Expert Misinformation Online/Experts Correcting Experts? ROUNDTABLE

0:10Dr Kevin Klatt: Welcome back to the EcoWell podcast. This is a show about the science of cosmetics and anything related. My name's Jen and I'll be your host. I've been off the air for a couple of months, excited to kick off a fresh new season with this episode on a topic I've been thinking about a lot. If you're not aware, you probably should be. Expert-led misinformation is a really big problem that is supercharging some of the misinformation that's out there. So this is a problem that you're about to know a whole bunch more about, but should other experts be correcting them? Is that more damaging because it shows more doubt in science?

0:48Dr Kevin Klatt: Inspired by some feedback I've gotten over the years, I figured it was a good time to flesh this out in a roundtable. Joining me for this discussion was registered dietitian, Dr. Kevin Klatt, toxicologist, Dr. Joe Zagorski, and chemist, Dr. Michelle Wong. This is a really important topic, I think especially for the expert crowd to be aware of. Big thank you to Kevin, Joe, and Michelle for agreeing to the roundtable. Some quick housekeeping before the show. My next summit is at the end of this month. Relevant to the topic of this episode, it'll be on truth and beauty. I'll be giving a presentation on source vetting.

1:28Dr Kevin Klatt: Michelle and Joe will be presenting too on sunscreen misinformation and hot topics and cosmetic safety respectively. The agenda is packed with topics I think are important to people today from people I trust to do the topics justice. Conference is free. You just have to sign up. happening September 27th. Replay will also be sent to everyone registered. Find all the details at theecol.com. And as always, thank you so much to my Patreon supporters for supporting my Sciacom work, including this podcast. You've been a big part of my motivation that's kept this show on the air for so long. We're at about the decade mark this year.

2:08Dr Kevin Klatt: Thank you for helping me continue to share these kinds of conversations for so long. If you'd like to support my work on Patreon, and it's accessible, you can find me at patreon.com slash the eco-o. Other great ways to support this podcast is by subscribing to it on whatever platform you're listening to it, writing a review for the podcast if you haven't already, and sharing. And finally, a big thank you to CM Studio Plus, who at the start of this year signed up to be a long-term supporter of this work and has been such a big help to further some of the things that I'm doing, especially with the SciComm cohorts that I've been working on alongside my summits and the summits themselves.

2:49Dr Kevin Klatt: So thank you so much, CM Studio Plus and Boris. And with that, here's the episode.

2:56Dr Kevin Klatt: And so I am here with Dr. Joe Zagorski, who's toxicologist, Dr. Kevin Klatt, who is an RD-PhD, a registered dietitian, if you're not familiar with that acronym. And then Dr. Michelle Long, chemist friend of the show. We're going to be having a conversation about expert misinformation and the need for corrections of experts perpetuating misinformation. This has been a topic that I've been thinking about a lot and something that I know I personally, I know Michelle has as well, have gotten feedback about whether or not this is something people should even be doing, whether the people who are correcting experts online are sowing doubt in science because we're showing that certain scientists or practitioners or whatever in certain spaces are doing sus things on the internet.

4:04Dr Kevin Klatt: It's happening if you're not aware. I guess you'll be aware by the end of this conversation. But with that groundwork, I'm going to get right to it with my first question. So from your respective spaces, what have you seen as the issue with expert-led misinformation? How do you see expert-led misinformation fitting in to the net spread of misinformation. Kevin, since your commentary inspired this post, you want to go first? Oh, man. Yeah, nutrition, I think, has just always been a hotbed of misinformation. I think that's in part because if you say the word expert, nutrition is so all expansive.

4:49Dr Kevin Klatt: It's everything. It's got a mix of food science, physiology, medicine policy and so like real expertise I guess this is maybe a spoiler for the whole show but like real expertise is like super narrow like you get your PhD in this little micro topic if you know I always had a friend that used to refer to as like it's a pie is a whole topic is a pie and like your PhD is just one really really tiny slice you know practitioners tend to get more of maybe the crust but you know nobody has expertise necessarily in everything so in in nutrition I I think the other weird part of it is you don't have like you can get your PhD in nutrition, but that's not like a clinical thing.

