Decoding the Gurus - Mini-Decoding: Huberman on the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Andrew Huberman, Stanford academic and host of a science-themed podcast, recently released an episode on Autism with guest Dr. Karen Parker. Considering the prevalence of misinformation about vaccines and autism and this episode being promoted as providing an overview of the topic, we were interested to see how the topic would be covered. In part, this interest was because of Huberman's strategic choice to avoid any discussion, let alone any recommendation, of COVID vaccines during the pandemic. The topic came up 2 hours and 43 minutes into the episode and lasted for around 10 minutes.What we found was interesting and we think deserving of a mini-decoding. What you will not find here is any endorsement of lurid anti-vax claims or cheers for Andrew Wakefield. Indeed, Huberman notes that Wakefield's research was debunked, while his guest Dr. Parker explains the consensus view amongst researchers that there is no evidence of a link. What you will find: Huberman readily engaging in ‘both sides’ hedging: maybe Wakefield’s research helped locate real issues with preservatives, maybe there are too many childhood vaccines (some clinicians 'in private' recommend none), maybe new data will come out later that reveals a link between autism and vaccines. There certainly are a lot of questions and could it be that 'cancel culture' is the real problem here rather than the existence of a very influential anti-vaccine movement?Let's just say, when you pair this with Huberman's comments on the potential dangers of Bluetooth headphones/sunscreen, the potential benefits for negative ion bathing and grounding, the lab leak origins of COVID, endorsement of AG1 and a host of other supplements, and fawning over figures like RFK Jnr and Joe Rogan... we have some questions of our own.LinksHuberman Lab 154: Dr. Karen Parker- The Causes & Treatments for AutismVaccine Schedules from the 1940s to 2019BMJ: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixedJonathan Jarry: Andrew Huberman Has Supplements on the BrainHuberman's comments on Instagram about RFK Jnr

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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music by the podcast, we're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listening to the podcast. We're an anthropologists and a psychologist listeningoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown, with me is Chris Kavanagh. And on this fine, sweltering afternoon in Australia, I'm ready to do a mini-decoding with you, Chris. How are you feeling? I'm doing all right. I'm doing good. I'm relatively energized. It's the afternoon, but I'm not done yet, Matt. And it's not sweltering here, but it's

also not bollock freezing. So we're in the okay zone in between. Yeah. I was just in the middle of reviewing a paper for a journal when you um called me on the red dtg phone and um i read the paper it's fine it's good i just want to write in the reviewer comments it's fine i don't mind i think you can do that you can do that see the life the demands on an academic's time they never never cease. Be it decode this piece of content, write a review for this. Everyone wants my opinion on stuff. Give George Soros a payment invoice or EcoHealth Alliance,

whatever it is you need to do to get through the day. But what we're here for today, Matt, get through the day but what we're here for today matt is a mini decoding of someone who's becoming a podcast favorite doctor yours anyway well yeah dr andrew hooberman and he recently did an episode on autism causes and treatments with dr karen parker who is a professor of psychiatry at stanford university school of medicine who is pioneering some research and potential treatments on on autism or this kind of thing right so long episode on autism he mentioned you know he's going to have other people on to talk about other aspects but why it's a mini decoding matt apart from the fact that we don't need to cover who we've already done it we've already done it we're not doing it we know

what he's up to we know his ish deck and by and large he's not in the worst of the guru sphere right like he's he's certainly not like as extreme as any of the polemical conspiratorial gurus but there were some concerns about overhyping small studies and being very what's the word very softly spoken when it comes to discussing grounding or other potential pseudosciences right we don't know much science can't really tell on those issues it's it's unclear the evidence is unclear and if you like you know adjusting your chakras or getting grinded that's who knows negative ions could be could be if you enjoy getting negative ions from moving bodies of water then huberman is not going to rain on your parade he's not going to yuck on your yum he's fine with it yeah he might even have 20 products that could aid you in your

