Journal of Personal Science: Omega-3 and ADHD (Part 2 of 2)
by Allan Folz
My story of omega 3 and self-experimentation did not end with my wife and her pregnancy. As I mentioned, I discovered the paleo diet, Vitamin D, and fish oil all about the same time. Mostly for reasons of general good health we began supplementing with vitamin D and fish oil (Mega-EPA Omega-3 supplement). I ordered some of each from the same place online and we began supplementing both at the same time, around January-February of 2010.
At the time my son was in kindergarten and having problems socializing at school. He had them at home too, but we’d all adjusted to them at home. He exhibited a lot of what would be called typical spectrum issues, though I was certain he didn’t have anything approaching Asperger’s. Things that interested him, such as building with Legos playing outside with or without friends, he did quite well. It struck me that he was a high-energy boy who didn’t appreciate receiving directions, desk work, or anything requiring moderation and self-reflection. I like to joke that Tom Sawyer is hardly a modern archetype.
Nonetheless, he was having problems. The Vitamin D Council web site had a number of very persuasive anecdotes from parents about autistic children cured by Vitamin D. Our son wasn’t autistic, but autism involves several behaviors, and he had a few of them. He didn’t make good eye contact when talking or being talked to. He wouldn’t follow directions if he didn’t feel an intrinsic motivation to follow them. He could not fall asleep and would often lay in bed restless for an hour or more at night. The Vitamin D Council recommended 2000 IU per 50 lb/day, so that’s what we all took. We also took one fish oil capsule a week. At the time I thought of omega-3 only being for heart health. This made me a little skeptical about how much was really required. We seemed a healthy family, so I figured our needs were modest. One capsule a week seemed well beyond the norm so we should be good.
Almost immediately after beginning the supplements my son’s behavior improved. I was pleasantly surprised and attributed it to the Vitamin D based on what I’d read on the Vitamin D Council web site. It wasn’t a cure by any means, but it was a very noticeable improvement. He would still have bad days, and I was a little bummed that after the initial improvement the Vitamin D didn’t seem to be helping any further. However, I figured such is real-life outside of attention-grabbing headlines.
Two years later, January and February of 2012, second grade for him, and about a year and a half after the self-experiment with my wife during her third pregnancy, my son’s behavior dramatically worsened. We were all still taking D, but at that point it was obviously not showing any benefit for my son. He was in a worse place than when he was in kindergarten. I resigned myself to Vitamin D not being his problem, and at his teacher’s demand signed him up for outside testing.
I didn’t notice at the time, but we had run out of the “fish oil” over Christmas break. The second week of January we visited family in the Midwest. When we returned, school was a nightmare for him and us. My wife and I attributed it to too much TV, bad diet, and not enough sleep while we were visiting family. However, even two and three weeks after our return his problems were worsening. Around the beginning of February, I finally got around to ordering another bottle of the omega-3. I thought of it as mostly being for my wife, who was doing fine, so I didn’t feel any immediacy. When it finally arrived, we all started taking it again. Immediately his behavior improved. It was such a night and day difference the connection was impossible to miss. It was like kindergarten when he first started taking Vitamin D, only far more so. For the first time in two weeks he wasn’t angry and crying at the end of the day. That’s when it occurred to me that in kindergarten he started taking fish oil at the same time as Vitamin D. For the last two years I had been attributing to Vitamin D what was due to the omega-3 supplement. I felt like an idiot.
After that, I did some research on omega-3, fish oil, and ADHD. When I knew what to look for, I found that there were, in fact, a few studies about using omega-3 for ADHD treatment. It seemed that EPA was effectie while DHA was not, or at best, less effective than EPA. When I took a closer look at our “fish oil,” I remember thinking to myself, “Oh wow, this stuff is Mega-EPA. How lucky is that.” I had chosen it almost at random. It had the best per-dose price and was listed as a top seller.