5:26Dr Kevin Klatt: You can become an RD and that's more of a bachelor's, typically entry level clinical practitioner status. It's now moving to a master's degree, but there's no physician specialization in it either. So there's sort of this void of like a doctoral level practitioner expertise. There are emerging, I should say, there are emerging doctorates in clinical nutrition. We don't have that like, go get your PhD in this and you become a nutrition expert necessarily. And that's always, I think, a little bit of a farce, as we'll probably talk about in dermatology doesn't make you an expert in all things skin, for example.

6:00Dr Kevin Klatt: Even if there was a physician specialty in nutrition wouldn't make you an expert in all things nutrition. But I think nutrition sits at this unique space where everyone thinks to like, oh, doctors should know everything about nutrition because they're doctors. And, you know, I watch a movie and doctors can run PCR and diagnose people and know all the things about all the things. And there's not really a physician that is a nutrition expert. So, yeah, it's a weird space to be in nutrition sometimes where you're like, even I did my PhD in nutrition and I'm an RD, which is sort of I think the closest you can get to sort of what you might think of as a nutrition expert and having that laboratory basic science and clinical RD experience.

6:42Dr Kevin Klatt: But I still don't have like I'm not a nutrition epidemiologist, which is like a huge component of our training as well. And so I think that the concept of expertise and the public perception of it versus the reality of what it actually means is very disparate. And that makes kind of deferring to nutrition experts a really hard thing to do. And unfortunately, you have a lot of people out there who are nutrition because it has all the social capital associated with it. It has people are going after everybody wants to build out their brand. and be seen as like sexy and edgy and forward and integrative and functional.

7:16Dr Kevin Klatt: And there's a million buzzwords around it. So they use, you know, there used to be a lot of branding about, like totally about nutrition. I'm the low carb expert. I found the way, the truth and the light in this diet. Now we're seeing nutrition be more of a, almost like a gateway drug where it's like, I'm going to talk to you about nutrition. And then I'm also going to talk about peptides and your supplement stack and the sort of overall lifestyle biohacking type approach that nutrition ends up being a core component of. So there's even less, you know, when it used to be like, I'm a low carb expert and you had a whole community of people interested in low carb alone, you actually did kind of have to know a bit more about nutrition.

7:53Dr Kevin Klatt: But now that nutrition is just part of this overall broad, massive scope of practice where you're allowed to talk about everything and you claim expertise and everything. There's a lot of people talking about it who genuinely, I don't think, know anything about food composition or digestion or, you know, diets and chronic diseases, nutrient deficiencies, et cetera. So huge, huge watering down of what nutrition expertise is. And so you obviously see people like physicians who get no training in nutrition kind of engaging within this. But you also, I call out my own profession of dieticians, a whole bunch for often speaking outside of their scope and relying on kind of sexifying data and being really into supplements and all these sorts of things, which if you're going to build your brand online in nutrition, it's really hard to actually make money off of it without taking sponsorship deals that end up being a little bit sketchy with the supplement industry or going on food tours, the agricultural industry funds.

8:48Dr Kevin Klatt: And you see various versions of this, which none of them on their own, right, are necessarily damning. I think you can be an evidence-based practitioner who makes some money through sponsorship deals, but there are very few legit versions of that within nutrition. So I don't want to wander too much and take up the whole mic, but expertise is such a fraught topic. And expertise is something that I talk about a lot on this podcast. So I'm glad you brought it up. And you had some interesting insights about nutrition as the gateway drug to other weird things, which I kind of think it's like that in skincare as well.

9:22Dr Kevin Klatt: But I'm going to put a pin in that idea for Michelle and go to Joe next. What's your perspective on this?