efforts in the wilderness but so the reason i wanted to cover him is because on that i was curious if they were going to touch on the issue of vaccines and autism right now i i feel like if you were going to do an episode discussing autism and its causes and the symptoms and theories about it that spending some time on the issue of the supposed links between autism and vaccines and and how they are in fact completely discredited is a necessity, right? At least some portion of the time would need to be devoted to that if you wanted to present where the current evidence is. Not because there's loads of scientific evidence that there was a link, but rather because there's a widespread perception and an ongoing and active campaign

to claim that they are linked. Yeah, as we saw from the Red Scare episode. People like that are suckers for it. And it's had a new lease on life, the spurious link there. When was that original paper by wegfield published and then retracted i think it was in the 90s um i can't remember the exact date but the yeah in any case it rose to prominence and attention in the 90s and then has had an ongoing influence for decades after that despite even despite being

retracted right but so so the other reason that this was of interest to me was because huberman has completely avoided referencing vaccines throughout the entire pandemic, as we noted on the episode, despite being somebody that is providing protocols of health, essentially a kind of health and wellness fitness optimizer, science-based information provider. He did not see fit to do an episode on vaccines, the evidence for them. He didn't endorse them during the pandemic or tell people that the evidence supports getting them. There were just one or two tweets where he mentions the kind of controversy

and that he's not going to engage in it. And then another where he highlighted a clip from Lex Friedman talking to Vincent Racanello from This Week in Virology. But that clip, although Vincent is a very good virologist and quite clear about the benefits in the vaccines, that specific clip that Huberman highlighted was actually a section where he was devils advocating the arguments against the vaccine like why people might be scared of them and huberman highlighted this

and said you know it's a great discussion like so that's an odd clip to pick out from that discussion so i was just curious what's he going to say right and actually for most of the episode they don't address it it's a you know almost three hour episode and around two hours 43 minutes is when they get to the subject of autism and vaccines which is the very end of the podcast and they cover it for around just under 10 minutes so this is why it's a mini decoding because we're just taking a little look at what he said and i i think i noticed a couple of things in the content that i i know because other people were like i listened to it i didn't see you know everything he said was spot on well let's see let's see if you concur on this so um here's

the issue being introduced by huberman i'd be remiss if i didn't ask for your stance and read of the landscape on the data about vaccines and autism i'm not talking about covid vaccines here i want to be really clear about that but there there was a theory running about, not just in the press, but in the scientific literature for a while, that vaccines could cause autism. That was proposed. My understanding is that was debunked. That idea still lives on the internet, but what is the evidence? Let's say, let's go through this sequentially. What was the idea? What was the evidence for that idea? And then what caused the demise of at least the scientific support for that idea?

Leaving open, of course, that new data may come, but let's talk about what is known now um sounded okay to me chris yeah that's all right it's introducing it you're adding in the disclaimer that you know future data may reveal that there is a very clear link that was just completely overlooked i feel somewhat that that is a throwing a bone to a particular segment it's a misrepresentation because actually because of the popular freak out over the vaccine autism link and because of the spurious research that did manage to get the literature it was actually looked into extremely thoroughly, like far more thoroughly than it kind of should have been. It should have been. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's just, it would be like, you know, if you were talking about evolution or whatever and you say, you know, no, there could be evidence that undermines the present theory of evolution that emerges. We don't, you know, we can't say that that won't happen. That's technically true. But if you do that, you're like flagging that it's not unreasonable

to harbor doubts about, you know, the veracity of evolution. And actually... More research required. Yeah, exactly. So it's not technically wrong, but it's just a... I think that is a strategic buffer that is placed there at the, before they get into it. But in any case, you know, just a minor point, then they discuss Wakefield a bit, and there's some good part here in what Huberman references,

but in any case, this is the discussion around Wakefield. And so the backstory on this is there was a guy named Andrew Wakefield who published a paper and he basically said the preservatives in vaccines are causing autism. So not the specific vaccine, but the adjuvant, the stuff that's preserving, the stuff that's keeping the vaccines bio-effective. Right. At least that was my understanding. Yeah, that's mine as well. And so, and then it turned- I want to be clear because the internet is a cruel and diabolical place.

My stance is that that was the hypothesis. I don't agree with that stance. Right. Okay. Right. And so, or if we want to just back up a little bit broader, there was this idea that something about vaccines were causing autism. But the study was debunked. He lost his medical license and the paper was retracted.

