The Health Compass Podcast
If you are interested in evidence-based information on all things health with lots of actionable take-homes, this podcast is for you..
The Health Compass Podcast
Unravelling the Maze of Misinformation: A Deep Dive into Information Hygiene, Conspiracy Theories and the Health Industry
David, a physicist turned cancer researcher and author of 'The Irrational Ape'.
We a deep dive into the realm of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, especially as it pertains to the health industry
David will shine a light on the concept of information poisoning and its potential hazard, emphasizing the significance of information hygiene to guard against the spread of false information.
We expose how our inherent attraction to certainty can lead us astray into the traps of misinformation and incorrect beliefs. Tune in as we inspect alternative medicine, its potential to provoke complete rejection of mainstream science, and the misunderstood implications of the term 'natural', especially in the context of medicine.
By the end of our conversation, you'll acquire a more sophisticated understanding of the power and pitfalls of information in our contemporary world.
Here we go, got it. That's all right, david. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, paul. I appreciate you giving up your time to come on.
Speaker 2:Sure listen, I've been giving you the run around for far too long.
Speaker 1:As I said, you're un-persistent, I'll hunt you down, I'll get you. So first question I always asked the guests that come on when, what and why. So where have you came from to get away at currently, at what you actually do currently, and then why you do what you do? I know it's a long-winded one.
Speaker 2:But, geez, the why is the tricky one. I'll start with what's the first one when or who? So I'm originally a Scariest man, north Country, dublin. I grew up in the Middle East, though, because in the 80s there was no jobs in Ireland, so my parents had to hot-tail it out to the Middle East because they weren't exactly rich. But Middle East is tax-free. I mean, let's give them that. I grew up in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2:I came back here when I was a teenager and thought I was going to be an actor or a musician and somehow ended up doing science. So I was in the UK for several years and I work a lot in the States, but I'm actually back in Ireland now, so I've got a bit of a loop-to-loop to get back. So that's the where. So I'm a physicist by training, but I went into cancer research about 10 years ago and then diversified into health research in general. So I do a lot of work on cancer modeling, but I also do a lot of work on why people believe medical disinformation, how we can improve the communication of science and things like that.
Speaker 2:And I'm also an author. So my first book, the Irrational Ape, came out about two years ago, and I was a professor at the University of Ireland and I was a professor at the University of Ireland and I was a professor at the University of Ireland and the Irrational Ape came out about two years ago and the American edition just came out a slightly updated one and I'm now working on another one. So I also write for different papers like the Irish Times or the Guardian or the New York Times and things like that. So I'm a jack of all trades and a master of known.
Speaker 1:I think it's the finest way to put it, and why are you currently doing what you do?
Speaker 2:At the moment. What am I doing? At the moment, I am doing an awful lot of biomedical research. In fact, what I'm really doing at the moment is, as a lot of people's lives have been affected by COVID mine obviously has been as well, but also my work life because a lot of the stuff we do now is trying to work out how do we communicate the science about vaccination, the science about disease, and how do we also put a stop to some of the conspiracy theories that go around it, because, as you can imagine, it's a tumultuous time and everyone has heard some sheer amount of nonsense. So that's kind of made my own work for you. That's what I am doing at the moment. It's a bit Absolutely, david.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying not to swear.
Speaker 2:I keep telling myself I'll swear less, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I can definitely swear on this podcast. So, kicking it off, I'd say, if we look at information as a whole misinformation, disinformation, malinformation can you break them down and then kind of maybe the ones that we're dealing with most in the health sphere?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, it's a good question. So misinformation is the umbrella term right. Any kind of falsehood that you come across, whether it's inadvertent like someone heard something and misunderstood it and said it to you or whether it's deliberate, comes under the umbrella term misinformation, right. And then we break that down under that umbrella. You have disinformation.
Speaker 2:Disinformation is a very important thing because it's a very important thing, because we all have disinformation. Disinformation is deliberately false. Political propaganda is often disinformation or a lot of conspiracy theories we see about health are often disinformation. And the other side of that coin is malinformation Literally means bad information. That's often true information but taken out of context. For example, if I was trying to tell you about water and instead of telling you that it's essential for life, I told you that it kills half a million people a year and that you find it in nuclear waste and it can be very toxic in high quantities, I'm committing malinformation because I'm not giving you the real context for that.
Speaker 2:And in health misinformation we actually see it all. We see the inadvertent mistakes where people make very innocent mistakes, where they misunderstand something. That's a classic misinformation. We see the grifters and the charlatans pushing deliberate falsehoods, the disinformation. And we see people also twisting facts to put a particular agenda out there, and that's the malinformation. So that's the real context and we see the real context. We all see the real context and in terms of information poisoning, we can see the real context. So I'm not going to put a particular agenda out there, and that's the malinformation.
Speaker 1:So that's the triumphorate of nonsense that we all come across in different ways and in terms of information poisoning, I'm sure you mentioned that a few times. Give us a rundown on that.
Speaker 2:I love this concept and I've made it my mission to try and ram it into as many conversations as possible. So during the beginning of the pandemic importance of these protective measures social distancing, wearing masks, wearing not touching things that we didn't have to touch and we all very quickly pivoted that All different feelings about it, but we all pretty much did. But I would argue that information is every bit as pathogenic, as infectious, as potentially dangerous, as physical pathogens, as viruses and things like that. So you can get infected by bad information and you can infect other people with it, and the way to avoid that happening is to practice information hygiene. So when you come across a big scary claim where someone says something to you, instead of immediately embracing it and rubbing it all over your face and just taking it on board, this kind of healthy skepticism, it's like wearing a skeptical armor and you kind of go okay, before I accept this claim, you're like you're wearing your virtual PPE. You know you're saying look, where did you get that from? Can you give me any evidence for that? And you know why should I believe that?
Speaker 2:And if we do that before we share, before we perpetuate these kind of things, we are, we are actually engaging in information hygiene, where we are treating information as potentially as infectious or dangerous, as a virus, and we don't do that normally, like if someone comes up to you and says you hear about your man and this, this and this. We accepted it face value, we always do. It's very human and it's not great. And particularly it's not great during social media, because anyone can sell you anything and by the time you shared it, all your Facebook friends are put up, your Insta stories or something. You know whether it's true or not, it's gone out there and even if you later go oh well, that's actually not true. Someone else could have been infected by that bit of misinformation and infect someone else. So I think we just have to. The concept behind information hygiene is just seeing that information is infectious and we have to be careful about how we spread it around or how we accept it.
Speaker 1:Why do we seem to? I don't know. That's, as far as it seems like an obvious question. But the bad information? Why does it spread so rapidly, even though it's, you know, maybe a small percentage of the population that are pushing it? But it catches on the word for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a few reasons for that. And the reasons is negative stories are sexier to our perception and there's evolutionary reasons and there's all sorts of reasons that we have a bias towards negativity Right the most. The biggest determinant I write about this in the book quite a bit the biggest single determinant of whether a story goes viral online is if it invokes strong feelings of outrage, disgust, anger or fear. We are so primed towards negative emotions and there's reasons for that. It's a good survival instinct. If something might be dangerous, you know we are primed to react to it. You know you hear a rustling in the bush, it's probably the wind, but if it's a snake you might get killed. So you jump and you react.
Speaker 2:We do the same with information and that makes it very easy for people to scare, to sell us scare stories. So if I, you know, tell you oh, the COVID vaccines killing children no, I'm talking absolute nonsense, of course, but my God, that will stick in your head far more than me saying well, scientifically, it saves a lot more lives. So we do have a predilection towards negative information which we have to be very, very careful with. So that's one of the reasons it sells more. Also, like there's a thing called the availability heuristic, and this is the idea that we're constantly exposed to these things. We actually know that negative information maybe because it's so addictive travels a lot more than positive news. Right, if you call your man down the road of bollocks, you could remember that more than if you say he's a great lad, you know.
