Heya - found you through a Reddit comment and just wanted to drop a note of appreciation/encouragement. Coming from the policy side of things, am similarly puzzled and fairly alarmed by the runaway popularity of Maintenance Phase, so really appreciate your thorough deconstruction of the fluffy, “feel good” narratives pumped out by the pod.
Have you ever considered recording a version of your critiques a la Decoding the Gurus?
Hi! I'm glad you found me! I had not thought of recording it but that is a good idea. Thank you for the suggestion! I know a lot of people prefer to consume content via audio, so it would probably help reach more people, too. I will play around with the best way to do that. I wonder if Decoding the Gurus would do an episode on MP... I will investigate! Thank you for the idea!
Thank you for this! I’ve also listened to some Hobbes episodes (particularly “if books could kill”) and done some of my own fact checking -- he has a very bad tendency to grossly misrepresent studies or leave out important context that would be impossible to miss to anyone with even average familiarity with particular topics.
When he started talking about things related to my own PhD work I couldn’t help but notice approx. 1 billion mistakes in interpretation and representation. This was doubly frustrating because his takes were conveyed with extreme smugness 😅
Thank you for reading and for commenting! It's especially hard when it's our area of expertise. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for you. Would love to chat more if you think there are episodes of "If Books Could Kill" that need some fact-checking!
I really appreciate your writing on this subject. I was an avid listener to this podcast, but in the past year have felt like there is something off. When they finally started approaching the topic of Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications, I found their content entirely lacking in factual evidence of claims and a lot of hyperbolic fearmongering about the side effects and people stealing medication out of the hands of diabetics. I'd love to see you do the Ozempic episode, though some of the information that they went on about incorrectly was in a bonus episode. I've stopped supporting them on Patreon because I realized they are a biased source of misinformation.
Hi! Thanks for reading! I did an initial review of the Ozempic episode on Reddit but it was admittedly pretty sassy because I was just SO frustrated with MP for getting things wrong. I am going to revisit that one and polish it up to post here. I didn't even realize there was a second part. I will see if I can get my hands on that!
It was before the episode came out, I think they mentioned it when discussing diet trends. When I criticized the way they were essentially scapegoating weight loss patients for endangering diabetics, I was shouted down by other listeners. But it's just another way society can attack fat people, by saying we're stealing medicine from people who really need it. I stopped supporting at that time.
This was very enlightening. I don’t think most podcast listeners will have the patience to read this, but it is important to set the record straight on some of these points. I enjoy MP, but at times have been made uncomfortable by some of their blanket statements, as well as by what smelled like cherry picking of data and sources. I am not an expert- I just picked this up from the general presentation of their findings. I often noted the irony of Michael debunking junk single studies but then citing single studies himself.
I still love the podcast. I don’t love misinformation, and I wish they would dial back some of their claims in the healthcare arena. I tell myself that MP is not a scientific journal, it’s not even journalism, it’s a podcast, and that they are activists trying to reframe the discourse about fatness that dehumanizes and harms people. This is necessary work, and they have helped me see my own fat bias. The sloppy research, while frustrating and dangerous, is something I just accepted. Maybe I shouldn’t.
Thank you for commenting! And I totally agree that the podcast is doing great work when it comes to revealing fat bias. I wish they would stick to that, and not try to expand into science. When they put out such sloppy reporting, it harms the overall cause. I think we can fight anti fat bias without spreading misinformation!
My thoughts about them were very similar at first, basically "okay they have no idea how physiology works, or the state of current research in this field, but the social message is important".
I listen to other podcasts about destigmatizing fatness, and got pretty concerned once I heard other podcasts directing their listeners to the "science" MP episodes to "learn" about these topics, as if MP is an authoritative source. I'm worried about the development of an "alternative facts" ecosystem like the one that grew around shows like joe Rogan and his cronies, where ideology drives their interpretation of "science".