In retrospect, were it not for the pain and difficulty experienced by my son, it would be funny how the answer was under my nose the whole time. I was slow to appreciate it because of my own prejudice and not treating the problem as something to scientifically test. I thought of omega-3 as being for heart health. I’d never seen it mentioned in relation to emotional health or brain development, outside of the usual bromides about eating walnuts and so forth. Plus the recommendations are always couched in generalities without specific dosage guidelines. Even after I discovered it made a difference for my pregnant wife, it didn’t occur to me to test it seriously on my son. Their symptoms and nutritional needs seemed unrelated.
A few weeks later we saw the professional who had tested our son to go over the results. A few weeks had passed between the evaluation and when we met to discuss the results; it was during that time that I made the omega-3 discovery. I told the professional that our son was getting really good results from the omega-3 supplement. I said that after noticing his results I’d done some online searching and there were a few scientific studies supporting the use of omega-3 supplements for ADHD. The professional said he was aware of the studies, but the efficacy wasn’t as certain or as strong compared to the prescription drugs so most people choose the prescriptions. (He sent me the same Bloch & Qawasmi paper Seth linked to in his April 21 Assorted Links.) I wondered if most people were even made aware of the possibility of omega-3 deficiency — he certainly didn’t bring it up with us. I would not have found the research papers without first knowing what to look for. I knew what to look for only because of the discovery I made with my son.
The omega-3 supplement, while a huge improvement, was not an immediate cure. We started giving him two capsules daily which consisted of 800 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA. That seemed to me a lot of omega-3, relative to what one could consume through normal dietary intake.
I was not overly comfortable with that level of dose long-term despite it clearly working. So every couple months or so I’d have him skip a day or whole weekend. Without fail, his mood noticeably worsened. By the early evening he would be overwhelmed and frustrated to the point of tears by little things that weren’t going his way, things that were really just the usual complications of life in a household with two parents and two siblings.
A poignant instance of the effects of missing a dose happened in the Fall of the following school year, still 2012. My wife’s mother came for a visit. The break from routine caused my wife to forget to give our son his omega-3 supplement for three or four days in a row. He might have had them on Sunday, but not on any of the weekdays. By Thursday I had gotten a note and phone call from his teacher about his behavior at school. We had to go and meet with her the following week. At the meeting I shared that we had forgotten to give him the omega-3 capsules due to his grandmother visiting. I saw this as proof it was working. The teacher didn’t know we had forgotten, and yet his behavior had noticeably regressed. She did not share my awe, and tried to imply that he should be on a prescription. I said that kids can forget prescriptions just as easily and the side effects from a missed prescription are going to be far worse than three days off an omega-3 supplement.
Last month we again ran out of the omega-3 supplement. Except for the accidental occurrence when my wife’s mother was visiting, this is the first time he’s been off it for more than a few consecutive days in the two years and two months since I first discovered it helped him. I’m quite pleased that he seems to be doing OK. There’s been virtually no difference in his behavior since stopping. However, it’s not a true cold-turkey quit. We have some of the Green Pastures FCLO infused coconut oil, so he’s been taking that instead. The manufacturer is vague about its omega-3 content, but my rough estimate is that he’s taking, a third to a half of his previous dose with the Mega-EPA capsules. Then again, it’s in the triglyceride form which is supposed to be 50-70% better absorbed on a per-gram basis. Perhaps it’s a wash.
I’ve thought about having him try flax oil. There is considerable debate about the efficacy of flax oil and the body’s ability to synthesize EPA and DHA from ALA, the omega-3 in flax oil. It might be a little late to test efficacy now. The best time to test was one and two years ago when the Mega-EPA supplement was clearly working and had an “efficacy” half-life of 24 hours. The thought never occurred to me until recently when reading Seth’s blog.
I can’t end without sharing some of my frustrations with the state of health science. There is no doubt in my mind that omega-3 helped both my son and my wife deal with some severe and yet common mental health problems. I’m a pretty sharp, pretty well-read guy that’s always had an interest in biology and medicine. Outside of a few esoteric corners of the web where you have to know what you’re looking for in order to find it, omega-3 is something you take for heart health.