Speaker 2:But it's the same with things about health, and the problem with that is that means that our information landscape is dominated by misinformation. So if you went to look up vaccines on Facebook or whatever else, right, you would find a lot more dodgy material than you would legitimate material. But because you're seeing it so often, your brain kind of recalls it quicker. That's one of the problems and the other reason it's related to that is called illusory truth. If you're exposed to something often enough someone keeps telling you black is white for long enough, even if you know it's not true really your brain starts treating it like it is. So we have these little psychological quirks and we've always had them. We've had them throughout human history. But the internet has just given them cocaine and said go crazy, right, it's just exaggerated them so much and we are very, very bad at stopping ourselves and going whoa, whoa. Hang on a second. Is that legit or is that dodgy, understandably? But I think it's something we really need to learn if we're going to survive the next pandemic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny that repetition, even from even getting the repetition of bad information even though you're in the now, has that effect.
Speaker 2:I do it. I mean, I know I got an email from a video that I go oh, you say there's a book, but you ever do this yourself. I'm like, yeah, I do it all the time. The other day I actually found myself saying to my godson I said, oh, he's had too much sugar, he'll get hyper, and I stopped him. That's not true. It is an urban legend that sugar makes children hyperactive. And yet here I was, even though I knew it was false, repeating it, and there was part of my brain that just went yeah, you've heard that, so that sounds legit and it isn't. But it's really hard to catch yourself out and go holy, bloody hell. I just fell for that loop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like in terms of like, say, I know, I think science is, since the pandemic, everything's every time there's science. Where has the UC, the distrust and science come from?
Speaker 2:You see I'm I'm a bit of a strange person to ask about this, because another area of my research is meta research not the new Facebook thing, unfortunately, although sometimes we have the meta research is. Research on research is how like? How good is most science? And the honest truth is, most science is not particularly well conducted. Now, I don't want people to run away going. Science is all terrible it's not but because science is, there's a thing on pressure on scientists called publisher perish pressure and essentially our careers are dependent on producing material all the time, and that means people take shortcuts and that means people you know phone it in and sometimes they even fake data.
Speaker 2:Right Now, science is self correcting, so eventually that will be okay, but there's a lot of. We've seen in the pandemic an explosion of publications, a huge interest in science, and we saw a massive increase in how many scientists are churning out the papers, whatever else, right. So the trust in science has always been high, but understanding in science has been poor, right, and one of my fears is that I mean I talked to scientists like if lectures an awful lot, saying, look, we need to improve our act. We need to. We need to get our own house in order and make you know and kind of do a little bit of forensic you know internal affairs stuff on some conduct of some scientists. So on one hat I have that hat on. In the other hat I can tell people as well that science is generally very trustworthy. There's no big conspiracies going on, that's for sure, and we can talk about that later on why we know that. But individual bits of science are always a bit of a data point. They're a question mark. They could be a mistake. What really matters in science is the patterns right. It's not one or two people saying something, it's when all the evidence points a certain direction and that's where real scientific integrity comes from.
Speaker 2:I am a scientist but that doesn't give me any inherent virtue in speaking about it. I'm only ever speaking with authority when I'm quoting the evidence accurately and putting it out there. We've seen during the pandemic a lot of scientists who don't do that as well. So it gets and I totally sympathize I talked to the public about this an awful lot and it is really confusing to work out. You know what's the good science, what's the bad science. But what I will say is you're right. Why is the trust high? Trust has always been high, but the problem is that understanding hasn't so.
Speaker 2:People kind of look at scientists. The way they look at, say, you know, used to look at policemen or doctors or something go well, they know what they're doing and they do generally, but that on its own doesn't mean they're doing good science. We've seen examples I should I can mention names. We've seen people like Dolores Cahill you know who has it was a professor in UCD talking absolutely nonsense about COVID. So just because someone is a scientist doesn't guarantee they're doing good science, and that makes it really hard for the public to ascertain whether they've been sold a crock or not. So I think the only solution to that is to teach people what science actually is.
Speaker 2:And science is just a method for investigating evidence and to arriving at conclusions based on that evidence and refining them constantly. So when people saw during COVID all the science shifting, oh you know. And some people would say to me does that? Why are the scientists changing their mind? What's? Why are they flip flopping? And I'm like, no, that's actually good. That means that we had this idea. We looked at the evidence and the evidence said no, that idea doesn't work. So we moved on to better ideas that were more refined. It's just hard to communicate sometimes. That that's the process. You know that's the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, science is self-correcting and you touched on it there, like why the expertise it's not always transferable. And you know, during the pandemic especially, you found that people were using that qualifications to gain a platform and then spying on your budget information that's completely different to the domain that they've, you know they've studied in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one of the things I mean. I hate talking about COVID in a way, because in some ways I'm not an infectious disease specialist. I know I know enough to get by, but I am a specialist. But I have had watched certain people online my eyebrows are chipped who suddenly become these gurus and I know I wouldn't put them in charge of a, you know, a Charles coloring book Like I know their level of ineptitude. I know that sometimes they're talking way outside their domain, even if they are scientists.
Speaker 2:I occasionally see people who I know are not public health specialists and what upsets me is there are public health specialists all around you could ask, but they don't give good media interviews. They don't. They don't say the things that people want People and this maybe tells us something about people and social media and what makes you. You know, big or small, and people don't actually subscribe to what's the best information narrative that most suits them. You find someone who's giving you the narrative you want. You'll put them on a pedestal right.
Speaker 2:We tend to cherry pick who we listen to and because of so many conflicting narratives in social media, you can literally follow anyone who agrees with your prejudices. That sometimes happens during the pandemic I think the first time I've ever seen it happening with scientists. You occasionally get you know you've had, I get asked about lockdown stuff and you have a scientist who signed a declaration saying that lockdowns were a terrible idea. Now they're very much a minority and they're very much not necessarily basing that on evidence. But I will have people go. Well, I follow these scientists because I don't believe in lockdowns. I'm like well see, that's the issue. What we, the question we need to be asking is are lockdowns good or bad? Or in what context are they good or bad? We shouldn't be starting with the conclusion and then arriving at the gurus. That's kind of what we do and it's kind of what we need to train ourselves out of doing as well, you know.
Speaker 1:It's, I suppose, like on a mass level, while black and white thinkers and the gray area is where most of it is, and that's hard for humans to. You are absolutely right.
Speaker 2:But we also like confidence, and that's one of the things that used to drive me up the wall. The biggest I'm looking for an Irish perspective. I'm not gonna name names, I won't get myself in trouble, but some of the Name, those Sure listen.
Speaker 2:Some of the strongest opinions I've heard on COVID, from both experts and non-experts, are delivered with the confidence that when I've read the scientific literature I go whew. I mean the correct answer is we don't know, we think it's probably X, but we need more evidence. But that's not the guy who's gonna go on primetime or Claire Byrne Life. The guy who's gonna go or girl who's gonna go on, that is the one who's saying definitely we need to do this and we need to do that. Because people like that kind of confidence I found during COVID. I mean, I got approached a lot of media people and they very rarely use my comments because my comments were generally this is actually really really complicated. There was arguments both ways. The evidence base still hasn't settled. You should really talk to an infectious disease specialist on this and a public health specialist on this and an epidemiologist on this. Now you're just gonna get Luke O'Neill and stick them on the TV. Okay, fair enough. But that's because people like confidence and reassurance.
Speaker 2:But real science often is, and particularly transient science, emergent science like COVID the correct answer should be the intellectual humility of saying we don't actually know for sure, but you can then caveat with a good guess, or the best evidence we have so far suggests that it's probably this, but we could be wrong.