Right. He lost his medical license on the basis of the fact that the study was wrong or was there. I think he faked the data. That's what I recall as well, that there was evidence of him literally making up the data. Right. Right. So it wasn't a case of like sloppy technique. It was a case of, of intentional fraud.

Right. That's my understanding. Again. What was the, does anyone ever like look into what his motivation for what, what it was? Like why someone would, I mean, threw away his whole career. Right. Yeah. I don't, I don't know.

But, but I think the hard part about that is understandably people got very frightened right yeah all of this sounds fine to me chris it all sounds like you know i think the points that i emphasize those that huberman did indicate that he was under the impression that the it had been debunked, right? This research and that not only was it wrong, but there was fraud. It was fraudulent. Right, the data was. And that's worth pointing out,

though I always think with these kinds of things, Matt, that like, you know, when Huberman says, has anybody looked into the motivations of Andrew Wakefield? Like, does anybody know? Yes, yes, lots of people have. There's been tons of investigations that you could easily find. Brian Deer, a reporter, did a whole bunch of work on that and revealed that, you know, he had financial stakes in alternative versions of the vaccines that were spaced out, not combined, and which he didn't disclose, financial confounding interests.

But it often surprises me that people who this, you know, the issue about vaccines and autism and stuff that you would imagine it's in the wheelhouse, at least broadly, but they haven't done that much research on it. Again, it's just the thing thing to know like an evening's research or just looking up his wikipedia page would reveal that information to you so yeah yeah no true true that's part of the course in podcast is stan it is but the good point is that there was the crucial reference, right preservatives that are in vaccines.

This could be connected to thimerosal concerns, right, in the U.S. And in talking about that issue, listen to this. And so the good news is at this point, there have been multiple, multiple studies that haven't shown a correlation between, you know, vaccines and autism. I do believe the preservatives have been changed as a result. So that's something we should check that, you know, that might be something where, you know, there's been a public health change on preservatives that are in vaccines. That's interesting in its own right.

I mean, we don't want to cause alarm, but that's interesting, you know, that in this data fraud case, it might have cued people to the idea that certain things might have been needing change, even though it wasn't the specific issue that this fraudulent researcher was focused on. Or the change was made to make sure people would vaccinate their children, right? So this is something that I think we should have lots of caveats here, like, you know, post the studies, like make sure that what we're saying is accurate, right? But I think that my concern is that we've spent, you know, so the good news is that, you know, like every single study that I'm aware of does not show a relationship between vaccination and autism, right? Yeah. So the lady that whom Iman speaking to is being very responsible karen she dr parker she's doing a great job in leaping in there and cutting off hooverman because hooverman leaps upon

that point that something was changed in childhood vaccines since the mmr vaccine fraud fraudulent study by wakefield and huberman presents that as well maybe it got them thinking that it was dangerous to have these preservatives and vaccines which of course is the marisol which is the thing that the anti-vaxxers were all freaked out about and as you just reminded me earlier that thing was changed but and it was in response to the anti-vax campaigners who were freaked out about it, despite there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it was doing any harm. And now Hooverman takes that as kind of an implication that, you know, maybe it drew attention to some genuine concerns there. some genuine concerns there yeah so he doesn't seem to know again like there's a lack of awareness about the fimerosal case but but also the wrong inference to jump in that like if people change something in response to like a campaign like that it indicates that there was

a problem and like no that's the wrong inference, as the guess correctly indicates. And then they stressed that the studies didn't support that. But the anti-vax community initially said, if you remove thimerosal, you're going to see autism rates drop. You're going to see, you know, a whole bunch of things change. And it didn't happen. And they then didn't at all change their claim. They just moved on to another one because that's what the anti-vaxxer because they're anti-vaxxers that's right yeah so this is why anti-vaxxer is a

pejorative term and it's not just oh somebody has legitimate questions um about something it's because it's immune they are immune to evidence they're ideologically fixated and as you say if you conclusively dispatch one of their arguments like a conspiracy theorist they'll simply switch to an alternative one now the guest karen parker also again has a nice section where she she kind of summarizes the state of the current evidence and i think she does does it well. So she says this. And so I think that most scientists and medical doctors that I know that are part of like the, you know, standard biomedical research community do not believe that vaccines cause autism. They vaccinate their own children. You know, they recommend vaccinations to other people's children. And so I think that's where we are.

