After last week’s story in New York Magazine exposed Andrew Huberman’s serial philandering, a chorus of his fans came to his defense saying that so long as his science checks out, that his personal life is irrelevant. Unfortunately it turns out that his science doesn't really check out, either. From cherry-picked results to quack "protocols" the famous neuroscientist and health guru frequently overextends his knowledge and starts shilling pseudoscience.
This week on the show I talk to the immunologist Dr. Andrea Love to set the record straight. Last week she wrote a damning piece in Slate that exhaustively catalogued several instances where Huberman’s health claims directly contradicted the studies he referenced, and were potentially even dangerous to follow.
Of course, not everything that Huberman mentions on his podcast is wrong. Quite a bit of his advice is simply common sense. Getting regular sleep, cutting back (or zeroing out) alcohol, and exercise are unequivocally beneficial. Other protocols, such as getting morning sun, ice baths and saunas are more likely good than bad even though the science isn’t settled.
But his endless churn of supplementation, hormone replacements, anti-vaccine sentiments, sunscreen skepticism and hyper-vigiliance of biometric data all can lead to clinically bad outcomes for people who take his word as gold.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that Huberman’s life advice and protocols are generally more accurate than not. Let’s say he’s reliably correct in his understanding of human physiology 80% of the time. That other 20% of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo doesn’t just go away. Over the course of his 3 hour episodes the audience learns to trust everything he says in the same way they would any charismatic leader. The 20% of misinformation then bleeds into the general public as fact—adding to our endemic lack of trust in actual scientific authorities.
Let’s also remember that while his podcast is “zero-cost” to the consumer, Huberman makes a tremendous amount of money on sponsorship deals, YouTube advertising, and speaking arrangements. Athletic Greens alone supposedly pays him $20 million a year to promote a supplement that according to Derek Beres, has almost no proven health value. Meanwhile, Huberman told me in January of last year that he charges $300,000 for a 1-2 hour talk (he went on to write that he only charges that much in order to fund grad students at his lab, which according to New York Magazine may not actually exist).
While many people have become inured to the fact that influencers routinely sell their public image to promote worthless products, an informed audience should always remain skeptical about how money can impinge on ethics. The reason that Huberman often dedicates 30 minutes or more talking about supplement stacks and hormone companies and ice bath protocols is because those companies pay him for his endorsements. It’s not rocket science.
Which leads me to the last subject that I want to address in the newsletter today.
On Thursday I’m launching a video titled “Why I fell for Wim Hof and Andrew Huberman” (early access here) that required me to do a lot of soul searching. The gist is that I want to be open to new ideas and ways of looking at the world without getting taken in by charlatans.
I endorsed both Huberman and Hof long before they were famous because they both had really important things to teach the world—ideas that were both true and revolutionary.
The problem was that as both men gained prominence the conflicts of interest between their growing fame and what it took to remain relevant on social media gained more velocity than their ability to generate new and revolutionary ideas. The only way they could make up for the gap and still grow their audience was to sacrifice their adherence to truth. I don’t think the drift away from truth is inevitable, exactly, but the lure of riches requires a person with incredible moral fiber to resist. Neither man could.
Over the last year I have persisted in my reporting on Wim Hof despite it alienating much of my fan base and causing a 40% decrease in my book sales. I continued to report on deaths and abuses of power by Hof’s organization because, for me, truth is more important than money.
But as I’ve also come into some success on I need to be mindful of falling into those same traps. As the proud proprietor of a YouTube channel, newsletter and six books I’m swimming in the same influencer waters as Hof and Huberman. With the decline of mainstream publishing I need to figure out what my own ethics are when it comes to both making an income online and not being unduly swayed by the lure of of it.
I realize that I need to make some changes.
These are the steps I’ve taken to ensure my independence:
I’ve decided to shut down all of my in-person training courses and events related to The Wedge. For the last several years I’ve taught at retreats and held occasional paid in-person trainings at my house. Making money from training protocols that I directly report on could result in a conflict of interest if I were to discover that one protocol or another is not as beneficial as I had originally thought. In order to remain independent I need to stop being a trainer.
I will not sponsor products or sign up for affiliate marketing programs. Over the last 7 years my website has posted affiliate links to a certain ice bath and an online training course for the Wim Hof method. Both programs have been shut down for many years. In order to avoid even the appearance of impropriety I will not take these kinds of sponsorships.
Conflicts of interest arise when someone has an incentive to misrepresent the truth in order to profit off of a lie. While writers and reporters certainly have an incentive to sell their own writing, we don’t live in a society where I have the ability to completely abandon finances. The least problematic way forward is to be paid directly by people who consume my content.
These are the ways I will continue to make money:
Book sales
Adsense on YouTube
Early access to videos on Patreon
Speaking engagements
Journalism with mainstream outlets
In every case above, my income rests entirely on the quality and content of my work. If people find what I have to say beneficial they can support it directly. If not: there are many other books, newsletters and YouTube channels out there for them to enjoy. Either way: I won’t be telling you one thing and selling you another.
If you would like to directly support me and get early access to my work on Patreon (where I have at least 5 yet-to-be-published videos) you can come on board with me for as little as $5/month.
I think there is a bit of misconception gooing on here. Huberman is doing a podcast, not science here. Popular science, in a way communicating science to the public. Personally I think he is doing a terrific job. Is he a saint, super natural creature, without any mistakes, contradictions or errors? Nope. I think millions of people have gotten great information from him, me included, on importance of sleep, exercise etc. And I think world is a better place for it.
So thanks for your criticism. It is important, just like scientists attack each others ideas, journalists are doing something similar. But I will continue to listen to Huberman podcast, in a critical way, not accepting everything he says as golden truth. I am open to change, have dropped previous podcasts when they stared spreading nonsense like Rogans podcast for example.