Speaker 2:You don't ever hear that in media interviews, do you? You don't hear people say, well, we could actually be wrong. You just hear the people who have a either like do this or do that. And it just frustrated me during the pandemic Because I talk a lot on vaccine science. Vaccine science is, by the way, much easier to do In one way, because vaccines are so overwhelmingly life-saving and the so much research has been done on them for literally centuries, that is very easy for me to sit there and go well, yes, vaccines are fantastic and I don't have to caveat that with too much. But it was eye-opening for me to see the amount of people that would go on like media outlets and say, yeah, we have to do this. I'm like that's not what the evidence says. We shouldn't be saying that.
Speaker 2:It's like, even when there is facts at play, facts aren't that interesting, but I'm like no, no, not at all, which is a shame, but it's also we pin our colleagues as well. We're like, yeah, I'm with that guy or that girl and we're a bit tribal. We're a little bit a good guy, bad guy, black and white, like you said, and literally the world is so shades of gray. Anyone giving you a simple answer has misunderstood the question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm actually reading Bad Science. A friend of mine gave it to me. Oh, ben Goldacre's one. That's classic yeah. Pretty good, yeah, yeah, I'm laughing out loud. So the people that propagate misinformation versus the people that wanna listen to them? From a psychological perspective, what's the difference?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really perceptive question. So one of the things that I deal with. Well before COVID, I did a lot of work on vaccine hesitancy and I would spend a lot of time talking to parents, particularly about the HPV vaccine, who were reticent to get their children vaccinated because it hurts, scary things, whatever. And I would make a very big distinction between people that propagate disinformation and people that fall victim to it and inadvertently share that maybe. So there are two, but there's more than two types. What I should point out is vaccine.
Speaker 2:We often hear anti-vax, pro-vax, and I don't like that distinction because it's not true. There's a spectrum of vaccine hesitancy. You'll probably have mates that got vaccinated but we're a little bit dodgy about it, and, vice versa, people that you know. There's a whole spectrum. There's people who accept unconditionally, there's people that are a little bit scared but will accept. There's people that tend to be neutral, people that tend to not accept and all the way down to the hardcore denialist and we talk about. And I think that the most powerful thing that we found in the research on this is that anti-vaxing propaganda nudges people down that spectrum. It doesn't turn them into like hardcore anti-vaxers overnight. It makes them apprehensive and afraid and reticent, and because they become risk-adverse, they're like, oh, maybe I'll just not get it. They're not sitting there going. You know Bill Gates? Yeah, plants are seeded though, exactly, and that's what it's doing. The vast majority of them aren't sitting there blaming Bill Gates and George Soros for putting microchips in us.
Speaker 2:They're the extreme ones. They exist and they email me all the, but they are the extreme version of that and I think it's very reductive when we when if someone like I was talking to a very close friend of mine who took a long time to get vaccinated, very scientifically educated, but was afraid. I was afraid for different reasons. She was afraid that she might become infertile, but she'd read scary things online and this is in her family is an existing fear. You know this kind of stuff, so you know she did get vaccinated. I'm really proud of her, but it took her a long, long time compared to most people.
Speaker 2:But it would be dismissive to call her anti-vaxer. She certainly wasn't. So what's the difference between the ones that propagate it and the ones that fought? So I would call her a victim of anti-vaccine disinformation and I would call a lot of people who don't get vaccinated victims. Right, they're just. They're trying to do the best for their kids or for themselves. They're not sure what to do. They've heard all this scary stuff and the easiest thing to do when you're given a choice of action or inaction and you're not sure is to do nothing Safe. So the default mode is oh, I don't know, I'll do nothing. So that's why it's an easy sell for the. So what about the people that spread all this in the first?
Speaker 1:place.
Speaker 2:What about the people like Oliver Cummins and Dolores Cahill and all those people that spread this absolute nonsense, right? Well, what motivates them? Firstly, they are conspiracy theorists, and I do a lot of work in conspiracy theorists, so let me tell you something about them. What is the biggest single motivator for someone to perpetuate conspiracy theory? Well, the biggest motivator for a perpetuator of this stuff is ego. And think about it.
Speaker 2:You get the social kudos of being seen as an expert, a guru. You make pronouncements, you have a legion of followers. It's a little bit like you know. You can put one of these hardcore anti-vaxxers, like one of these propaganda kind of people, in a room with the world's best immunologists and pediatricians and doctors and scientists and they will still think they know more, even when they objectively know the least. In fact, there have been studies done on this that show the most opinionated people often know the least something called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and so there's an ego component.
Speaker 2:When I see people like Ivor Cummins or Marcus De Bruin I'm talking to an Irish context, just so people have the local reference points I look at them and go Jesus, they know so little like objective. They use all the fancy words but they don't really understand them, but look at the following they get, look at the engagement they get. It's great for them. The other thing is we don't like randomness. Right, the more innocent explanation is we don't like randomness. We like to think that someone's in control, that someone is pulling the strings, that everything is some sinister cabal, and the truth is life is very random. Things happen and you can't foresee much of the future, and that scares us. So it's actually easier for some people to believe that there's someone in charge of all this than to accept the reality that life is very, very random and it's very hard to predict.
Speaker 1:I think you touched on the Donny Krellga and it's just happening to me now it's here, I think in the book, those with little expertise in the given subject mistakenly assess their knowledge as vastly brighter than it actually is. Dancer was a great sum up other, like you know.
Speaker 2:The great example. When people ask me for an example about, I say Donald Trump. Donald Trump could sit there and actually think he was smart enough to be president of the United States and really believed it. That's a great example of Donny Kruger, a man who knew absolutely nothing, with the confidence of a guy that was a super genius. And you know it's not a new problem. So one of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite philosophers, is Bert Rand Russell. I'm the kind of nerd who has favorite philosophers. Yeah, sorry, but I've realized that. And then when I said that, but one of the things he said is the tragedy of this world is that the intelligent are full of doubt while the stupid are cock. Sure it wasn't entirely wrong, he was writing in the 1920s, but I think this has been a perennial problem.
Speaker 2:But that goes back to the confidence we were saying earlier on. We love confidence, we do, we encourage. You know, confidence is sexy. Confidence is a really good bullshit tool, isn't it? You know, I used to work in sales years ago. I see we're working pub promotions and selling Miller, which is a terrible beer to people, and I played the Miller psychologist for years in different pubs around Dublin.
Speaker 2:And again, the trick is like you might be, you might you just confidence and you're faking it a lot. In my case, I was faking it a lot of the time, although when I look at Trump, I think he genuinely probably believes it. That's the terrifying thing, yeah. But like confidence is appealing, people like it, whether it's real or fake, and that's why we like people that confidently make assertions, even if those assertions aren't backed by evidence. Someone gives a certainty and we see this.
Speaker 2:By the way, I worked with cancer misinformation a lot too. One of the reasons people go for alternative medicine for cancer, even though it's far more likely to cause them severe harm, is that an oncologist will say to you right, this, we're gonna do this, this and this, and the odds and this, this and this, we think this will work and there's a percentage and maybe and this, we'll have to wait and see the alternative medicine person will say, oh no, no, these apricot seeds definitely cure cancer, definitely make that tumor go away. That definitely, that non-random, that absolutely certainty we crave, that as humans and the reality is most of the world is never gonna give us that certainty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was planning on touching on the alternative medicine scene a bit later before I do. When you talk about this web of belief right, and how it relates to the kind of conspiratorial belief system and how it's all in that one, I think that's a really good point that you make within the book and could you elaborate on that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure. So that's another one of my favorite philosophers, god damn it. I feel like such an earth when I say that is WV coin and WV coin coined that term, the web of belief. And this is the idea, and I really do feel this is a strong model of belief. He felt that all our beliefs were interconnected. Right, if you imagine like a spider's web, every strand they're beautifully interconnected. But if you pull on one thread you pull on the rest of them. And this is why, for example, he said look, if you can accept that there's one, say, a single big pharma conspiracy somewhere, right, and you accept just that one conspiracy, you've actually pulled on the thread that says, ok, well, I think that lots of conspiracies are now possible. And then suddenly you make a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Other things are going to happen.