9:32Dr Joe Zagorski: Yeah, like Kevin, toxicology is an incredibly broad field. You figure in, you're looking at every organ system, every cell type in the body, sometimes multiple organisms, sometimes including environmental impacts. You know, you're talking about a field that spans everything from chemistry to computer science to basic molecular biology and everything in between. So it's quite literally impossible to be an expert on everything in toxicology. Now you can have expertise on the field generally as a whole, but as Kevin was saying, like when you get your PhD, I'll just talk about mine. For instance, I was studying a very specific protein in human cells and its response to a food preservative and how it changes the way human immune cells work.

10:26Dr Joe Zagorski: That's a very, very narrow view. Now, I probably, at least at the time when I was doing my doctoral work, knew more about that one question than anybody, because that was my one question. But it didn't necessarily mean that I knew or had an in-depth understanding of, let's say, skin toxicology. I think that that's a really important piece of nuance when we are talking about what expertise means and what it means in terms of presenting to the public, because whether or not we like it, as soon as you put letters after your last name, the public sees you as an expert in all things science. Unfortunately, that's just not true.

11:12Dr Joe Zagorski: Now, that doesn't mean that you, at least in my opinion, I don't think that means that you can't offer an interpretation as long as you acknowledge your limitations. So I always tell people that my view of expertise is understanding where yours stops and someone else starts, because all of these fields are overlapping Venn diagrams. For instance, if we are talking about, let's say, nutrition, there's an overlap between that and toxicology, where the things that you are eating and you're being exposed to sometimes can be protective. So for instance, iron, proper iron consumption can protect you from low levels of lead in your food because they compete for a similar transporter in the body.

11:56Dr Joe Zagorski: And so there's an overlap there. I am not a nutrition expert. I don't play one on TV. Understanding where that starts and stops is extremely important. And what I see a lot of times is the lack of transparency in where someone's own personal expertise starts and stops. And I don't necessarily think it's malevolence or anything. Sometimes I think it's just they don't realize. But I think if we want to have accurate and trustworthy messaging, being able to check that is really important. Realistically, if we're working in the sciences, we're checking one another constantly anyways. that's how peer review works.

12:43Dr Joe Zagorski: This should be something that we are not necessarily uncomfortable with, but unfortunately, sometimes we are. And I don't know if that's, you know, somebody's pride on the line or what have you, but I think if we are going to have any sort of impact in moving the needle in, especially in this age of real chemophobia, then we need to be able to have discussions amongst experts to say, hey, you know, you've might have misinterpreted this nuance and be open to that correction. Otherwise, I think that what we're doing is we're ultimately making the situation worse.

13:23Dr Kevin Klatt: I feel that in my bones, the need for transparent disclosures for expertise. I just want to say something and then I'm sure Michelle may be able to talk more about this or maybe she doesn't want to go there. I don't know. But as an example, there's this one person that says PhD cosmetic scientist and then he gets a lot of people repeating this like he has a PhD in and around cosmetic science. You would think that, right, by the way that it's described everywhere. Not a single degree in science. So it's like you have to be transparent, otherwise you're going to give the wrong impression. Experts are going to check.

14:08Dr Kevin Klatt: Of course, the first thing that I'm doing is looking on his LinkedIn. But the public doesn't do that. I think a lot of people just assume that when people say PhD, XYZ, in that kind of framing, that they're being honest. And I know that's conversations that I've had with people. And I guess that's the reason why vetting is important for people with platforms. Hold on.

14:30Dr Joe Zagorski: A really good example of this. I actually got in a little bit of an argument on social media with an individual who was talking about the dirty dozen, which I'm sure we're all familiar with. EWG is dirty dozen. I had made a post essentially saying that, you know, we're already not getting enough fruits and vegetables. And now you're trying to get people to not eat fruits and vegetables. You're doing actual measurable harm here. And the person was saying, well, you know, I'm an environmental scientist and this is what I know. And so I did exactly what you said. I was like, well, what are you actually a scientist in?

