Pseudoscience in Health and Fitness with Dr. Nick Tiller

How can we navigate a health and fitness space riddled with pseudoscience and misinformation? What does it mean to live in the post-truth era? How can we all train ourselves to become better critical thinkers?

We dive into all this and more with Dr. Nicholas Tiller, who we discovered because of his call to action paper about the need for exercise scientists to contest the growing amount of misinformation in the space.

Nick is a senior researcher in the Institute of Exercise Physiology and Respiratory Medicine (Lundquist Institute) at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Tiller has a broad research profile, contributing numerous peer-reviewed studies in cardiopulmonary function (specifically in chronic respiratory disease), respiratory mechanics, and exercise limitation. Tiller is a leading authority in the physiology and pathophysiology of extreme exercise, a subject of personal interest in his capacity as an ultramarathon runner. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 

While Nick's work focuses on exercise science, he is fundamentally a skeptic and an advocate for critical thinking. This lens is apparent throughout all of his work, and drives much of what we discuss in this episode. 

Check out his website here

He's also very active on Twitter

​His book Skeptics Guide to Sports Science has been reviewed as one of the "Best Sports Science Books of All Time" and easy a great reference from common exercise science myths.

His column on Skeptical Inquirer is also excellent.

For more on the story we briefly discussed about the British con artist who scammed militaries with fake bomb detectors, you can start here.

If you want to dive deeper into our brief conversation about the Tuft's Food Compass research and the subsequent Joe Rogan drama, start with this blog post.

Some of the reading that Nick suggests includes:

Isaac Asimov's Robot series (and Alex also recommends Foundation)
Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World
James Randi's Flim Flam

He also recommends the following podcasts for aspiring skeptics:

Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Geologic