to other people's children. And so I think that's where we are. Correct. It's standard knowledge amongst the pediatricians and mainstream doctors that vaccines do not cause autism. The evidence is not there. And the majority of medical doctors and pediatricians and so on all recommend that people are vaccinated according to the standard schedule good job karen parker that's correct yes yep so after that is referenced hooberman wants to uh he presents it as raising the concerns of some in his audience so let's hear what some of those concerns might be you know could i just ask a a question? And I feel more than obligated to do this because I don't, you know, I think I have a pretty good finger on the pulse of the listenership of this podcast, but I think there's a range of stances on this where some people have a lot of trust in the

standard medical establishment, others have less trust in the standard medical establishment. Others have less trust in the standard medical establishment. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't try and represent all those sides. And, you know, one thing that I've heard is that over the last 20 or 30 years, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of vaccinations that kids get. And I don't know if that's true, but when we say vaccinations, we could be talking about, you know, measles, mumps, rubella, polio. We could also be talking about measles, mumps, rubella, polio, flu shots every year, rabies vaccine, this vaccine, you know, HPV, right? With one that wasn't even available when I was in college, you know, as everyone in college who was well aware there wasn't an HPV vaccine. Didn't change people's behavior a whole lot.

But, you know, there's a vaccine, there's multiple vaccines, and then there's, you know, all the vaccines, right? So raising a concern that maybe there's too many vaccines yeah and you know he mentions he hasn't you know he doesn't know if there are too many but he's a lot of people are mentioning this matt and you know again i feel like a independent research from somebody competent might be able to locate this information relatively quickly. I found, for example, a post on Vaxopedia by Vincent Ionelli that discusses the vaccine schedule in the U.S. from the 1940s to 2019. the US from the 1940s to 2019. And to the presentation of the anti-vax community that Huberman is discussing there, there hasn't been this dramatic increase in the amount of vaccines that people take. And there's a claim that kids get 72 doses of vaccines now. And that post goes into detail that essentially they're getting 13

vaccines that protect them from 16 vaccine preventable diseases. And these are all diseases that you don't want, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, diphtheria, the influenza vaccine and so on is there. So Huberberman is he frames it as he's going to raise a concern from his audience now he doesn't know if it's valid or not you know there's there's no no real clear way to to determine that but in so doing he's, it sounds a bit like he is on board with this position because he talks about, you know, when I was young, you know, we didn't get all these like vaccinations like people do now. And yeah, like I've seen similar spurious claims, for instance, that Americans like North Americans get vastly higher number of vaccines than people elsewhere in the world. And again, a little bit of fact checking, you could see that it's just simply not true. Yeah, he frames it in an interesting way, which is that he's got a moral obligation

to represent the spectrum of opinion amongst his audience now he does i'm sure have a strong anti-vax natural health woo anti-conventional medicine anti yeah conventional medical authorities segment in in his listenership but that shouldn't mean that he needs to represent that and be their spokesperson like it's like the car driving the horse like isn't that like like explicit audience capture like he's meant to be an expert isn't it if he's got that cohort in his listeners wouldn't the responsible response be to attempt to you know correct misunderstandings yeah especially given that they trust him and he could correct the misunderstandings and do some real good right but so here he's you could

say that he's doing this by bringing this point up to an an expert right although weller the karen parker is you know the correct person to discuss the childhood vaccination schedule, that would be a concern. But there's a bit more to this, Matt, where it continues on. So this is more of Huberman kind of indicating, you know, why there are concerns around this topic and how far he shares them. And I think that one of the concerns that I hear about is the idea that, okay, there's some critical vaccines, but then which ones are perhaps less critical, if any. And these are the kinds of discussions that are starting to surface. And that, you know, have parents and potential parents,