Speaker 2:It's why when we interview conspiracy theorists, they very, very, very rarely only have one conspiratorial belief.
Speaker 2:They tend to have an entire conspiratorial worldview and usually that was started by them altering their web of belief sufficiently that everything could be fit in. And this is why I know it sounds like sometimes, when people have a nonsense belief, I can be the real party pooper who will say, yeah, yeah, that's not actually true. And here's why. And the reason I do that is that every little bit of misinformation we believe affects our other beliefs too. And I mean, I like when people correct me. I'm actually quite grateful for it, because I don't want to alter that web too much, I don't want to pull the strand to let loads and nonsense in, because by letting a little bit of nonsense in it's a slippery slope argument, isn't it? You start letting a lot more in. So that Aquine was very observant, I think in that and I don't think he's wrong. Having dealt with conspiracy theorists now for about seven or eight years and interviewed them and spoken to them, think he might have been onto something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and with the alternative medicine saying I was kind of touching on it kind of leads to this kind of like it's similar to the web, similar to how we believe things. The alternative medicine leads to this complete rejection of mainstream science. That's called out just, you know, just disregards everything because the belief system is alternative medicine, no matter what evidence is presented from the other side. That's how they will reject it straight away, which is scary.
Speaker 2:And again, I suppose there's probably a spectrum there too. So you see, people that will use I sometimes we call it complementary alternative medicine. Some people will say they'll use something complementary on top of their traditional medicine and think, you know, I'm getting bonus medicine. Fair enough, that's probably. You know it's probably not working, but it's probably not harming them. The real sphere like it is when they get so deep into the alt-med that a lot of alt-med rejects traditional medicine. And you might wonder why. Well, that's a very good reason If and this has happened a few times, I mean, I've seen this to its extreme end on a few occasions but what happens is if you get really down that rabbit hole and the evidence keeps telling you that the thing you really believe in, all the scientists are telling you it doesn't work, it becomes easier and this is web of belief again to start thinking that the scientists must be trying to rubbish this because they're down some conspiracy.
Speaker 2:And the more you take that narrative, the more you push away mainstream medicine and only take alternative medicine. And again, because I'm primarily a cancer researcher, I think, by training. It's grim when this happens to patients and it happens far too often, and you have people who are very vulnerable. They're very scared. They're going under life altering treatments sometimes and they have, you know, the chemo or radio and the side effects of that, which are scary. And then they have someone promising them oh no, you don't need any of that. Look, I got these. You're right out, right? I don't think people are being foolish. I think they're just scared and I don't even think the people selling the magic beans are being nasty. Sometimes there's charlatans. There's scam clinics around the world who are definitely charlatans. I think the people selling the magic beans really believe it because they want to believe it, because it protects them. If they believe the magic beans cure cancer, that means when they get cancer, they got the magic beans. So it's reassuring in a roundabout way and you see this through extreme.
Speaker 2:But you see it becomes a guilt thing a lot and in your health sphere which I mean you're dealing with people and talking about their diets all the time you get this kind of dietary guilt. Sometimes A lot of the people I used to with years ago, who used to drive me up the wall, were keto evangelists. They still drive me up the wall, but you know, keto diet for everything and fair enough if you're doing that for training or a body purpose whatever, or you're doing a restrictive diet to lose calories, that's cool right. But there's a certain class of keto evangelists who believe it will cure cancer and they actively tell patients that and it's head wrecking to me because I'm like no, no, the last thing you want to do to a cancer patient is put them on any restrictive diet. It's like the number one wrong thing to do.
Speaker 2:And we've seen like patients really suffer from this kind of stuff, or people that think cannabis is gonna cure their cancer, and they go so far down that rabbit hole that you know. I had one person I knew a patient who's now deceased had curable breast cancer and she decided she wanted natural treatment, which is we'll get onto one naturally and naturally said. So she took cannabis oil, which I mean I remember pleading by proxy with which not to do it, and yeah, the treatable cancer became an untreatable one. By the time she sought conventional medicine, it was a little bit too late and that's the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I think there's a big difference between giving something for a common cause and telling someone that this is gonna cure your cancer. I know it's coming from the same realm, but you need to reach that whole end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:It's a spectrum, isn't it? And it's not that. And again, I don't think that people who really believe in al-Mahd are trying to defraud people. Like often people, the default position is, oh, they must be charlatans, they must know it. And I'm like, no, I think they genuinely believe it. They've talked themselves into believing this because they need that to be part of their belief system. That doesn't make it less harmful, but it does make them. You know, they're not bad people. They're misguided. But that's no good for patients, you know. So.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's one of them's space that the people that get into it genuinely want to help people. For the most part, as you said, it's still a spectrum of that also, but I think, even I think you mentioned in Bad Science, where he was talking about you know minor things like you know fluos, common colds and people going to see your homeopath and feeling great after three or four days. But even just the fact of obviously placebo and then the fact of sitting down and talking to someone who genuinely is listening, rather than going to the GP and just running your prescription in San Juan, new York hasn't had as powerful a leak in itself.
Speaker 2:We are such psychological creatures, 100%. I have a friend right and my friend's had a brilliant guy wouldn't know, but like he's had a very tough life with a very different life. He's always been trying to help people and stuff like that and a few years ago he got into the ultimate stuff and we had some conversation about that. But after that he dropped that and he got into something else which he thought was interesting. Right, he thought he was psychic and this sounds funny and I'm not taking the piss out of him, but he's a very he's got a lot of empathy right.
Speaker 2:This guy he'll read you and he'll, like, I think you feel a bit sad today, do you feel sad? And he's very good at that. But because he wants to help so much and people said, oh God, how did you know that? Like he started thinking, you know, with the crowd he was hanging out with the ultimate man that he must have had some kind of gift for this, and I remember him telling me this and me like biting my lip, going I don't laugh and don't because it's not fair to laugh, and I think that's where, when I talk to healers and people like that and all men people, I think that's where they come from. They have really good intentions and maybe they give someone someone and someone gets better placebo effect or aggression to the mean and they go. Oh, I did that. I'm helping, like my friend who thought he was a psychic because he was just fairly good at noticing people's emotions, which is a good thing. Wanting to help is a good thing. I don't want to rubbish that.
Speaker 2:But it's very easy to get down to weird rabbit holes where you end up projecting conventional medicine or whatever. And that is where you got to be super alert and this is why I mean it sounds some of these beliefs are innocent. If you're using, you know, homeopathy for your cold, well, you're just drinking water, so it's probably not going to do any damage. If you're using homeopathy for your tumor, that's where you might be in a lot more trouble. But they're just a spectrum. It's very, it's very. Yeah, it's very easy to get down that spectrum by mistake.
Speaker 1:It's funny. You said that because they're friend or friends similar, got into Reiki and now they actually I can you know that someone's speaking to them? Now you know all of a sudden and maybe it is that you know the fact that they're helping people and that they're able to feel their feelings, are good at identifying where someone's at. They feel it has a higher power, given them that which is 100%. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean you train people right, you get there and you know, you know the satisfaction of when you train someone and they just get it in there and they improve themselves or whatever else. And I lecture and I love when I see a student just clicking and just to get it and I'm like, yes, there is a human urge and a really nice positive human urge to want to get his nice sense of satisfaction when you help someone else. It's just important to, like you know that what you train has to be the correct thing, like if you thought someone terrible form, you know, which of course you wouldn't do. But you know, like there's, you know it's just cause we can't intervene. We have to make sure the intervention we do is positive.