I think the comparison with statins is apt. When “heart-healthy whole-grains” don’t fix one’s blood makers, and why would they, it’s very quickly on to prescription drugs (statins). When “use your words” doesn’t fix a young boy’s interactions with classmates and teachers, and why would it, it’s on to prescription drugs. Boys especially are put on incredibly strong pharmaceuticals with well-established risk factors that include stunted growth and suicide. Pharmaceuticals should be tried last, but they are clearly being tried first by frustrated parents and suspect practitioners. It’s a national shame and a personal outrage.
Part 1, about using omega-3 to treat postpartum depression, appeared yesterday. Allan Folz is a software developer in Portland, Oregon. He recently co-founded Edison Gauss Publishing, a software house that makes academically rigorous educational apps for children in grades K-8. Their apps are suitable both classroom and home use, and have proven to be particularly popular among homeschoolers that appreciate a traditional approach to practicing math.
Journal of Personal Science: Omega-3, Nursing a Baby and Postpartum Depression (Part 1 of 2)
by Allan Folz
My wife had moderately severe postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth of our first child, a boy, in 2004. The depression lifted at the same time the nursing stopped, when he was about two years old. The pregnancy itself was without major or even minor problems so the depression was a big surprise. It was frustrating because nothing we did to alleviate it actually helped.
With our second child, born in 2007, for the whole pregnancy we were worried she would experience it again. Thankfully she did not. There were a couple of differences between the two pregnancies. Our first baby was a boy and born with a complication during delivery. The placenta did not release. This caused to be transferred to a hospital, as it was a home birth. At the hospital she was given two units of whole blood. Our second baby was a girl, also born at home, and this time with no issues.
Her third pregnancy was in 2010 and this is where the story begins.
A couple months before she became pregnant, I had discovered paleo dieting following a link to Richard Nikoley’s blog. I read about his experience and followed links to other sites in the paleosphere. The diet, the rationale behind it, and the numerous reports of other people having their health remarkably improved by it really resonated with me, so we adopted a lower-carb, paleo-style diet.
We didn’t have health problems that we were trying to correct for ourselves or a particular need to lose weight, outside of a few pounds for my wife relative to how much she weighed prior to her first pregnancy some six years before. However, I’ve always had an interest in health, medicine, and how the body functions. I even considered becoming an M.D. back in my undergrad days and minored in biology alongside my major in electrical engineering. I have a strong skepticism towards experts and what is the conventional wisdom in mainstream media sources. I think that’s why I almost immediately found Seth’s blog so intriguing, he questions the conventional wisdom and pushes people to take personal responsibility over their health and well-being. So, we were on a low to moderate carb diet, but weren’t fanatical about it. I remember that after my wife’s first visit with her midwives they were concerned by the ketones in her urine and strongly suggested she start eating more complex carbs. She followed their advice to be conservative. We were also supplementing Vitamin D and a little fish oil (a Mega-EPA omega-3 supplement). She was averaging 5K IU of Vitamin D a day, but only about one, 1 gram capsule once or twice a week of the fish oil. All in all, not much fish oil as I wasn’t sure how much was really necessary for people otherwise eating traditionally healthy, home-cooked meals, and I’m very skeptical of the diet supplement industry.
Late in the third trimester she started experiencing some moodiness. By itself, it probably would not have seemed atypical for a woman in her third trimester, but with my wife’s history we were far more sensitive to it and quick to take notice. Paying close attention (and long before discovering Seth’s blogging on self-experimentation), I eventually realized the moodiness happened when we’d skipped taking fish oils mid-week. If she didn’t take any mid-week, by Saturday it was very noticeable that her mood was on the short-tempered side. Once I noticed the connection, and without telling her what I was doing (i.e. single-blind), I’d deliberately skip the mid-week dose one week and note her weekend temper and mood. The following week I’d be sure she took a capsule mid-week. Next week back to skipping. Then, just to be sure, I had her double-dose one week. The double-dose had her in the best mood of all.