you know, rightfully thinking about this stuff. And no one really knows where to get the information. But like I've tried and I can't find a pediatrician that says, hey, listen, these but not those. Or you can certainly find board certified physicians that say many and certain board certified physicians that say none. You actually can find those. The none category tend to hide themselves a little bit more than others for obvious reasons. But it's hard to get a sense of like which vaccines are critical and which ones aren't if you're a parent and you're not versed in this stuff. And so you could imagine that like people are, you know, kids are taking

many more vaccines and only some of those are critical and maybe all of them are critical. Well, I think, I guess the way I would maybe turn it on its head is that, you know, because of this study that did in some ways so much harm, right? Like we spent- The Wakefield study. We spent, I don't even want to hazard a guess about how much money worldwide went into studying, you know, the, you know, vaccines and autism based on a fraudulent data, right? Like that's to me a real tragedy. But at the time they didn't know it was fraudulent. Yeah. It's a, it's a frustrating framing, isn't it? Because it sounds

superficially like a, like a reasonable position. Oh, there's, there's a lot of vaccines. Some people say we shouldn't be taking any. some people say we should take all those vaccines you know tetanus as well as diphtheria as well as measles mumps and rubella but surely the middle ground the reasonable position is just to take some of them right chris like it's um yeah um like it's um yeah um like the framing the framing implies that these concerns are reasonable there's a lot of people talking a lot of people are asking reasonable questions about which vaccines really should you be getting and which are just optional and the answer of course is that they're all all of the scheduled vaccines beneficial for children yeah that's why they're on the schedule right and there isn't they weren't on the schedule until they were found to be overall safe and beneficial and the far

outweigh any risks from side effects right that that's why they're yeah yeah like like it costs money like the australian government is is remarkably miserly when it comes to health funding right it's there i mean to put it another way that they're very good at making sure they get Australian government is remarkably miserly when it comes to health funding, right? I mean, to put it another way, they're very good at making sure they get bang for their buck and it costs money to vaccinate kids and get something. They are not going to be recommending and rolling out and distributing useless vaccines. You know, there are edge cases like the seasonal flu vaccine, right, which, you know, and actually you have to pay for that yourself

if you want it in Australia because, you know, in terms of bang for buck, it probably is, you know, worth it. But, you know, because it's marginal, the government will refuse to pay for it. So it just goes to your point that they only schedule public health type vaccines that are actually beneficial and definitely worth the money. And if you look at the guidelines that are provided, like just from the CDC, for example,

I can see a little table here that has the recommended child and adolescent immunization schedule for ages 18 years or younger. They've got a bunch of categories, Matt. They have a yellow indicator for range of recommended ages for all children, a kind of green one for ages for catch-up immunization, and the purple one for range of recommended ages for certain high-risk groups, as well as another one for high-risk groups that may receive vaccines subject to individual clinical decision making. So they actually do make these distinctions between the ones which are, you know, completely recommended and the ones which are more that you should seek out if you're at high risk and at

certain ages. And it's it's recorded the age groups and stuff so who haven't been saying you know i you know i can't find good information on this and and he mentions board certified pediatricians some of whom recommend like some of them are willing to say some are good and many are good, but there are people who say none. Now, those people, they tend to say it behind closed doors because, and he implies like, you know, because it's controversial, but like, because they're anti-vaxxers, Mr. Huberman, if they are saying that you should take no vaccines from the vaccination schedule, that's not a mainstream or a reasonable person at all and like he's presenting it as you know there's lots of different opinions so it's very hard to find

out which one is correct and it shouldn't be hard like it's not hard for a normal person all right and it shouldn't be hard for hoover, who although he's not an immunologist or whatever, we've seen how willing he is to do these massive deep dives into all kinds of crazy... Pheromones and tears. Yeah, he's meant to love that kind of thing. But this topic, it mystifies him, apparently. He's unable to even scratch the surface of it. Yeah, and the issue is, like you said, Matt,