Speaker 2:If I thought people like fake science, I wouldn't be helping, even if I thought I was helping. So it's a case of redirecting those positive things about people like you know, hey, you really want to. So my friend who thought he was a psychic, I suggested that maybe he should look at being a counselor because he's very, he's a lot of empathy and he's not retraining as a counselor. I felt that I very subtly redirected.
Speaker 1:You mentioned regression towards the main there and I think could you explain that a little bit deeper for people that listen. Yeah, sure it's, it's a, it's good. I describe it kind of yeah, I think the example could be just even the least of common call for it, for instance.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. You know when you have a cold or something like that, you know and you really seek help. When it's at its worst, when everything's at its zenith and everything's terrible, like if you only have a little snuff, like I'll, I'll soldier through. When you're absolutely dying, you're like I want to go to the pharmacy or get a little drugs and have a great right. And then you take all the drugs and you feel better, right, and you go in your head, ah, there's drugs. It probably wasn't. In fact, if you had a viral cold, the drugs probably did nothing right. What probably happened was, if you imagine your baseline is like this slightly undulating line, it kind of slightly. When you're sick it's at an extreme right. It's, your discomfort is a much higher level, but that's away from your average, away from your mean right, and eventually your body, which is very good at trying to maintain homeostasis and bring you down to a acceptable level of health, is working very hard behind the scenes to do all the fighting off of those invaders and everything, and eventually those symptoms will subside. They will naturally subside and if you take the most extreme measurement of something right. So when the Zen at the worst, your symptoms are and that's going to be the furthest away from the average, the furthest away from the mean. So the next measurement you take is going to be closer to the mean. You're going to be getting better.
Speaker 2:It's regression towards your standard average of health, right? The problem with that? No, it's not a problem, it's great. It's a fantastic example of how your body is incredibly good at healing you in. Your immune system does a bang up job, right. But the problem is, if you give someone a concoction at the zenith of their symptoms, they're like oh, it was the thing that did the wonders for me. You're like well, no, you're not giving your body enough goddamn credit here. So placebo effect is part of the reason that we feel better when we take, you know, even medicines that don't work, and another part is regression to the mean, where, literally, you know you only seek help and sort of a bit crap and then by time they'll just get better anyway. We just don't give our immune systems enough credit for being awesome.
Speaker 1:I tell you, yeah, and I would say that was a great part of the book and, as it is, it's like this. You know, you go, I think, a friend of mine. Every time he has a sore throat, he drinks like hot water and lemon and then it starts me up straight away. You know, it's just that regression to the mean. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to touch on in terms of natural versus all natural and this kind of naturalistic fallacy, and now you talk about that, and I think it was Danny podcast.
Speaker 2:I was probably ranting, yeah, yeah. Now I'm probably a terrible guest. I probably like when you're around.
Speaker 1:I actually like when you're around. I think it's hilarious. I get a few whiskies into me next time, and then you know I'll proper rant, but I'll go with the guy for a point and when the locals have had that, that'll work for it.
Speaker 2:It is, I just want to hit it's quarter to 11. I probably shouldn't be drinking whiskey at this. Things have probably gone badly if I have a whiskey at this hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'll answer your question after I've got that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, natural is a great word, right, Natural is a great adjective, because if you ask them, what does natural mean? Right, it turned out it's one of these evanescent words that's very hard to pin down. So let's say I say, oh, natural foods, okay, so plants and stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, humans have been cultivating them for like 10,000 years, and then that you know we can't eat the wild versions because we no longer have the palate for it, so we can only, and then it will. You know, suddenly the definition of what's natural. Natural is very hard to pin down. Okay, that's the first problem with the word natural.
Speaker 2:People say, for example, oh, drugs, I take natural medicines and not pharmaceuticals. But pharmaceutical products are usually found in nature. Well, that's usually where they were discovered, the active ingredients. All they did was they found the, what chemical in that was doing the curing, and they synthesized it and worked out the dose that is most effective. So you didn't accidentally eat half a roof of a caravan, kill yourself because the dose was stronger one day than the other, right? So is that not natural? Because you just found the active ingredient which occurred in nature and put it in a pill, you know? So it gets very hard to do that.
Speaker 2:The other thing is the implicit fallacy that we all do. I do it as well, everyone does. It is the appeal to nature fallacy where you're like, well, natural is better than synthetic and natural is good or healthy, we associate the things. Now there's a good counter to that by looking at what we call the natural world Arsenic and Ebola and deadly nightshade really natural. You'd be a bit silly to put them in your breakfast cereal. You know, the idea that natural is always better is not even when it comes to medicines. One of the things that we do with medicines is we control the dose very carefully so that you get the maximum therapeutic benefit without killing yourself.
Speaker 2:If you were just eating plants that had these chemicals in them, which often is the case, you're not actually sure what the concentration is one day. One day it could be not enough to do any good. The next day it could be so high that it kills you. So just, you know working. This is all the scientists working out. Okay, what's the good thing in that and how can we synthesize that and do all that kind of stuff? So the appeal to nature falls to you here all the time.
Speaker 2:But the two problems are hey, it's very hard to define nature because the humans have been the whole world, the animals we eat, the food we eat. We have been messing around with them for 10,000 years. The natural ancestor of a sheep doesn't look anything like a sheep. Chickens we have made into weird, freaky big breastbirds so we can eat lots of juicy chicken breast. That's how human society settles.
Speaker 2:We got into agriculture, which is genetic engineering. That always shocks people here. Agriculture is basically selective. Breeding is genetic engineering. That's what we've been doing for and that's the only thing humans are good at Like, if you think about it right. We are crap in the wild. We're not particularly strong. We can't climb trees very well, don't survive long in open water, and we survive even less when we go under the water. We're kind of naked apes. We're not great at stuff. What we are very good at is altering our environment. We have the gift of language and the gift of communication and fairly big brains for our large heads. What we do is we alter the environment around us, even natural. That's a hard one, because we've been messing around with that since humans have been wearing lion skins. How long ago was that? Well, I think I wore a lion skin for Halloween last year but I think it was longer than that.
Speaker 1:We say the same thing about our brains because we're still at the top of the field trying anyway.
Speaker 2:I found something funny about brains. I have a niece now and she's 18 months old. She's gassed, but humans are basically born only half gestated. That was one of the trade-offs of getting such big heads that you have to be able to be born, you have to deliver. Maybe it has to be delivered before it's brain is gone. Basically, that's why humans are so crap for the first few months of their life, because they're still half gestated. Some baby mammals come out like horses, can basically run from birth. We think crawling is an achievement. I'm watching her start to crawl now and I'm like you see, if your brain was a bit smaller, you could have got here a lot quicker. If you want to bring it he doesn't appreciate this ass.
Speaker 2:She just gives me a dirty look.
Speaker 1:I've literally been on the way for 10 days. I am from New York. Congratulations. It's not your first, is it Second?
Speaker 2:I have a seizure. You're an old hand. Now You're a pro.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't know that. I don't think that's what I want. To keep it for myself, whatever suits you.
Speaker 2:I've been giving you the run-around long enough, so you have to take for as long as you need me.
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting with the natural, the naturalistic quality of the guitar. When we look at the health and fitness space, it's kind of associated with a clean eating crowd. Oh God, yeah, natural equals good, unnatural equals bad. You know, process versus unprocessed foods and I think it's even when I'm never giving a talk, a nutrition talk, I always start off with good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, natural, unnatural and I say scrap all that, because yeah you're dead right.