15:04Dr Joe Zagorski: And he had a bachelor's degree in geology. And I just replied and I said, you know, rocks rhymes with talks, but they're not the same thing. But people hear environmental scientists. This guy has his credential and he knows what he's talking about and could not be further from the truth. So anyways, go on.

15:24Dr Kevin Klatt: Yes, I agree, Michelle.

15:27Dr. Michelle Wong: Yeah, I think on the cosmetic chemistry topic, like the whole thing where people's qualifications don't match what their expertise is, I feel like the problem is probably way worse because there's like formulation diplomas where you don't actually need to know that much. You start them with a year 10. You actually don't need to finish high school to do these diplomas and to pass the diplomas. Technically, you learn a lot in the diploma, but the actual assessments, you don't need to know even year 11 chemistry. You don't need to know what a mole is. You don't need to balance an equation to pass that diploma.

16:03Dr. Michelle Wong: And then afterwards, people are calling themselves a cosmetic chemist. And then there's also companies in the industry who will call their formulators cosmetic chemists, regardless of what their training is. So again, maybe they don't know how to do a mole calculation, which is, you know, you should be learning in, I think, year 10 chemistry. Like, if you're an undergrad and you can't do a mole calculation, you're not graduating with a degree in chemistry. And so, yeah, you're seeing all these, quote-unquote, cosmetic chemists. I think we saw this as a huge problem during Sunscreen Gate last year, which is when Choice magazine found that a whole bunch of sunscreens were testing under their SPF.

16:38Dr. Michelle Wong: There were cosmetic, quote unquote, chemists saying really weird things like if it's got this much zinc oxide, it has to be, it's definitely scientifically impossible to not be over SPF. Can't remember what the number was. There were also like brand owners who were also coming in and they weren't being upfront with their credentials either. And they're saying, you know, choice is like the EWG. This was Charlotte Palomino specifically. And it's like, no, choice were being advised by like proper sunscreen testing experts. and then you can't just like, you know, dismiss what they're saying. But people trust them because I don't know why, but they see that brand owners look like experts.

17:15Dr. Michelle Wong: And then like back on the actual, I guess, quote unquote actual expert side, we've got people like dermatologists who are saying things about chemistry, like things like mineral sunscreens reflect, there's toxic amounts of benzene in your sunscreen. I don't know how many people remember back in 2021, there was this huge like benzene and sunscreen scare story, which came from a very questionable lab, in my opinion, who just didn't know like basic chemistry or were counting on the fact that dermatologists wouldn't know basic chemistry, which was true because all these dermatologists rushed online to tell everyone about this huge issue.

17:49Dr. Michelle Wong: And then now five years later, the same dermatologists are posting about how you don't need to be worried about benzene. And I'm still not saying this is chemistry. The next time something similar happens, it's just going to be the same stuff. stuff. And yeah, coming back to this whole topic, which is like people don't know who the right expert is for each topic. And there's no one expert on all things of one topic. This is extending into the peer-reviewed literature as well with sunscreen. There was a study on sunscreen misinformation that came out about a month ago, and it had several pieces of misinformation in the actual text of the study.

18:23Dr. Michelle Wong: And I emailed the authors and I pointed it out and they were like, oh yeah, no, it was just the reviewers who added this. We'll make sure that when we do the press, this won't be a problem. We'll clarify it. I did not see any clarification. And then the actual study also had a whole bunch of methodological problems, in my opinion, because they didn't know that much about how TikTok works. So it's like every time there is some sort of, I guess, practical problem that people want answers to, that regular people, consumers want answers to, It's usually an interdisciplinary problem. You need to know different things to answer the question properly.

18:59Dr. Michelle Wong: And so to really address everything, you need to know who the right experts are. You need to be in contact with them. You need to be able to ask some questions or at least Google your way through to the answer. And I think people really underestimate how much time it takes to do this properly and how hard it is to actually bring up some sort of coherent answer that is satisfying to people without messing it up. So I think, yeah, it's a massive problem. It's why science communicators exist, I guess. And a lot of the time people underestimate that. People just think, oh, the peer-reviewed literature, if it's peer-reviewed, it must be 100 % true.