At first I was amazed. It was so neat, so mechanical — like flipping a switch. But it occurred to me that if two capsules in a week vs. one was enough to noticeably change her mood then she was obviously deficient as every mg was being put to use with no spare capacity in her system. I wondered if her body was scavenging omega-3 from her own brain for the developing fetus. That was a sobering thought. After that she went to supplementing daily and had no mood issues throughout the rest of the pregnancy or while breast feeding. She did have some of the typical “baby blues” that set in at the three day mark, but they did not last long. Also, she had good days and bad days, like anyone would. I’d say the omega-3 returned her to her normal bearing, irrespective of the demands of pregnancy and nursing.
There is zero doubt in my mind that omega 3 helped both my wife deal with a severe and yet all too stereotypical mental health problem. I’m a pretty sharp, pretty well-read guy who’s always had an interest in biology and medicine. After the experience with our son’s weaning, I wondered if nursing could cause or complicate PPD.
Seven years ago, when my wife was pregnant for the second time, I had searched the web for material related to those two (nursing and PPD) and came up empty-handed. I know I’ve never read something dealing with those two in mainstream outlets because it’s the type of thing I would mentally file away for future reference if the situation ever came up. It seemed like I was the only one willing to consider there might be a connection between them. Diet suggestions for nursing mothers are full of the usual bromides about getting enough complex carbs, fiber, and protein. Search engine auto-completes on “postpartum depression” don’t offer “omega-3” or “diet” anywhere in the top 10. You have to type the first two letters of each before they pop-up as auto-complete options. Today, the first hit for “postpartum depression diet” (I use Bing) is https://www.postpartum-living.com/depression-diet.html, which makes absolutely no mention of fats or lipids. It mentions vitamins, of course, but, incredibly, nothing specific.
During the two years my wife had PPD after her first pregnancy, no one suggested omega-3. At the time, I attributed her PPD to the delivery complications and the blood transfusion. I knew that depression is well-known among heart-attack survivors and IVF recipients, and, in my opinion, IVF is a pretty severe complication. Among the health professionals she saw about her PPD, the only thing the MD did was give her a prescription for Prozac or something similar, which she didn’t use because, well, of course — she was nursing. Had she quit nursing to take the prescription we would have attributed the improvement to the drug when it actually came from ceasing nursing. The naturopathic practitioners — she saw two different ones — gave her B-12 shots, SAM-e, melatonin, and a bunch of useless diet advice that one could read at all the usual places. The B-12 was good for a 24-48 hour energy boost. Other than that, none of them made the slightest difference.
Part 2, about using omega-3 to treat ADHD, will appear tomorrow. Allan Folz is a software developer in Portland, Oregon. He recently co-founded Edison Gauss Publishing, a software house that makes academically rigorous educational apps for children in grades K-8. Their apps are suitable both classroom and home use, and have proven to be particularly popular among homeschoolers that appreciate a traditional approach to practicing math.
Value of Salt Reduction Supported by Four Studies
For a long time, researchers have found links between high sodium intake and higher blood pressure, and between higher blood pressure and increased risk of stroke. At the same time, critics, including Gary Taubes, have argued that the data do not support the idea that most people should reduce their salt intake.
New evidence suggests the critics were wrong. Four different studies support the idea that high amounts of salt intake are generally bad.
One study recently appeared in BMJ Open. ”The UK initiated a nationwide salt reduction programme in 2003/2004. The programme has been successful and resulted in a 15% reduction in population salt intake by 2011,” write the authors. That might not seem like much but the reduction was in the salt in processed foods, which for most people is most of their salt intake. The more processed food you ate — and the more extreme your salt intake — the greater the reduction.
The main finding of the study was that over the same period, there was a large and steady decrease in both blood pressure and strokes in the UK. Mortality from stroke and ischemic heart disease (IHD) went down by 40%!