Just wanted to thank you for this in-depth fact-check! I find it so hard to listen to misleading content when I’m just trying to fact-check things for myself, it’s so so frustrating. It just makes you want to constantly pause to rant. Thank you for putting yourself through that!
Hah, it does test my patience, but the more I do it, the better I am getting at not getting too riled up by the blatant misinformation. It's definitely a growth opportunity. ;)
Hi, I'm a journalist and I write a publication called The Cynic's Guide to Self-Improvement (formerly on Substack, now on Ghost) and I'd love to talk with you about this. If you're available, what is the best way to catch up with you?
Found this on Twitter and wanted to remark on how good this is and how much I appreciate it. I'm on the clinical side of this issue, and it's hard to go through all the history and statistics checking. Also happy to see the record getting corrected on gallbladder disease/cancer.
As a (former?) MP fan I think this work is really important. The blind faith I see in on the MP subreddit is really concerning. People seem to be making individual health decisions based on the podcast... yikes! We definitely need more science literacy in fat activism.
Thank you for reading and for commenting! I totally agree with everything you said. It's doing harm to the fat activism movement to spew such misinformation.
Thank you so much for these! As a layperson I had no idea that the sources being referenced were being misrepresented, and it’s frustrating to hear! I really appreciate the work you’re doing here and I hope you keep it up!
Great article, and I 100% believe in focused criticism -- that's how you help get everyone closer to the truth.
The one quibble I'd have is that it's plausible that greater health coverage would result in some net savings by increasing prevention efforts (though you could probably point to some offsetting costs).
That is a good point - the downstream costs are much higher when people don't get preventive medicine because they are under insured (or uninsured)! Thanks for raising that issue. A very important consideration!
One of the things I've noticed reading these is that Michael and Aubrey have a lot of contempt for any field that isn't their own. Like all the times they wave off long established statistics methods as "mumbo jumbo" or "empty statistics." If I was an unkind person, I'd say that they seem to view summarizing Wikipedia articles and writing bad poetry about your body as the only legitimate form of work. But I'm not, so I'll just say that they should take an intro to Statistics course.
Hahah you are not unkind but you are certainly astute. I think this is what cracked me up about them citing a mouse study in this episode. They are so very quick to dismiss anything that doesn't fit their world view and then they don't even do the very small amount of work it takes to find legitimate sources for their podcast. Wild.
I see what happened - they updated SEER Explorer since I posted this originally and that changed the link (and the age was updated, evidently). Thanks again!
I adore MP and will continue to listen avidly, and I also appreciate this so much and have read it thoroughly. Thanks for sharing! I feel lucky to have such a deepened understanding now.
Great article. Just one question about the one thing that didn’t make sense to me: you said “In the 2020 report, Miliken estimates that 6% of the costs of Alzheimer’s are due to obesity (see graph from the report below)”
The graph in question is a pie chart with percents attributed to various diseases. If the 6% for Alzheimer’s meant what you say it means, there would be no reason to expect the percentages to add up to 100% - in theory, the percentage of the cost of multiple diseases attributable to obesity could be over 50%.
Since it’s a pie chart and the percentages *do* add up to 100%, I assume the chart is actually saying the converse - that 6% of the increased costs from *obesity* are due to increased spending on Alzheimer’s.
Heya - found you through a Reddit comment and just wanted to drop a note of appreciation/encouragement. Coming from the policy side of things, am similarly puzzled and fairly alarmed by the runaway popularity of Maintenance Phase, so really appreciate your thorough deconstruction of the fluffy, “feel good” narratives pumped out by the pod.
Have you ever considered recording a version of your critiques a la Decoding the Gurus?
Hi! I'm glad you found me! I had not thought of recording it but that is a good idea. Thank you for the suggestion! I know a lot of people prefer to consume content via audio, so it would probably help reach more people, too. I will play around with the best way to do that. I wonder if Decoding the Gurus would do an episode on MP... I will investigate! Thank you for the idea!