it's easy for people to find out the information. It is, technically. They can just go to the CDC website and look at the information or whatever. It's hard because there's a very strong anti-vaccine movement in the US and in other countries that intentionally muddies the water. And there are a lot of, you know, health influencer types who are very, at best, ambivalent or outright anti-vaccine, but Huberman is not supposed to be in that category. That's right. I mean, that's the key point, that if you are going to normal conventional medical sources for information, it's not hard. It's not hard at all to find out what the

consensus is and what the recommendations are. It's only hard if you're getting information from these darker places, weird online communities and anti-vaxxers. So, yeah, I feel like Huberman is telling on himself a little bit there yeah and so there's also a little bit of the framing after they've discussed this they're talking about you know it being a controversial issue and i think the guest karen parker who's generally very good on this topic specifically, I think gets a little bit of influence from the way that he's presenting things. So listen to this.

I think the thing, the consequence of all this that I think is also extremely sad is that everybody, because everyone got so riled up and so fearful, there has been, historically until recently, many researchers who are like, oh man, I don't want to touch immunology and autism with a 10 foot pole. Right. And yeah. You know, and I wouldn't consider myself fearless, but like my lab never had any reason to work on those, on those important problems. But I'll tell you,

like, it seems like it's not a kettle of fish. It's a ball of barbed wire with a bunch of, you know, napalm burning around it. I mean, you say one thing, your career is ending. You say the opposite thing, your career is also ending. You know, it's a mess. But I think this highlights that there are so many parents, you know, again, and I think we need to listen to parent stakeholders, right? Like, you know, there needs to be a dialogue whenever anybody's any illness to talk to the people who are involved, right?

So, Huberman perceives it as like damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, right? Yeah. as like damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, right? Yeah. But again, like there's only one way to interpret what he means by that, right? So if he comes out and puts forward like the orthodox medical consensus on vaccines, then his career will be ended because he's going to massively anger a large component of his audience and he doesn't want to do that.

It's not fair to expect him to do that. And if he comes out with an anti-vax position, which will make a lot of his audience very happy, or a vaccine-sceptical type position, then he'll be subject to professional criticism from people like us, or more important, people like us. And so that's why he perceives is it as damned if you do damned if you don't but there really shouldn't be a dilemma there in terms of not you know yeah

i think you you're right and now the way that he's presenting it though is that if he was to do research on this topic then and he was to take any position that, you know, he would get it no matter what he said. But that doesn't really make sense because like, if you were to do research on autism and vaccines and you find out like all the researchers who've done good quality studies on it, that there is no connection, like you said, who's damning you in the mainstream medical or research establishment for discovering what we've already established multiple times, right? And the anti-vaxxing community wouldn't like it, but they're not researchers. They are, at best, very fringe figures in the medical community, right? figures in the medical community right so the fact that he presents it as you would you know you get it from whatever you find it's like well not unless you're paying attention to

the anti-vax communities and wanted to wanted to keep them happy yeah so that that is the interpretation there and i just i of, it's a bit unfortunate that Karen Parker also goes along a little bit with it, saying, yeah, it's very controversial, you know, trying to do research in this area. There are people that won't touch it with a 10-foot barge pole. And I think that kind of presents it, you know, that, oh, this has become a highly politicized

issue. And like the, you know, the research community is now afraid to look at actual links, whether there are. And it's not like that. It's more that they've been completely discredited. There is a very strong anti-science, pseudoscience advocacy community, which will, you know, completely attack people that are arguing there isn't any connection. But that's not really the way that they're presenting it.

They're presenting it that, like, you know, researchers have become afraid of this issue. Yeah, have become shy of it. And the implication could be that there isn't good evidence anymore about vaccines because researchers are too afraid to touch it. Right. That's just not true, right? It's just like this whole – like I've published on anti-vax attitudes, as you know, Chris, so as a result of – because of that,