There were small changes in other environmental variables over the same period: people ate slightly more fruit and vegetables, weighed slightly more, smoked somewhat less, and so on. Maybe these other changes were what led one critic to dismiss the results in a New York Times article:
Dr. Niels Graudal, a senior consultant in the department of internal medicine at Copenhagen University Hospital, said that connecting the two events “is meaningless.”
“This paper describes two independent incidents,” he added. “That these incidents should be in any way connected is absolutely unlikely.”
Consistent with the low quality of science journalism in the New York Times, it seems the reporter, Nicholas Balakar, did not ask Dr. Graudel any hard questions — for example, for an alternative explanation of the decline.
The BMJ study did a poor job of determining the a priori likelihood of such a big decline. It could have looked at year by year changes in stroke and IHD mortality before 2003, for example. Was stroke and IHD mortality rising or falling? It could have looked at changes in stroke and IHD mortality in similar countries without a salt reduction program over the same period. Such comparisons would have helped a lot. But the BMJ study did report the results of other nationwide salt reduction programs.
Japan, in the late 1960s, carried out a government-led campaign to reduce salt intake. Over the following decade, salt intake was reduced, particularly in northern areas from 18 to 14 g/day. Paralleling this reduction in salt intake, there were falls in BP and an 80% reduction in stroke mortality in spite of large increases in fat intake, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity which occurred during that period. Finland, in the late 1970s, initiated a systematic approach to reducing salt intake through mass media-campaigns, co-operation with the food industry and implementing salt labelling legislation. This led to a significant reduction in the average salt intake of the Finnish population from ≈14 g/day in 1972 to less than 9 g/day in 2002. The reduction in salt intake was accompanied by a fall of over 10 mm Hg in systolic and diastolic BP and a decrease of 75–80% in stroke and IHD mortality.
Again, reductions in salt intake happened just before huge decreases in stroke and IHD mortality. It is the triple repetition of an unlikely event (big reductions in mortality) and the experimental aspect (something was specifically changed) that convince me. The critics are not going to come up with a plausible alternative explanation of all three cases (UK, Japan, Finland) any time soon.
A paper co-authored by the same Dr. Graudal who dismissed the new findings found that high sodium intake was associated with increased mortality. It also found that low sodium intake was associated with increased mortality. This is why a reduction in the salt in processed food makes so much sense: 1. It’s easy. You don’t have to do anything. 2. It reduces salt intake the most in people who eat the most salt — exactly where it is likely to be the most beneficial.
Just to be clear, this data also says that if you don’t eat a lot of salt, there is no good reason to reduce your salt intake (unless you have high blood pressure).
The Link Between Lead and Crime
In the 1960s, a Caltech geochemist named Clair Patterson made the case that there had been worldwide contamination of living things by lead, due to the lead in gasoline. There were great increases in the amount of lead in fish and human skeletons, for example. More than anyone else he was responsible for the elimination of lead in gasoline. (By coincidence, this was just shown on the new Cosmos TV series.) A professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh named Herbert Needleman did some of the most important toxicology, linking lead exposure (presumably from paint) and IQ in children. Children with more lead in their teeth had lower IQ scores. The importance of this finding is shown by the fact he was accused of scientific misconduct.
When lead was eliminated from gasoline, blood levels of lead went down — and so did crime. The idea that childhood lead exposure causes crime many years later explains so many otherwise-hard-to-explain facts, especially worldwide declines in crime rates, that I conclude it’s true: lead exposure does cause criminality. Kevin Drum wrote a long article about this in Mother Jones a year ago and followed up his original article in many ways. A BBC radio show yesterday covered the topic.
This interests me for two reasons. One is simple. It shows the value of monitoring your own brain function by using something like the brain test I have often blogged about — e.g., to notice that butter made me smarter or mercury in my teeth fillings made me stupider. There’s still lots of lead in the world — in old windowpanes, for example. And you are exposed to thousands of other modern chemicals (e.g., in cleaning products) whose effects on your brain are essentially unknown.