19:37Dr. Michelle Wong: And so all this stuff just spreads like wildfire. So yeah, I guess to wrap it up, it's a huge problem in every area of science. It's just really hard to communicate these things. And it takes so much time. And there's just like chronic underinvestment in science communication.

19:53Dr Kevin Klatt: And I just need to say like good science communication, because I think a lot of companies think that they're like funding science communicators when they work with dodgy science communicators online. But if you don't vet who you're working with, then I mean, you're not really supporting or investing in good science communication. I also wanted to say that I think the greater challenge, and everyone was alluding to this, when people are misrepresenting their expertise, is it's making it harder for the general public to find truth because it causes more confusion on who the relevant experts are for a given topic.

20:37Dr Kevin Klatt: And step one for finding truth on a given topic is to find consensus amongst or at least close to, not every topic has consensus, but like agreed upon truths amongst the relevant experts. So when dermatologists are talking about a chemistry topic and then they're making it seem as they often do, or I mean like there are so many dermatologists talking about sunscreens and their impacts on coral reefs. It's like, think about that for a second. Those are not the relevant experts for the topic. But they are quoted by the media. The public reads that. And then it's just creating so much confusion on where relevant expertise lies.

21:23Dr Kevin Klatt: So I'm just going to move on to my next question. What are some of the factors that you see contributing to misinformation from the expert space? And I'm going to tie in the next question with this. And it's going to first be directed to you, Michelle, since you're the SciComm content creator with the longest track record here. How do you see social media algorithms and brand partnerships fitting in with this?

21:52Dr. Michelle Wong: This is a massive question. There's so many factors, I think, contributing to it. I feel like we could talk about this for ages and we've been through some of it, like people don't know expertise. I think one of the, I guess the big ones that really stand out to me, I think plagiarism is a really big one. And this is becoming a bigger problem with AI chatbots because they are like excellent plagiarizers. It's like, again, this issue where people don't know what expertise is relevant. If you have some random person giving this massive spiel of great info and they never say what their source is, then you're like, well, whatever expert they're putting themselves forward as, that must be the expert for that thing.

22:31Dr. Michelle Wong: And so you see things like people thinking dermatologists have good opinions about packaging sustainability. This is like an example where Jen has been ripped off. Like Jen is, her topic is environmental science. And we have a dermatologist and like two brand owners, a dermatologist and an esthetician. Well, she calls herself an esthetician. Again, this is one of those like fake expert things talking about sustainability. And it's like, they're just citing the primary sources. It doesn't even look like it's hard to learn environmental science. And then there's also the fact that a lot of the information out there within particular siloed expert communities, It's just wrong because they just don't listen to other expertises.

23:13Dr. Michelle Wong: One of the big frustrations for me has been dermatology. I've written a journal article and submitted it to a dermatology journal saying, actually, mineral sunscreens don't mostly scatter and reflect UV. They mostly absorb. And they wrote back going, sorry, you're wrong because of these dermatology sources. And it's like, well, this isn't dermatology. I've cited eight chemistry references. Why are you citing dermatology back at me? and it's just like the culture within their community is like that and so yeah it's a massive cultural problem where they don't know who their experts are and then I guess like to add on to the plagiarism problem there's also this like massive overconfidence problem which is where people don't know the limits of their expertise and again I think it is one of those massive problems where like the further along you go the more you know it is like that so-called Dunning Kruger curve where yeah like you need to have meta knowledge to know about the knowledge like the stage of the knowledge.

