How to 'do' science...
and argue with Trav.
Last week I shared this article and accompanying paper which lightly condemned Intermittent Fasting as a muscle wasting dietary practice.
In short, the paper showed that those who employ 'intermittent fasting' were more likely to lose muscle mass during their diets, and not likely to lose more fat mass.
As someone who has challenged the lifestyle choices of others in the past....*cough* wingchunkungfu *COUGH*.... I casually sat down pants-less on a splintery bench of my own choosing, and prepared to be whisked away by an avalanche of butt-hurtedness.
"You're an idiot, Trav. Watch this YouTube video from FastingGuru69 who says the exact opposite of what you said."
"You know nothing, Trav. I gained 260 pounds of muscle and lost 700 pounds of fat simultaneously on intermittent fasting."
"Ignorance is bliss, Trav. You're like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, except you're excited by being wrong instead of tending rabbits."
Instead of rolling up my degree in nutrition from the University of Pennsylvania and swatting the foreheads of my intellectual foes, I had already prepared to make this a series of teachable moments.
After all, starting an informed discussion about a topic is how everyone learns.
EVERYONE. Including me.
As such, I have prepared the following brief piece for you today:
How To Have A Scientific Argument With Trav
...inherently helping everyone involved to learn stuff.
A guideline on how to have a scientific discussion.
Option 1. Attack the Paper That I Posted
Nutritional studies are usually garbage. This is why finding a series of papers that support your argument is more compelling.
Let me show you how to attack a paper, by attacking the paper that I posted!
1. There's only a sample size of 116 people.
(That's actually not bad for a nutritional study...)
That said, the most compelling studies on any topic will have THOUSANDS of participants... thus eliminating any chance of statistical anomalies effecting the results.
If 10 of the folks in this study just loved the occasional birthday cake in the middle of the night, that could skew the results.
If you see a study with only 20 people in it, it's basically useless.
2. The study didn't control for EXERCISE.
This is a big one.
Earlier this year, I shared the following newsletter on the "Four Laws Of Muscle", which clearly showed that exercise of any shape or form will dramatically slow (or prevent) any form of muscle wasting.
So, did the 'regular diet' group happen to exercise more than the 'intermittent fasting' group? We don't know... but this is another reason why having a few thousand participants would have been nice.
Further, if BOTH groups had exercised, would there have been a difference in the amount of muscle lost, or would fasting always turn out to be worse?
Again, we don't know, because there was no control for exercise in this particular study.
This will help you sift through some of the BS... however, you will still encounter biased opinion.
Hey... IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME, CHALLENGE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE PAPER THAT I POST!
This will get you in the habit of reading the damn papers, and thinking about flaws in the scientific method.
Option 2. Share a Study Showing Different Results
This is my favorite... because it allows me to consistently catch people who DON'T EVEN READ THE STUDY THAT THEY'RE POSTING.
As such, I get to ridicule them for being preposterous human beings.
Every time a someone responded to my newsletter with a demand that I watch a specific YouTube video, or read a specific book, I asked that they pick the most relevant paper from the sources cited, so I could look at the data.
In other words, don't just believe a video. Read the paper that the guy is citing. If he's not citing a paper, then report his video for exploitation of minors. That'll teach him.
"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." -Christopher Hitchens
More often than not, when someone actually responded to my request with a paper, they actually supported MY point, and not their own.
Here are a couple of amusing ones:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27737674/
This study showed no difference in lean body mass after 8 weeks, but did find this:
"Testosterone and insulin-like growth factor 1 decreased significantly in the Intermittent Fasting Group, with no changes in the Normal Diet group."
Great.
So no difference in muscle mass (yet), but a significant decrease in all of the hormones that help you to build and preserve muscle mass.
...including the hormones that make your jimmy-jawn function as intended.
What do you think is going to happen over the next 8 weeks. Or over a year?
This is not a "win" for the opposition.
Time Restricted Feeding In Young Men Performing Resistance Training
"individuals performing resistance training and Normal Diet'gained 2.3 kg of lean soft tissue on average, as opposed to −0.2 kg in the Intermittent Fasting group, indicating that fasting may have hindered the growth of muscle.
So this one showed that while intermittent fasters didn't lose a ton of muscle mass, the 'normal diet' group gained an average of 5 pounds of muscle MORE than the fasters.
Is anyone even reading the papers that they're posting... or just assuming that I won't?
And hey... don't get me wrong, I will absolutely cherry pick data to support my point, but a basket of cherries is no match for an overwhelming tide of evidence to the contrary.
The bottom line is this:
Get yourself in the habit of reading the papers. They're not glorious reading, but quite frankly... you can't trust anyone. As you'll find, sometimes you can't even trust the guys who did the study.
Again, some medical research websites like Jamanetwork will post papers and have other doctors / researchers comment below the article!
This is especially cool, because it allows the science folks to tear apart the study, and you can make a more informed decision on what to believe.
The second bottom line is this:
If you're going to argue with me, you better be coming with the evidence, or you better be attacking my paper.
Otherwise, I will be waiting with a printed copy of this newsletter on some extra firm resume paper, ready to smite the imaginary flies on your forehead.
Have a great week.
I'll probably write something else on Friday.
-Trav