The other reason is complicated. It involves the context of this discovery. Mostly, the health research establishment has been unable to get anything right. Heart disease has been the #1 killer for decades; doctors still claim (and vast number of people, including New York Times health writers, believe them) that it is caused by cholesterol. Depression and bipolar disorder might be the single greatest cause of suffering nowadays — and psychiatrists are still claiming it is caused by “chemical imbalance” in the brain. (For my view of what causes depression, see this.) Beyond figuring out that lung cancer is caused by smoking, there has been almost no progress understanding what causes cancer. The “oncogene theory” of cancer turned out to be a dead end. There have been little bits of progress here and there but on the big issues, there has been nonsense decade after decade — and lack of realization that it is nonsense.
In contrast, taking lead out of gasoline was a big step forward in public health and pointing out the link to crime a big step forward in understanding crime. Rare examples of progress. What can I learn from that? I have stressed the importance of insider/outsiders — people close enough to understand but far enough away to have freedom. The lead/crime case supports that. Clair Patterson was a geochemist, not a toxicologist. Rick Nevin, the first person to argue that lead causes crime, was an economist, not a criminologist. Both of them had a good methodological understanding and used this to shed light on a different area than their original training. (Obviously I have used my background in experimental psychology, especially my methodological knowledge — how to experiment, how to measure brain function — to shed light on many health questions.) The lead/crime link also supports my view that the notion that “correlation does not equal causation” does more harm than good. The immediate response of many many people to the lead/crime evidence was exactly that — putting them on what turned out to be the wrong side. Whatever truth correlation does not equal causation might have is outweighed by the damage it does when it is used to ignore evidence. How smart do you have to be to realize “correlation does not equal causation” is stupid? To me don’t ignore evidence is the most important principle of science. But many university professors don’t agree with me.
I’m also impressed — in a good way — by Drum’s article. At least it exists. Anyone can read it and then look further, for example at original scientific articles. I wouldn’t say it was easy to write but it did not require expensive travel, extensive interviews, or months of research. It did require original thinking. In contrast, the New York Times and The New Yorker, which do allow expensive time-consuming journalism, haven’t published anything nearly as good in decades. The New York Times‘s idea of high-quality journalism seems to be a series about the high cost of health care while The New Yorker weighs in on the harm done by Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Thanks to James Keller.
Assorted Links
- High priced drugs
- Indiegogo QS-related scam. “Founded by CEO Isabel Hoffman, whose big thing before this was anti-aging medicines, and CTO Stephen Watson, a York University math professor.” Hoffman was the University of Toronto’s Alumni of the Year in 1995. Also this and this.
- omega-3 helps children with ADHD
- Seoul traditional restaurants. The best guide to Seoul restaurants I have ever seen.
Thanks to Tyler Cowen.
Teaching Children: Adjustment to Individual Differences
After I blogged about my belief that a good teacher tries to bring out what is inside their students (not just transfer brain contents), a reader named Terri Fites commented:
We homeschool, and I see lots of what you said in my kids.
I asked her to elaborate. She replied:
Here is where I learned the most starting on day one of kindergarten with my first child five years ago; it is my job to identify strengths, weaknesses, and to help the learner achieve the goal using what they can. For example, I was embarrassed and appalled that my first child didn’t read or show any interest in reading to herself until about second grade (7 years old). However, I continued to provide the necessary environment–reading wonderful books aloud, having her read a sentence from our selections, occasionally forcing her to read from her own readers. She had a great verbal understanding and would listen to anything I read aloud to her. Eventually, slowly, she transitioned and has NO issues with reading now. Her strength is verbal understanding and listening comprehension. Her weakness is focus on her own activities and sitting still.