Speaker 1:There's nothing inherently unhealthy when we come in the constipated. No, not eating a pizza is not going to make you unhealthy. Eating a salad is not going to make you healthy.
Speaker 2:That's just not the way it works 100% and the clean eating one, you're dead right. Because that is the version of the natural, of the appeals to nature, fallacy it's also, I think it's a little bit judgmental, right. So when? Because the implication is that if you're not clean eating, you're unclean eating, right, fairly, goddamn, loaded word. And it's people are all you know. You deal with clients all the time. They're trying to improve their health and their well-being and they're being subjected to this nonsense. Not from you, obviously, because you're, you know, competent.
Speaker 2:But this cleaning and stuff, it goes and it actually transfers. I see it in cancer. I see it. Oh, you got to eat clean. And the implication is if you get cancer, it's because you didn't eat clean enough. So it becomes a judgment oh, if you put on weight or you're not super healthy, it's because you're. It becomes a moral judgment where it's not Like you know yourself. You know you need to get the right balance of micron, macronutrients, all that kind of stuff. And you know the dietary advice for how many years now, no matter, it's like balanced diet. You know a bit of everything, healthy denominations of that. You know like. I guess it's because dietary advice is not very exciting at the end. In some ways it's great, but it is Whereabouts of these people.
Speaker 2:They claim to have a panacea. They have. Oh, you do this and you're going to be ripped or you're going to be. You know you're never going to die. You live to your million and it is natural, it is appeal to nature, fallacy. But if you really want to go back, one of the ones I love and you might remember this years ago, remember the paleo diet was really big for a while. I love that because a friend of mine over in Oxford is a paleontologist and he specialized to human diets and he's like, yeah, all these people think what the paleo people ate, they didn't and they couldn't get access. And also, you know they were dying on our frigid of brown 25, 26. I mean, I'm not sure you want to regress to that. And again this goes back. Humans have gotten very good. It used to be hard for us to get calories. I think one of the problems that was really easy for us to get calories. I went and had a Big Mac yesterday. I was like I don't have the comfort.
Speaker 2:I drove up to Sanctuary and got a Big Mac and yeah, I mean, obviously that does encourage a little bit sometimes our propensity towards obesity, but obviously that's not a demonized food. It's just to be mindful of our needs and balancing them in and out and stuff like that. But yeah, we can't like we can have a pizza, we can have a burger, we can have a blowout who cares? You know it's it's not, it's patterns of behavior, more than individual foods that are going to make the long term differences.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think as well, when you like the fields bad, there's a level of guilt that cuts through. When you deal with society start feeling dogey and guilty and shameful, and that's kind of what's being pushed on social media. And obviously, field availability has gone up and you know, when it comes to obesity, we about now this, you know it's multifactorial, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, 100% Like it's it's. It's a lot of different things and demonizing one thing or demonizing or even even to an extent demonizing obesity is not always the correct thing to do. But, yeah, the guilt, and I mean we have. We have a huge increase, particularly in younger women with eating disorders, and men as well. But but it's more and I kind of wonder this kind of narrative, this clean eating, this, you know, this guilt, association with food, it's not healthy first and actually doesn't help us get to our optimal health, like I mean, I'm sure I know, when you take clients and you'd never be, you know, given them that nonsense, but there are people that would, and it's just it's a negative cycle, I think.
Speaker 1:You know health and I think the health is it's, you know, it's subjective, you know, and you know we have. We have our physical health, we have, you know, nutritional health, obviously, social health very important, mental health very important, and it's just one, emphasis on just one is not on it. As you said, make it live longer. This longevity goes now that people are really portion and just keep this and you'll get to the other 100.
Speaker 2:And I suppose there's also. There's a case that all you know it, all it all ties into different things, what you want to achieve in your health goals, whatever different things. Last year I went through a particularly stressful time and I had lost a lot of people and it was. It was very sad and I was so stressed out by it. I lost a lot of weight to the point where I had abs again which I hadn't had an age and people kept saying you know, great things are going, fantastic. Like actually I feel the worst I felt in years. You cannot extrapolate one to the other and your physical body status is never going to be. You know, that's a major part of your psychological health, but it cannot be all of it and we're weird like that. We have to balance. You know, people can't judge books by covers and that's. I guess we live in the Instagram era, right, where we all do our. You know, maybe I wonder how that plays into our mind. I think more research has to be done, but sure it is fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know we are always very mindful of when I say someone not to comment on that actual appearance, and I think, people, it's a real ordeal thing though. Jesus, you look great and you could be actually sick. You could be having illness that's making you lose the weight To be fair.
Speaker 2:It's an Irish thing to say Jesus, you're looking great, even when someone looks haggard, and then as soon as they turn their back. We go see your man.
Speaker 1:The hail fell well met.
Speaker 2:It's still well alive in.
Speaker 1:Ireland. He's got the length of self going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah except if they're a really good friend of yours. You say to their face Jesus, you look like a shite.
Speaker 1:Just a couple more right there in my zone. You touched on it earlier about the THC and I think that's a point because I get hit with this a lot and I know there was a review going on in 2017. But the National Academy of Science where they done I think it was a systematic review I met analysis of 10,000 studies on the medical application of cannabis. Can you talk us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Sure. So again, there's no substance in nature that's inherently good or bad. Right, these are labels we put on things and they're not very accurate labels, because I give my students an example is radiation good or bad? Well, if you're being exposal unnecessarily, it's bad. If you're getting treated for cancer, it's bloody great. So horses for courses and cannabis is the same. So cannabis has been used for well over 2000, 3000 years as a relaxant, as a social thing, often used in ceremonies and social bondings across the world, and it gets you high as balls. So I mean lots of things going on there right Now.
Speaker 2:Getting back into the appeals of nature thing, there's always been an argument can we medicalize this? And the answer is we have. Yes, there are three things that we have really good evidence that cannabis or derived products from cannabis beneficial for. The first of these is for vomiting associated with chemotherapy and things like that. Right Now there are drugs that have already been derived from, from THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, that help with some people vomiting. But here's the kicker why don't we hear that drug more often? Well, it's a third line drug in most oncology centers and the reason why it's third line is because we have drugs that are more stable and do this better. Cannabis will make these cannabis derived drugs will make people feel better in about half of cases, but in the other half of cases they'll make the vomiting worse. So they're usually a backup. If the first two haven't worked, you throw it out there. So that's one thing it definitely works at. It is good for managing spasms from multiple cirrhosis, so MS spasms. It has shown really good efficacy in that. Because it has a relaxed and defect. It has that kind of stuff going on. And the third thing it is very, very good at in some instances is managing certain types of pain. Not all pain, because pain is a complex phenomena, but managing certain types of pain in certain conditions. So there's three really good uses of THC, which is great.
Speaker 2:The problem is you have people that will claim that it cures cannabis or cures cures cancer that'll make you live forever, that you know, and all those stuff that's. That's not true, unfortunately. If it was, and sometimes it's a misunderstanding and this is actually a probably an example of malinformation. But but flip the other way. So the one I get is yeah, well, we have evidence that that cannabis THC will cure, will kill cancer cells in a petri dish. So what do you say to that scientist? And I'm like that is true. Which is? That is true, 100% true. So we'll bleach, so we'll sneezing on them, so we'll accidentally leaving the incubator at half a degree too high or too low, it turns out it's really easy to kill oh so, a water, by the way. It's really easy to kill cancer cells in a petri dish. What it's very hard to do is kill cancer cells in a person without killing their cells too, and that's what an anti you know, cancer therapeutic has to do. And THC, while it's great for some things, doesn't do that. But you have people that have very much the appeal to nature fallacy, who really believe that this has to be a cure. And why should it have to be? It's perfectly good at doing what it does. It doesn't have to do everything.