I've read a fair bit of the literature in vaccine – sorry, journals like Vaccine, right? That's the title of the journal. No one's afraid of publishing. It's a massive, massive scientific area. No one's afraid of doing research on this. They do take potential risks and things very seriously, and they do investigate them, and they check the benefits or not very seriously

because it's such an important topic area. And you do also get lots of low quality studies claiming links still nigh between a whole bunch of different factors, right? So people are publishing on these kind of topics all the time. And there's one last clip, Matt. This is the kind of lead out of this conversation. It kind of follows on the same thing about, you know, the controversy around it and issues about cancellation and whatnot. So here's the last clip. I think that there are parents who will report, wow, like there are there is immune system

dysregulation in my child. And but because of this historical issue with vaccines, it's only been very recently that I think people, scientists, medical doctors have said, okay, we're hearing a lot about this from parents. And are there a group of individuals who have, you know, immune issues that could be driving their autism, right? We don't know, and everything should be evidence-based. But I think that, like you said, with this cancel culture and all this fear, scientists sometimes will pick topics very judiciously based on, you know, like, hey, I just want to be left in peace and I'm trying to help this community. And if there is areas of the enterprise that you think are going to cause all kinds of grief, then people are going

to be less reluctant to study them, even if it's critically needed. Well, that's a perfect place to say, thank you. I realize you're not addressing the vaccine autism issue directly, but you're so clearly going after the target, trying to figure out what are the biological mechanisms that are disrupted in autism and by extension, other deficits of social function in kids and adults. And she is interested in a particular approach to, you know, examining causes and potential ways to treat autism. So actually her research is not the like completely dominant paradigm so wakefield i'm not saying she's you know a fringe figure or something like that but like it's kind of presenting a very specific take on things and that's par for the course with

huberman but yeah that cancel culture reference researchers you know like it it gives the impression i think if huberman is correctly characterizing his audience that these are academics admitting that the topic has become like kind of taboo and that you can't really do the research because if you find out things that you know the medical community didn't want to admit that it could cause you professional difficulties like you could easily read what they're saying as acknowledging the validity of that perspective yeah yeah yeah well i i get i get why you um wanted to do cover this on this little mini decoding. Hibman's interesting because he doesn't flat out say totally egregious things like some of our gurus.

He's quite careful. He'll always frame things as many people are saying, or he'll just say, let's ask the question. There are an awful lot of vaccines. It's very hard to figure out which ones we should be getting. You know, it's very reasonable to be. Some people say zero, Matt. Some people. Yeah, some people say all of them.

They just don't pay the attention. You know, we just don't know. So, yeah, like it's a lot of those sort of little things in the framing where I could see, you know, that segment of his audience that he pretty much acknowledges our anti-vaxxers really you know coming away with from it you know a little you know feeling that little bit of support that that you know they're not crazy whereas they need to be challenged right and they need to be challenged like in a friendly way by by people that they trust right and someone like hooverman is actually in an excellent position

because like like most podcasters people in this alternative sphere like people just intrinsically trust them right they think he's a good guy he likes being healthy he's not some anonymous gray official in washington you know he hasn't been gotten to like nobody believes that right and so he's in a he's in a really strong position to say, hey, I really care about being healthy. You know, that's the main thing that I'm into, optimizing your health and well-being. I've looked into the vaccine stuff.

It's actually not that complicated, guys. Really, you should just get your kids vaccinated. Get the COVID vaccine. It'll do you good. There's no risks. I mean, that's the truth and the truth is very limited risks very limited risks very limited yes i'm speaking loosely yeah you can frame it any way you like but you know human like that truth is within human's

grasp he's a smart guy right he's got a phd in a related field. He could figure that out and actually just communicate it in a very upfront, frank way. But it needs to be done directly. You can't sort of hedge and angle around the question because what you're doing is actually supporting those people's beliefs, which are actually dangerous to them. But does he actually believe that? That's my question, Matt. actually dangerous to them but does he actually believe that that's my question matt like if i had huberman in an interview i would just straight up ask him you know like what do you think the the dangers are with the covid vaccine or would you recommend them broadly to people like and he and he would say it's all very complicated and i'm not an expert and yeah but he but he like i know

he would but i feel like people should just, they should press a bit, right? Because, like, if he is a normal science communicator and he's somebody that understands how to read the scientific literature, overwhelming majority of evidence supports vaccination for covid and for almost all other childhood vaccines right they are not put there unless they are helpful that's the they have to go through clinical trials and it's actually difficult to get things put onto schedules and whatnot. So, yeah, like I do wish people would push him on that. I know that they won't. And I read from his statements like here, right, in isolation. You could just say, well, he's just trying to, you know, he's trying to make the kind of anti-vax side of his audience willing to listen to the discussion.

