that.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll answer that question, but I do want to
Speaker 3: touch on a point you made, and it's just my
Speaker 3: personal opinion.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I haven't done my googling on this, Craig. So I
Speaker 3: would imagine research shows that it's our negativity bias that
Speaker 3: has a lot to do with this, because experts and
Speaker 3: doctors are wrong from time to time, or you know,
Speaker 3: they say one thing, new studies come out and they
Speaker 3: change their mind you know.
Speaker 2: That's how that's how we progress.
Speaker 3: Right, If we never changed our minds, that means we're
Speaker 3: not learning from new data that came out, So that
Speaker 3: should be part and parcel part of the process. And
Speaker 3: I think that's misunderstood. And when we hear about a
Speaker 3: doctor who did something bad, or you know, a scientific
Speaker 3: study that was later proven wrong, that sticks to us
Speaker 3: like glue, and we forget about all the thousands of
Speaker 3: studies that have held up. We forget about the tens
Speaker 3: of millions of doctors who are giving good advice every day,
Speaker 3: saving lives every minute.
Speaker 2: Those don't make the news.
Speaker 3: All that really gets sensationalized are the negative stories. And
Speaker 3: I'm not saying they shouldn't be reported. But I am
Speaker 3: saying that we as media digestors, need to keep in
Speaker 3: mind that we are being only shown a sliver of reality,
Speaker 3: and that sliver is usually something that is going to
Speaker 3: drive a headline or drive clicks. It's probably a little sensationalized,
Speaker 3: and we need to be cognizant of that, and keep
Speaker 3: in mind that there's lots of stories not being reported
Speaker 3: because they're not exciting that show that experts are getting
Speaker 3: it right all the time, So we have to you
Speaker 3: know me, I think that's a big part of the problem.
Speaker 3: It's a built in bias in our brain. I'm not
Speaker 3: blaming anybody. It's not our fault, but we should recogni
Speaker 3: that and try to be more savvy and intelligent when
Speaker 3: we're listening to these influencers or watching these tiktoks. Got
Speaker 3: to check out their credentials and we have to fact
Speaker 3: check them in robust ways that rely on evidence and
Speaker 3: scientific or medical consensus.
Speaker 1: My training partner, God bless him, he's the current reigning
Speaker 1: Australian conspiracy theory champion. He sends me about ten conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory videos a day. Shout out to the crab. His
Speaker 1: name is Mark I lovingly call him the crab because
Speaker 1: he looks like a crab and he moves like a crab.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's way down the rabbit hole, Like he
Speaker 1: only comes out of the rabbit hole for lunch, you know,
Speaker 1: and then then back.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, yeah, I think we all trust
Speaker 1: like that. He trusts nobody. He sent me. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say this, but I'm going to throw him under the bus.
Speaker 1: He sent me one yesterday on this guy like who
Speaker 1: I don't know, worked for the Air Force or NASAU
Speaker 1: or someone, and talking about yeah, flat Earth, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: come on, bro, surely we draw a lot. Surely, surely
Speaker 1: we draw a line at flat Earth, even you. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, so it's it is. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: never had the level of access to information, good and
Speaker 1: bad information, misinformation, actual information, pseudoscience, real science, hysteria, data like,
Speaker 1: but it's all coming at us unless you're very discerning
Speaker 1: or educated. It's often, you know, I'm mildly educated, and
Speaker 1: it's still hard for me to figure out what's what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I actually feel a little sympathy for
Speaker 3: conspiracy theorists. I mean, the glom into something that seems exciting.
Speaker 3: That seems different. I think their intentions are often genuine.
Speaker 3: You know, they're trying to help, you know, they think
Speaker 3: they got something, you know, fascinating or important to share,
Speaker 3: even though it's demonstrably false.
Speaker 2: For some reason, they are immune to hearing.