Speaker 2:You know, I remember I was on. I was on an Irish TV we're talking about this and there was a bill that was meant to be legalizing cannabis for medical use. Now, cannabis was already legal for medical use and if you read the bill as well I did, it was like it was more like a way of using overblown medical claims to make it legal on the street or for trading right. And I was doing the show and I was like it was Gino Kenny was on with me and he turned around at one stage and he's going oh, you're just against this. And I actually turned out. Actually I'm pro the legalization of cannabis. I actually think it would be a good idea to legalize it, control it, have it available. And I said what I'm not pro is using exaggerated medical claims to get that as a backdoor. And I remember he was kind of annoyed at me that stage because I think he was about to pounce me and say you're just against cannabis and I'm like no, I'm actually thinking it should be legalized, I think it really should be. But that's a separate argument to will it cure all disease? Exactly, it'll work for some. It won't work for others.
Speaker 2:And if people want to get high, I'm not against that. I mean I like a drink. I mean it's as obviously and there has to be moderation people can become addicted to cannabis despite the common misconception that they can't. And it can be damaging to younger people who start too early because, again, it's you know. You know the effects of cannabis. We don't need to be so. The point is. It's like alcohol you know you're moderating, you control it and I would ideally like to see a world where people can use it with the knowledge of like okay, I shouldn't take too much of this or do this too often, because it will damage me. But I mean, I understand why it's currently illegal, but there should be a conversation about that. But the medical part of it is not going to be a big part of that conversation because the medicine limited use.
Speaker 1:Good, as you explained, I was very about and I think I'm just touching on vaccines before we go and then I'm gonna have more questions. Right, you shouldn't have said keep me on as long as you're, that was your forced mistake. Well, just in terms of the MMR vaccine and how that has attributed it to the vaccine hesitancy as a whole, can you talk about a little bit about that, where it's kind of came from, where it's basically bullshit and then sure can.
Speaker 2:yeah the effects that it's actually had later on, and continues to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. For a bit of historical background, the MMR, measles, mumps, rubella vaccine is a triple jab, right, and it's three in one and measles in particular, very, very deadly disease and people go, oh it's not. Well, measles has, I mean, by to the Irish death rate and roughly has the same death rate as, say, covid does. It's pretty, you know, it doesn't kill all the time, but it does kill and it can do a lot of damage when it doesn't. It can make you go deaf, it can cause brain damage you want to avoid and it's also horrible. If you ever talked to anyone, particularly the older generation, who had measles, it sucks to get Like. I was talking to my dad about it last night because he had measles and he was like, yeah, and we have three deaf members of my family and the suspicion we don't know why they're the older generation, we suspect they were measles related, like it really was a big problem a long time ago and now it's so much worse. And first thing is this is the the the wake field MMR debacle started in 1998. But I need to point out that anti-vaccine activism always existed since 1772 at least that is how far back it goes. I have a pamphlet from 1772 called the sinful and dangerous practice of inoculation. So that's anti-vaccine rhetoric's been around a long time, right?
Speaker 2:So in 998 a gastroenterologist, andrew Wakefield, published a paper in the Lancet, very respected medical journal, where he looked at 12 kids with autism and tried to find out reasons, and in the discussion he suggested that maybe it was because they had the MMR vaccine. Now, as scientific evidence goes, this pretty weak right, because most kids had the MMR vaccine. There was 12 kids in the sample and he had, as it later transpired, had been very unethical in how he sourced the kids. That's neither here nor there what Wakefield did. So he called a big, big, massive press conference to announce his results. That's unusual. Scientists don't usually call their own press conferences and he did. And he said oh look, we should be, maybe move. You know, maybe stop this jab, maybe it's causing autism and the reaction. Now people always mix this up. Initially nothing happened. In 1998 people just went like the only people at this conference were science and health journalists who knew enough to go. Oh, go away. This is nonsense, right. But what happened was the anti-vaccine movement, which had never gone away, adopted this. Now, as it later turned out. Wakefield was taking money from a big a number of high-profile anti-vaccine people and they adopted and they started getting it into newspapers as human interest stories. Oh, my daughter's autistic I wonder if it was the vaccine right.
Speaker 2:By the year 2000 this became a big goddamn thing. People were really scared. In the UK vaccination rates dropped hugely. They've been up in the high 90s and they suddenly started dropping in parts of London. The 60s. Ireland was affected really badly too. In fact we had three of the first deaths due to this. So we hit in the north inner city we had three children die in the year 2000s and a means of outbreak whose parents had not vaccinated them because they'd been following the UK stuff and they were scared. So we actually got some of the first human casualties of this right um and the UK became a huge thing eventually. It took a long time.
Speaker 2:The media even, like you know, the medical establishment are trying to beg people to get vaccinated. But the media weren't great at the time. They were like oh, maybe Wakefield's onto something. He's a champion of patience. One journalist at Brian Deere who I'm friendly with and he's a brilliant guy. Brian Deere just kept investigating, he kept doing the job of a journalist and he eventually found out Wakefield was taking loads of money, had fake data. He found everything right and Wakefield was exposed as a fraud and the study was exposed as fraudulent and it was retracted properly in 2010, so 11 years ago. Now, right, and you know, wakefield is disgraced. He has no scientific credibility.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing about how media works nowadays, particularly in the advent of the internet and all that kind of stuff. That never has gone away. That bit of misinformation, despite the fact that it's so thoroughly debunked, so absolutely wrong, has been adopted around the world by anti-vaccine activists, and they know it'll scare parents. This is where they aim it at. Oh, you would want to get your kid vaccinated. They might go all autistic. Now, obviously, autism is not caused by vaccination. It is a neurogenetic, you know condition that you you're born with right. Um, it just so happens that it manifests around the time you get verbal, which is around the time you get your booster jabs for ememore. There is no relation apart from that, right, and I think the problem with is, even though it's 11 years since his paper was retracted and over 20 years since it was published, right, if I'm doing my maths right? Yes, if you like.
Speaker 2:That has left a poisonous legacy Donald Trump, when he was elected president, was talking about. He invited Andrew Wakefield to his inaugural ball and we I've dealt with Andrew Wakefield personally. He's a despicable. I was saying that, right, we didn't get on, we'll put it that way. And that damage lasts. And I gotta remind people in 2019, right, the measles vaccine alone saves over a million lives a year. Still, and in 2019, the WHO declared a vaccine hesitancy a top 10 threat to public health Because, around the world, in places where measles was once non-existent because the vaccination rate was so high, it started to break through again.
Speaker 2:Parts of America, a lot of Europe In 2016, we had about 5,000 cases in Europe. By 2018, we had 85,000 cases. Right and needless deaths all over the place. Right, and this is something I think is a very powerful lesson Propaganda lasts a long time.
Speaker 2:Right, the facts can be out there, but, knowing this is a fact, we listen to the scary story and it's often, I think, parents who fall for this. They're trying to best for their kids, but people like Wakefield are not interested in the best for your kids. They're interested in their own legacy and their own grifting on this, and I think it's really important to not look at it as a case of oh, if I do this, what'll happen to my kid. Nor, if I don't do this, what could happen. And when you stack up the risks and benefits, you're always gonna find always it's a better bet to vaccinate your kids. And the conversation. If you're unsure and I totally understand people being unsure always reach out to a qualified healthcare professional doctors, nurses, you know pharmacists and they'll all tell you the same thing and ask them to vaccinate their own kids and they damn well will Promise you that Right.
Speaker 1:See, it's like what you said. It's the when it's being eradicated, people don't feel the need. Why would I vaccinate the kids against the measles when no one gets it anymore? But then when that actually kicks off and there's many thousands of people they own it, then you start to see a resorgeness of these illnesses that haven't been around in a long, long time.