My second child came along and was strong in different ways that I had to discover and appreciate. Her verbal skills, although perfectly normal, are not her strength, but music rises out of her at every moment. Clearly we have to do more than music. Using this strength, I make sure to provide plenty of musical CDs in Spanish for Spanish (which she struggles with–we have had tutors come for years with the intent the girls become fluent). We memorize and recite poetry routinely as part of our lessons, and she “sets” hers to song/music. When we do math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication flash cards), she does best if she hears them in a sing-song voice. Her strengths are effort, music, rhythm, and art. Her weaknesses are verbal reasoning and remembering verbal types of things (not so prominent in math and geography skills so her spatial and math skills overcome this problem remembering things).
I would say, particularly in elementary school, that although the reading, writing, and arithmetic skills needed should not be optional–the timing of learning them and the method of learning them ought to be fluid to a degree. Everybody should learn to read but we’re losing kids because they’re not developmentally ready until second or third grade for some of these verbal/reading things. By then the bulk of the spelling and phonics rules have been expected to have been learned and the child is probably destined to be a poor speller, decoder, and poor at reading aloud. (This would be my husband. Obviously he was able to overcome this, but his spelling and read aloud are not pleasant. He says he remembers the year when words and reading just started coming together for him. Unfortunately, that was fifth grade. Did he need to learn to read and spell then in fifth grade!? I’d argue NO! But, in this case, recognition of a child/type of child is important. He is very, very logical, and the way that spelling/phonics is taught now/then is NOT so logical. A rule is given here. It is broken here. It is ignored here. No explanation is given. A kid learns long A as a_e here or -ay there, but not all the other combinations that make the long A sound– and certainly not all together in a lesson sequence!!!: ea, ae, ei, eigh, ai, etc. The logical child gives up. There are programs out there like Orton Gillingham, for example, designed to teach the “rules” of English in such a logical manner. Or I design my own curriculum. But this is not an option for most school teachers. Autonomy is being denied.) And now, multiplication is being moved forward in school grades, too. And analytical, thinking math is being moved forward. I think we’ll lose students! Good students! “I’m no good at math.” Geesh. Because you can’t do story problems in second grade? Because you’re still mastering the facts and you’re being pushed into application too early?
Lyme Disease and Bad Medicine
I got Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic (2008) by Pamela Weintraub from the library and found something surprising: an angry foreword. Weintraub is a science journalist; the foreword is by Hillary Johnson, another science journalist and apparently a friend of Weintraub’s.
In her anger, Johnson says several things I say on this blog.
The more Weintraub investigated, the more virtually everyone with a shred of authority was losing their credibility. . . The so-called “objective” scientists were sending an entire disease down the river and over the cliff [meaning they ignored it] for reasons that seemed frequently to have more to do with mere opinion and crass external forces — cash, prestige, careerism — than with scientific erudition.
She rejected the science writer’s inbred habit of relying on the government official with the highest pay grade or the scientist with a job at Harvard as the final word on a topic. . . . I think of her, with enormous respect, as a “recovered” science journalist.
As one who also suffers from the disease I chronicled with kindred passion in Osler’s Web, I sometimes wonder if the only investigative writers who will possess the necessary temerity to remove the white gloves and tackle those putative experts to the ground will be those . . whose personal experience demands they follow the rocky trail that leads to the truth.
The last point is the most important, I think. You can curse the careerism of Harvard medical school professors and the servility of science writers but that does nothing, or not much, and what you are upset about (careerism and servility) is unsurprising. Less obvious, at least to me, is that there is a way to overcome the careerism and servility. It still surprises me that I was able to figure out interesting stuff about sleep, obesity, depression and so on that the experts in these fields hadn’t figured out — and that sometimes contradicted what they said. (For example, I found sugar isn’t fattening.) As Johnson says, one reason I was able to learn so much was that I wanted to sleep better, lose weight, be in a better mood, and so on. Unlike the experts in those fields, for whom research was a job.
Universities: Expectation versus Reality
A recent Ph.D. from Berkeley named Dragan commented here:
Probably the biggest disappointment of my professional life was realizing that Universities are not very much like what I imagined them to be.
