Breaking Up With Bad Science Podcast: The Huberman Hubris

You know it's bad when even a therapist can tell it's bad science.

The End of An Era

It's the end of an era, and I want to make it official: Andrew Huberman and I are no longer an item. I know this might come as a shock to some, especially those who know me as a Huberman groupie. We had some fun times, but it is all over now.

It’s a little bittersweet, so let me share a quick timeline of this relationship - purely platonic, wildly fictional, and entirely unbeknownst to Andrew.

In the beginning, I was so happy to have found him - someone who takes the time to comb through the science, particularly neuroscience, to uncover golden nuggets that are interesting to the general public. He made them accessible to everyone while dissecting and explaining complex scientific concepts along the way. What was not to like? His Tom Hardy looks didn’t hurt either.

In short, for a therapist like myself, looking to incorporate practical neuroscience into psychotherapy, it was a goldmine.

The first episode I ever listened to was about the neuroscience of tenacity and willpower. I remember being blown away, thinking, Why has nobody told me this before? (Looking back, maybe nobody told me because it was not true).

Then there was the episode on breathing with Jack Feldman. Jack is an absolute boss in the field of elucidating the neural mechanisms of breathing, and I thoroughly enjoyed that episode - despite it being three hours long (if memory serves). It was packed with anecdotes from the lab and hands-on experiments from this neuroscience pioneer. I learned so much.

And the episode with Lisa Feldman Barrett on understanding emotions. I got a glimpse of the role that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays and how it is one of the rare areas of the brain that we can influence intentionally.

I was recommending the podcast to anyone who would listen, spreading the word. It appears that the whole world was doing the same as Andrew was becoming very, very popular.

First Cracks

Next came the episode on attachment. At the time, I didn’t know much about the neuroscience of attachment, so it felt like I was drinking from the cup of knowledge. Looking back, there was already a fair amount of neurobollocks in it, but at the time, I didn’t realise. I was still blissfully oblivious on my little Huberman cloud.

But then I started hearing voices of criticism, even outrage. Some scientists pointed to a lack of rigor, sloppy interpretations, and even a basic misunderstanding of statistical values. But I didn’t believe them. I stood by Andrew. I thought it must be just some jealous, geeky scientists annoyed by his fame and ability to make science popular.

Eventually, however, my rose-tinted glasses fell off too. It was the episode on dopamine that started it for me. I mean, in it, he completely abandoned any remotely scientific script. It was a true deluge of neurobollocks: dopamine detox, defining craving as low levels of dopamine (when, in fact, it turns out the opposite is true), and the idea that indulging in small pleasures depletes overall dopamine levels. Practically every dopamine myth was covered, somehow made to sound plausible, all conveyed by Andrew Huberman's reassuring voice, as though subliminally telling us, 'I know what I’m talking about.'

The next big disappointment was the episode about cynics and how harmful it is to be one, featuring social neuroscientist Jamil Zaki. The episode oscillated between tenuous connections between cynicism as a life position and insecure attachment, positive psychology, and references to some very questionable works of literature and animation. It was a classic case of science overreach, where the scientists use whatever they can find to support an argument against something they personally dislike or disagree with, in this case, the 'bad cynics'.

The Final Blow

The other day, I woke up to a notification of a new Huberman Lab episode featuring psychiatrist Allan Schore. Dr Schore's thesis to live by, throughout his work and career, is based on the left brain/right brain myth. The idea that the left brain rational, analytical and bureaucratic while the right brain is emotional, creative, non-literal and the seat of human attachment. If this were true, it could then be leveraged for use in psychotherapy and in theorising about neuroscience of attachment.

Now, this is one of the main and most debunked neurobollocks myths in the world, and so the whole episode is basically one huge neurobollocks endorsement. Huberman was buying all of it, and didn’t push back or challenge the incorrect viewpoints by using empirical neuroscience evidence. Something that a student would be able to do, let alone a ‘professor’. Come on man.

The cynic in me is inclined to think that Andrew must know about it being an outdated myth and that really anything goes as long as it is getting attention and more audience. We will never know. All I know is that it is a step too far, for me.

This particular neuro-myth has been debunked times and times again by people way more clever than me, so I won't do it here. You can check my blogpost on this or explore some of the references below:

• "Right-brain" myth in attachment

• Left brain/Right-brain neurobollocks

• TED-Ed video about this myth

What I want to show you instead is how, sometimes, you don't even have to consume the product (which, for me, this podcast has undoubtedly become) to get an idea of its quality. You can just look at the label. And what’s the label? It’s the references and the description. Let’s have a look.

Flagging the Red Flags

Let’s first look at some general red flags when it comes to assessing the quality and relevance of scientific claims. In another blog post, fittingly for this occasion titled 'Neurobollocks,' I outline red flags to watch for when critically evaluating the validity of scientific claims and theories (this list was put together with Dr. Mike Tranter)

1. What are the references? In other words the scientific peer-reviewed papers that are used to support the theory in question?

2. Is that study relevant (or is there some oversimplification, or misapplication going on)?

3. Is there a body of evidence or a signle, isolated study? Related to this is cherrypicking, or choosing only the evidence that supports the claim we are making and omitting to report the opposing evidence.

4. How old is the study? My rule of thumb is the cut-off value of 20. In other words, if all the references supporting a specific new theory or intervention are more than 20 years old, then it is probably outdated.

Now let's look what references for the claims are provided in this podcast episode. First reference:

• The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants., C Chiron, I Jambaque, R Nabbout, R Lounes, A Syrota, O Dulac, Brain, Volume 120, Issue 6, Jun 1997.

Can you spot any red flags here? One study, almost 30 years old. Surely, if something as important as the right brain developing first in infants were an established scientific fact, the person making the claim, the 'expert', would provide a more recent reference.

Now, a very quick search (by an utter non-specialist, i.e., me) uncovers the following, much more recent studies that tell a more complex and very different story:

• Lateralization of Resting-State Networks in Children: Association with Age, Sex, Handedness, Intelligence Quotient, and Behavior, 2022.

• The neural basis of language development: Changes in lateralization over age, 2020.

• Distinct hemispheric specializations for native and non-native languages in one-day-old newborns identified by fNIRS, 2016

So, in fact we have two red flags triggered here: outdated study and cherrypicking.

Would you not expect the 'expert' to know better?

And what about when these ideas and inaccuracies cascaded into a whole range of offshoots, such as psychotherapy ('right brain psychotherapy') or parenting ('right brain parenting')?

Now let's look at some other references from this podcast episode that support guest's claims about the right brain dominance for creativity, attachment and emotions:

• Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self

• Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

• Allan Schore, Right Brain Psychotherapy

• Iain McGilcrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

• Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

• Allan Schore, The Development of the Unconscious Mind

I am noticing lots of self-referencing on this list. Another observation is that only one person from the list is a neuroscientist (Antonio Damasio). One of the authors left actually uses Allan Schore’s work to support his own theories, and vice versa, creating a circular argument.

I could go on, but I think you get the gist. There is enough info on the "packaging label", don't even need to listen to the episode to know it's gonna be full of ... neurobollocks.

Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice, But Not Thrice

That is the thing about trust and confidence in something or someone. Fool me once. Fool me twice. And then after that, I'm just like : I don't have time for this anymore.

Never mind. If it’s not for the science, all that’s left are the looks. I think I’ll just watch Tom Hardy movies instead.

Sorry Baby XoXo

As always…thank you so much for reading. Any comments or thoughts, feel free to let me know…