Speaker 2:And you see this for nascence very quickly. For example, measles has. We all know about ornates now from COVID, but it has an ornate of about 18. Which means every single measles infection leads to about 18 secondary infections. It's very infectious and you need a really high herd immunity. About 95% of your population has to have it. Because it's that infectious that if it's a little gap it'll get a foothold. That's why in London it was so tragic when it hit 62% in some places In Cork at one stage it hit like in the 20%. There's parts of North Cork where it went super low. It's improving but we're still a little bit below what we need for herd immunity and I would strongly encourage it's totally understandable.
Speaker 2:The biggest single determined of parents getting vaccine hesitance is exposure to anti-vaccine propaganda online and if you have fears, that's totally human. These are designed to play on your fears. So I would say always have a chat with a healthcare professional, medical professional, scientist even and I think that might have saw a lot of your fears and doubts. Remember, all these people online want to do is make you scared. Just be mindful of anyone who's trying to make you scared.
Speaker 1:I think historically people as well. If you get an understanding of, like we just said, how far vaccination goes back and even if you look at a small box, for instance, the effect that it's had on some of the diseases, how it gets, you know, I think people just don't look back that far, you know, they tend to just think about the herd in the now.
Speaker 2:And that's totally understandable, like I was chatting with my dad last night about him using an outdoor toilet in his house for the first 15 years of his life, and that's nothing we have a reference for. We forget very quickly what was endemic generations before, because the only reference point we have is what we see around us. So that's why people were more afraid of autism than they were afraid of measles, because they couldn't see measles. The availability heuristic for measles had gone. They couldn't see the damage it did. They couldn't see the damage Polio did or smallpox did, because that was all gone. But they could see. The biggest thing they were scared was oh, I'm scared of his autism stuff, because that's new right, and they could see that and they were reading about it. So, again, that's availability heuristic. That information was available to them. But again, measles never went away. It was just being kept at bay. And that's the same with a lot of our infectious diseases and it's a reason why vaccination will always have a very important place.
Speaker 1:A lot of people talk to me. They tend to think that you don't really always have to. You know, we're diagnosing a lot of things easier now that wouldn't have been diagnosed many years ago. Someone only said to me today about cancer. He says why do so many people have cancer now? And I said I'm not 100% sure because it's not my name, but maybe because I live in Langratt. That's probably one of the reasons.
Speaker 2:Anyway, You're dead right, you're 100% right. Cancer is primarily a disease of aging. I said that in a podcast once and someone thought I said of Asians, which I just clarify it is of aging. The longer we live, the more times we roll that genetic dice that we might develop the cellular damage that eventually becomes cancer. And so it's not surprising cancer rates go up as life expectancy goes up. But that perversely means that we're actually living longer, healthier lives. It's something that's always going to end those lives or, if you know, and that's the point and it's why rates on there and this I always say, but I mean I know I rant about statistics a lot it's why statistical information in isolation, you have to be very careful with the context of it and you see a lot of grifters You've seen a lot during the pandemic trying to spin figures the wrong way. Context is always vital always, context is key.
Speaker 1:Oi, david, we always ask this question before I let you go, not a real one what? Ok?
Speaker 2:So you have to buy me a drink for another hour. That's my charge. No, no.
Speaker 1:Two minutes or get you a drink the guy. If you would three books that you'd recommend. Now maybe let's say four books. We recommend the harassment late, obviously, but something along the lines of the harassment late. You feel people will get a benefit of it, not too heavy People, you know yeah, so adjustable.
Speaker 2:Well, actually you've mentioned one in Iran. I loved Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. It's funny, like Ben Ben's a smart ass and it comes out in his writing and every chapter is just a rant. Don't even that connected, it's just a little rant. You can. You can delve in and out, so that's a great, great one for that.
Speaker 2:I remember reading it years ago and just thought this, this is great fun. I used to buy it for Christmas for people. And a little bit more philosophical is Carl Sagan's the Demon Haunted World Sciences Account on the Dark, and he's talking about how you know superstition and misinformation. And he was talking about this in 1995, long before we had the internet and the rise of social media and stuff, and it hasn't dated badly at all. It's really, really good, good, good read on that front. So that's two, right, I have to get one more.
Speaker 2:I mean, I keep going towards fiction but I go towards facts in this case. So, just in this kind of creative thinking way, a book that helped me along and this is a weird one and this is a bit of a curveball there's a book by Simon Singh called Firmats, last Theorem, right, and it was about the discovery of. So Firmats. Last Theorem. It's a very simple thing. You probably remember from school Pythagoras' Theorem x squared plus y squared equals z squared, and you can put whole numbers in that. You can put, you know, two squared plus sorry, three squared plus four squared equals five squared, and that works, you know, but, but, but, but firm, ah, there's no solutions If you put any number greater than two. So cubed plus cube, there's no whole number of solutions and it took over 300 years for someone to prove that Right.
Speaker 2:But the whole adventure and how people went through the logic of trying to, it's it. It reads like an adventure story and it it actually my mother who hates maths. I'm like, are you reading? I don't know why, I don't know maths. She's just that was really exciting and yeah, the maths were, were kind of it wasn't. It was about the discovery. So if people want to see how discoveries progress and how people go the wrong way in the right way and science oscillates, maths is not technically science I'm I before anyone calls you up on that but the logic of discovery is there too and I found it really. As I read that one, I was like 17, 18. And it made me go, wow, I want to do some science, which is a weird reaction to have. So people want for math. Last year and by Simon Singh, I highly recommend.
Speaker 1:And I'll add a little more stiff by.
Speaker 2:Mary Roach. If you want to, I have to add in female authors, but I've realized I've done a lot of male authors here, including myself. Stiff by Mary Roach about the life of cadavers and corpses and the stuff that can happen to you after you're dead is hilarious. Totally worth a read as well.
Speaker 1:And then, mo Maree, three, health. We always finish with three health tips. So now, as we said, health subjective. Right, it doesn't have to be, you know, e, fruit and veg, for example, but what tips would you give someone just to be, let's say, a healthier human being as a whole?
Speaker 2:As you know, I'm a big advocate of clean eating and paleo diet as a whole. I think the word holistic is often abused, but it just does mean whole person. Unfortunately, it's abused by scam artists and stuff like that. There's your physical health and your mental health, and it is very easy to neglect your mental health. I've certainly been guilty doing that, but forgetting that that's an important part of you're, not a machine. So for health tips, stuff that helped me, I recommend I walk a lot, I hike a lot and I cycle a lot, and there's something I don't know if this has been studied, but there's something very, very reassuring about being outdoors, about being in nature and being disconnected for a while.
Speaker 2:Another health tip for that is I often have to force myself to put my phone down because I used to be like blue to it and now I'm like actually, you know what you do sometimes need to just be in the moment, appreciate the people around you, the things around you, and I spent years not doing that and I've definitely been much happier. It's much more annoying when I don't answer emails, as Paul knows, but it is. And the third thing is keep active. It doesn't matter, you don't have to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping iron and going to be me. Just keep doing stuff. Keep your limbs mobile, keep your mind, read loads of books, Keep all of yourself mobile and I feel like a fraud giving health advice in that regard, but that's my very basic tips, Thanks for that, david.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think outdoors, you know there is something to it when you're outdoors and you're especially how you can get connected to nature.
Speaker 2:It sounds like a cliche, but it does put things in perspective. If you're stressed, out Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I spend about 50% of my time in the mountains, to be honest, which one, dublin and Wicklow, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Wicklow's my heart. I might see you there at some stage.
Speaker 1:Maybe Willow or something. Yeah, david, thank you Paul, an absolute pleasure. Thanks very much.