Speaker 3: About the truth, or they think it's a hoax, which
Speaker 3: is another thing I get all the time, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, the conspiracy Whenever you show data or debunk something,
Speaker 3: the easy out is while it's just a hoax or
Speaker 3: you're lying. I mean, okay, well then it just boils
Speaker 3: down to a matter of trust, and you know, you
Speaker 3: can trust the conspiracy theorists or you can trust experts
Speaker 3: who live in the real world.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I don't know, but I do.
Speaker 3: I have sympathy because I sense that a lot of
Speaker 3: those conspiracy theorists have genuine feeling that they're trying to help.
Speaker 3: They got some kind of top secret information that the
Speaker 3: world needs to hear. But it's just so so terribly misguided,
Speaker 3: you know that. Yeah, yeah, it's a little heartbreaking. But
Speaker 3: to get back to your point, is there some light
Speaker 3: at the end of this tunnel?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I was really encouraged to see so many scientific and
Speaker 3: medical organizations coming forward immediately, you know, against what these
Speaker 3: recommendations were that came from our own government. And that
Speaker 3: was great to see because a lot of people are
Speaker 3: no longer standing up to some of the lies that
Speaker 3: we are being fed, some of the falsehoods that are
Speaker 3: being propagated. So it was encouraging to see them take
Speaker 3: a stand and say absolutely not, this is this is
Speaker 3: this is totally nuts. Here's why listen to your doctors,
Speaker 3: not the guy who said, don't take medical advice from me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there seems to be I mean, from the outside
Speaker 1: looking in and the very far away lens through which
Speaker 1: we observe the US, which of course has just filtered
Speaker 1: through our media, is there a bit of pushback, more
Speaker 1: pushback coming, Like we have this thing, all these rallies,
Speaker 1: no kings, this has been on our this has been
Speaker 1: occupying out TV screens for the last day or so.
Speaker 1: Just give me an insight into that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that happened today and it looked to be an
Speaker 3: extraordinarily huge event. Or no, I'm sorry, it happened yesterday,
Speaker 3: but it looked to be an extraordinarily huge event. The
Speaker 3: turnouts were far greater than I think anyone really expected.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, there's an extraordinary amount of
Speaker 3: people in the US who see through all these lies,
Speaker 3: who see through the propaganda and have a greater understanding
Speaker 3: of what fascism and authoritarianism really is, and you know,
Speaker 3: conceive that this is a dangerous road that we are
Speaker 3: going down. We have, you know, a president that is
Speaker 3: you know, just so unpresidential, so unprofessional, and so puerile
Speaker 3: in his remarks and actions that is just not befitting
Speaker 3: the integrity of that office. To many people, this is
Speaker 3: a global embarrassment and they just can't believe, you know,
Speaker 3: that it happened once, much less that it happened twice.
Speaker 3: So I don't quite know what the future holds, because
Speaker 3: now that the Republicans have power of so many things,
Speaker 3: they have both houses of Congress, they have the president,
Speaker 3: They've stacked the courts. It it almost seems like a
Speaker 3: helpless situation that there's no way the Democrats are going
Speaker 3: to ever reclaim power because of all the gerrymandering and
Speaker 3: things that are going on that don't really allow them
Speaker 3: to have a fair fight. But seeing something like the
Speaker 3: No King's rallies does give you a glimmer of hope,
Speaker 3: you know, that when you can visibly see a bunch
Speaker 3: of people out there saying we're not going to take this,
Speaker 3: that's inspiring.
Speaker 1: There's something like, I don't know, two and a half
Speaker 1: thousand different like groups rallies around the country, so definitely
Speaker 1: there's some momentum. So always good chatting to you, sir.
Speaker 1: We appreciate your wisdom and your insight and your time
Speaker 1: anytime and you're shakiness. Thank you so much. We'll say
Speaker 1: goodbye fair but thanks mate. I appreciate you for being
Speaker 1: on the project and being such a fun part of
Speaker 1: our team. Thank you.
Speaker 2: You got it, Craig, thanks again.