Thank you for this! I’ve also listened to some Hobbes episodes (particularly “if books could kill”) and done some of my own fact checking -- he has a very bad tendency to grossly misrepresent studies or leave out important context that would be impossible to miss to anyone with even average familiarity with particular topics.
When he started talking about things related to my own PhD work I couldn’t help but notice approx. 1 billion mistakes in interpretation and representation. This was doubly frustrating because his takes were conveyed with extreme smugness 😅
Thank you for reading and for commenting! It's especially hard when it's our area of expertise. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for you. Would love to chat more if you think there are episodes of "If Books Could Kill" that need some fact-checking!
I really appreciate your writing on this subject. I was an avid listener to this podcast, but in the past year have felt like there is something off. When they finally started approaching the topic of Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications, I found their content entirely lacking in factual evidence of claims and a lot of hyperbolic fearmongering about the side effects and people stealing medication out of the hands of diabetics. I'd love to see you do the Ozempic episode, though some of the information that they went on about incorrectly was in a bonus episode. I've stopped supporting them on Patreon because I realized they are a biased source of misinformation.
Hi! Thanks for reading! I did an initial review of the Ozempic episode on Reddit but it was admittedly pretty sassy because I was just SO frustrated with MP for getting things wrong. I am going to revisit that one and polish it up to post here. I didn't even realize there was a second part. I will see if I can get my hands on that!
It was before the episode came out, I think they mentioned it when discussing diet trends. When I criticized the way they were essentially scapegoating weight loss patients for endangering diabetics, I was shouted down by other listeners. But it's just another way society can attack fat people, by saying we're stealing medicine from people who really need it. I stopped supporting at that time.
Ah, yes, MP's response to Ozempic has been confusing to me, too. I'm sorry that you experienced that from the other listeners. I'm glad you spoke up!
This was very enlightening. I don’t think most podcast listeners will have the patience to read this, but it is important to set the record straight on some of these points. I enjoy MP, but at times have been made uncomfortable by some of their blanket statements, as well as by what smelled like cherry picking of data and sources. I am not an expert- I just picked this up from the general presentation of their findings. I often noted the irony of Michael debunking junk single studies but then citing single studies himself.
I still love the podcast. I don’t love misinformation, and I wish they would dial back some of their claims in the healthcare arena. I tell myself that MP is not a scientific journal, it’s not even journalism, it’s a podcast, and that they are activists trying to reframe the discourse about fatness that dehumanizes and harms people. This is necessary work, and they have helped me see my own fat bias. The sloppy research, while frustrating and dangerous, is something I just accepted. Maybe I shouldn’t.
Thank you for commenting! And I totally agree that the podcast is doing great work when it comes to revealing fat bias. I wish they would stick to that, and not try to expand into science. When they put out such sloppy reporting, it harms the overall cause. I think we can fight anti fat bias without spreading misinformation!
My thoughts about them were very similar at first, basically "okay they have no idea how physiology works, or the state of current research in this field, but the social message is important".
I listen to other podcasts about destigmatizing fatness, and got pretty concerned once I heard other podcasts directing their listeners to the "science" MP episodes to "learn" about these topics, as if MP is an authoritative source. I'm worried about the development of an "alternative facts" ecosystem like the one that grew around shows like joe Rogan and his cronies, where ideology drives their interpretation of "science".
Yes my thoughts went there as well.
Just wanted to thank you for this in-depth fact-check! I find it so hard to listen to misleading content when I’m just trying to fact-check things for myself, it’s so so frustrating. It just makes you want to constantly pause to rant. Thank you for putting yourself through that!
Hah, it does test my patience, but the more I do it, the better I am getting at not getting too riled up by the blatant misinformation. It's definitely a growth opportunity. ;)
Hi, I'm a journalist and I write a publication called The Cynic's Guide to Self-Improvement (formerly on Substack, now on Ghost) and I'd love to talk with you about this. If you're available, what is the best way to catch up with you?
Hey Josh! Would love to chat. Shoot me an email at spurioussemicolon@yahoo.com!