So he's raising the concerns so they can be addressed. But you have to put that in the context that he's never recommended the COVID vaccines. And you have to put that in the context that he's willing to promote very, like, very strong conclusions from small, low quality studies. But he's very reluctant to comment on the COVID vaccines. And when he discussed lab leak, he said, no, I've, you know, I know researchers and they're all in agreement that this is really likely from, you know, the lab in Wuhan. And they're just afraid to say that shows that he is not good at assessing like scientific literature and consensus. And that topic is outside of his realm of expertise, perhaps. But, you know, all these things kind of stack up. And I think that you shouldn't, people give too much credence to the disclaimers that people throw in. Like, you know, some doctors say that, yeah, you should take vaccines, but some don't, right?

That's, that isn't an, that's presented as an even handed portrayal, but that is actually like a full balance. Yeah, it's a rhetorical technique. And Pudman uses quite a few of them pretty effectively to maintain that strategic ambiguity. Yeah. As we've noticed again and again, you know, if you read, if you listen to him literally, you can say no lies detected.

But the vibe that consistently comes through is another story. And I think that's bad. He's a medical doctor who's never made any criticism of Joe Rogan about the things that he said during the pandemic, for example. You know, sorry, he's not a big old doctor but he's a health like influencer is promoter a science-based person and he's never made it he's meant to be a researcher he's meant to be a researcher chris right but but he's never felt the need to highlight any of the things that joe rogan has promoted that's been wrong

any of that. No. I mean, look, I mean, I've got to say, I think, you know, first and foremost, the thing that I detect with these guys is that they're first and foremost career influencers, and it's not, it's only going to be harmful to your career. And this is, look, this is as true of Chris Williamson as it is of Hooverman, and I don't think they're subject

to any sort of strange psychological disturbances, as is the with brett or eric weinstein right yeah i'm sure that they're very nice people but first and foremost they are building a business an entrepreneurial business as being an online influencer and it doesn't make any sense on any level to go in hard against vaccines or to criticize Joe Rogan's madness because you're only going to harm your business, Chris. So that's what it. You would care mostly about retaining your audience and your network and your access to Rogan's audience. But if you present yourself as primarily someone motivated by getting the science right, communicating what the evidence shows, and that's what you're about, you're actually a researcher

that just cares about public communication of science accurately, which Huberman is how that's how is how he presents himself then you should be willing yeah to yeah like that's as a rogan you're right that is that is worse than that that i guess that's what puts him into the guru category because like we covered red scare right and they've got heaps of terrible and stupid opinions, but they don't present themselves as anything, really, apart from what they are. And Chris Williamson, for instance, he presents himself as a bloke, right? A bro.

Bro. Yeah, right. He's got an amateur interest in stuff, but he doesn't claim to be anything else so i agree with you i think it's a little bit um a little bit worse in huberman's case yeah that's what i wanted to cover it because i i like you know just to emphasize again before we finish this is not to say that huberman is the most toxic the most terrible there are lots of ways that he's you know compare him to brett weinstein compare him to joe rogan he's like years better we said that on the episode with him in the adiab right there they've got good information in there as well about like studies and you know the

generally a much better quality source than a whole host of other guru types but still the issues that we talked about are there and i see that a lot of people don't either don't pick up on them or they they don't want to say i don't know but we are here map so we we can say we we're we're not but we are here, Matt, so we can say it. We're not constrained by the need to... Keep Joe Rogan happy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. Or Andrew Zuberman, for that matter.

So there we go. No, no, no. Well, you make me happy, Chris. That's the main thing. Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thank you for that decoding. I'm going to submit my review of this article.

We got work to be doing, so we're off into the world of academia, the wonderful world of academia, the never-ending dirge of emails that is academia. Goodbye, Matt. Thank you for this speed one-hour decoding. I will see you soon enough. Goodbye, Matt. Thank you for this speed one hour decoding. I will see you soon enough. See you later.

Bye. Thank you.