I asked him to elaborate. He replied:
My peers dreamed of being in the sports or movies, of being lawyers, of being rich. Those dreams didn’t seem so great to me. Instead I fantasized about being a scholar and later in life climbed up the educational ladder towards a PhD at a leading research university. The closer I came to becoming a professor — my professional goal in life — the more disappointed I became.
I am somewhat embarrassed to remember this, but I used to say things like: “Universities are places where people can devote themselves to a life of study, investigation, and imagination. In exchange for a home like this, we provide society with ideas. And, of course, we teach.” I guess I thought that there should be a home for people who are capable and devoted to intellectual pursuits, a rather naive notion it seems.
I wanted a place where I would be judged primarily by my intellectual and creative ability. Instead I have been made keenly aware of the importance of networking, of doing favors for the right people, of who to cite, whose criticism to acknowledge and whose to ignore. I used to despise such things, now they’re second nature. The irony, that I now know far more about popularity than I did back in high school. One of the first things I learned is that it is imperative to do research that brings money and/or prestige. In other words: popular research. I didn’t know such a thing existed.
What if I don’t want to do popular research? The most common advice I received during my graduate studies: “Wait till you’re tenured to do that,” always said with good intentions.
Only one person told me: “Do what you believe in. Tenure and accolades will come in time.” I liked this advice more. But the professor who gave it was fully tenured before I was born. Perhaps things were different in his time? I suspect they were. Last year, two retired professors, each from a major research university, assured me that they would never get tenure in this day and age. They took years with their research and published few yet original papers. “You have to wait until tenure nowadays,” they said.
This is not what I thought I’d find. Nor did I expect to find that efficiency and money-making are priorities here. I love what I do, or at least what I want to do. If I could afford to, I’d do it for free. I mean that as an academic, money seems relatively unimportant. Yet universities seem to be run by people who aren’t academics and whose primary interest is making money, rather than fostering research. It occurs to me that these two aims may be in conflict.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that academia is altogether bad. I can honestly say it beats unemployment and the handful of low-wage jobs I had as a teenager. And there are days when all the things I just wrote about seem less important and I focus on my research or my teaching. But other times I think, silly me. If only I was smart enough to get rich in the first place, I could have done anything I wanted to — like pursue research that actually interests me.
As a professor (with tenure) at Berkeley, I was fascinated by how mediocre I was. By the usual metrics, I was in the bottom quarter of the distribution. Yet I had made discoveries that I knew were important — for example, a surprising way to lose weight, a really surprising way to improve mood. Although these discoveries impressed me, they did not impress my colleagues.
High-Frequency Trading and Health Care
High-frequency trading is a misnomer. It’s actually short-latency trading, a name that makes clearer why it is so unsavory. As Michael Lewis explains in Flash Boys, short-latency traders use a buy order on one exchange to quickly buy that stock on other exchanges before the original buy order reaches the other exchanges. Lewis writes:
The deep problem with the system was a kind of moral inertia. So long as it served the narrow self-interests of everyone inside it, no one on the inside would ever seek to change it, no matter how sinister or corrupt it became — though even to use words like “corrupt” and “sinister” made serious people uncomfortable.
I thought of health care. Our health care system — centered on treating symptoms with drugs you take for the rest of your life — serves the narrow self-interests of those inside it, such as doctors and medical school professors. That is surely one reason its predatory aspect is rarely mentioned.
But I also noticed how poorly Lewis, an excellent writer, describes the problem. “Moral inertia”? No, the problem is not that Person X or Person Y is slow to get outraged. “Corrupt”? No, no one is being paid off to look the other way or vote a certain way or introduce a certain bill. “Sinister”? It’s unclear what that means. Is Lewis just using a fancy synonym for “bad”?
Elsewhere Lewis uses the word predatory, which seems accurate. Short-latency traders preyed on those who sold stock, taking advantage of their ignorance. Of course, no one is forced to buy or sell stock and the loss on one trade is small. But everyone gets sick.