Found this on Twitter and wanted to remark on how good this is and how much I appreciate it. I'm on the clinical side of this issue, and it's hard to go through all the history and statistics checking. Also happy to see the record getting corrected on gallbladder disease/cancer.
Thank you for reading! Always happy to hear the clinical side of things, too, since that's not my area of expertise.
As a (former?) MP fan I think this work is really important. The blind faith I see in on the MP subreddit is really concerning. People seem to be making individual health decisions based on the podcast... yikes! We definitely need more science literacy in fat activism.
Thank you for reading and for commenting! I totally agree with everything you said. It's doing harm to the fat activism movement to spew such misinformation.
Thank you so much for these! As a layperson I had no idea that the sources being referenced were being misrepresented, and it’s frustrating to hear! I really appreciate the work you’re doing here and I hope you keep it up!
Thank you for reading and for commenting! This is exactly what I am doing this for - I want people to be as informed as possible! :)
Great article, and I 100% believe in focused criticism -- that's how you help get everyone closer to the truth.
The one quibble I'd have is that it's plausible that greater health coverage would result in some net savings by increasing prevention efforts (though you could probably point to some offsetting costs).
That is a good point - the downstream costs are much higher when people don't get preventive medicine because they are under insured (or uninsured)! Thanks for raising that issue. A very important consideration!
One of the things I've noticed reading these is that Michael and Aubrey have a lot of contempt for any field that isn't their own. Like all the times they wave off long established statistics methods as "mumbo jumbo" or "empty statistics." If I was an unkind person, I'd say that they seem to view summarizing Wikipedia articles and writing bad poetry about your body as the only legitimate form of work. But I'm not, so I'll just say that they should take an intro to Statistics course.
Hahah you are not unkind but you are certainly astute. I think this is what cracked me up about them citing a mouse study in this episode. They are so very quick to dismiss anything that doesn't fit their world view and then they don't even do the very small amount of work it takes to find legitimate sources for their podcast. Wild.
Small correction: you accidentally linked the SEER data for all cancer. For gallbladder cancer, the median age of onset is 71 for both sexes.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-network/explorer/application.html?site=38&data_type=1&graph_type=14&compareBy=sex&chk_sex_3=3&chk_sex_2=2&series=9&race=1&hdn_view=1
I see what happened - they updated SEER Explorer since I posted this originally and that changed the link (and the age was updated, evidently). Thanks again!
Whoops! Thank you! Will update this now! I appreciate the note. :)
I adore MP and will continue to listen avidly, and I also appreciate this so much and have read it thoroughly. Thanks for sharing! I feel lucky to have such a deepened understanding now.
Thank you for reading and for commenting! There is absolutely room for both loving MP and acknowledging that it has flaws. I appreciate your thoughts!
Your PAR formula is wrong.
Ooh yikes! Formatting error. Thanks for catching that!
Should be corrected now. Thank!
Great article. Just one question about the one thing that didn’t make sense to me: you said “In the 2020 report, Miliken estimates that 6% of the costs of Alzheimer’s are due to obesity (see graph from the report below)”
The graph in question is a pie chart with percents attributed to various diseases. If the 6% for Alzheimer’s meant what you say it means, there would be no reason to expect the percentages to add up to 100% - in theory, the percentage of the cost of multiple diseases attributable to obesity could be over 50%.
Since it’s a pie chart and the percentages *do* add up to 100%, I assume the chart is actually saying the converse - that 6% of the increased costs from *obesity* are due to increased spending on Alzheimer’s.
Hi! Great catch! You are right. Thanks for pointing that out - I will note that correction!
Small correction: you accidentally linked the SEER data for all cancer. For gallbladder cancer, the median age of onset is 71 for both sexes.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-network/explorer/application.html?site=38&data_type=1&graph_type=14&compareBy=sex&chk_sex_3=3&chk_sex_2=2&series=9&race=1&hdn_view=1