24:08Dr. Michelle Wong: You need to go beyond before you can look back and go, oh, actually, this is where the limits of my expertise is. Like when you're looking at learning levels in education, it's like, yeah, meta knowledge is beyond knowledge. You know something and then you know about how much you know. You need to know the stuff first. Yeah. A lot of people who haven't done a PhD, they are overconfident and that's normal, but then they go online and they're overconfident and that becomes a massive issue. Now, social media algorithms and brand partnerships, I think the obvious thing with social media algorithms is engagement is what boosts things.

24:40Dr. Michelle Wong: And a lot of the time, what gets engagement is brand new information. And in science, brand new information is usually not true. We like replication. We like getting lots of little bits of information to get the big picture. If you have one brand new piece of information, chances are it doesn't fit well into the big picture. But that's the thing that will get people excited, like learning that black plastic is causing whatever problems. So yeah, like a lot of this is just being the first to social media with a brand new piece of information is rewarded by social media algorithms. If it's something that's short and appeals to biases, it gets shared, it spreads.

25:17Dr. Michelle Wong: And with brand partnerships, a lot of the time, the people who are less ethical with how they share the information, they are going to get a larger audience. They are going to be able to charge more for a brand partnership because they are unethical with how they're sharing their information they are probably going to take more brand partnerships that are questionable and then they're going to have more money to hire more people and pump out more content and so yeah like all the incentives are poorly stacked in this whole ecosystem yeah oh my gosh i mean i like

25:46Dr Kevin Klatt: co-sign endorse kind of everything michelle said i think this is one of the areas where nutrition and skincare have like quite a lot of overlap on the physician front of things i think there's actually like a really sad psychology behind a lot of it. Like as a dietician, I interacted with a lot of medical students and it's amazing in training how they're not allowed to say they don't know the answer without getting like beat down on in rounds by physicians. And there's sort of like a learning to cosplay and expertise in something and knowing the answer and just coming up with an answer that like sounds good and at least can get you back past that attending that's kind of like beating you down.

26:25Dr Kevin Klatt: And then that I think, you know, this is not all physicians, like, well, most physicians go through that, but then a subset of them also have a bit get into it for a bit of an egotistical reason, like being deferred to and having that sort of authority bias, and like being associated with like, prestigious medical training. And then I think a lot of folks come out of their prestigious academic affiliations and come onto social media and like, are really looking for again, being deferred to as the expert seen as the expert. And they have not learned to say that they don't know things. So they just pretend to be an expert in everything and kind of come up with it, regardless of their training.

26:58Dr Kevin Klatt: And anytime I've ever pointed out online that physicians get like almost no training in nutrition, I get vociferous pushback from physicians that is like, like our premed is basically the same as a nutrition undergraduate degree. and like we learn all about vitamins and glucose, metabolism and fatty acid metabolism and things. And like I one time had to take like the undergraduate dietetics curriculum, which would be most relevant if you're trying to give diet advice to people and like compared it to the pre-med curriculum. Like, yeah, you're missing two years of coursework. And the two years of coursework you're missing is everything about food and then like clinical nutrition and like all the things that matter.

27:36Dr Kevin Klatt: Like sure, you take Orgo and you might take biochemistry and learn glycolysis, but that doesn't tell you about food composition, nutrition assessment, nutrition counseling, pathophysiology of disease, all the methods that go into like how we measure not only the food composition, but nutritional status, nuances of the literature and nutrition where people don't like there's not a placebo for food like there is for a double blind randomized placebo controlled trial and medicine. And so you need complex pairwise comparisons. There's not really an unexposed group in most nutrition studies, you know, on and on about like all the things they don't get in their training.

28:10Dr Kevin Klatt: And I just get like always responsible well how hard is it to tell people not to eat ultra processed foods like can you define an ultra processed food for me and they can't do that either and just like people really double down when pressured instead of just kind of admitting that they don't know something and again I think that comes sadly from like a lot of trauma of how medical training is is done you know I don't want to be overly hard on physicians because I think there are there are just as many in my dms if not more they're like hey I don't know anything about this can you like point me to resources.

28:38Dr Kevin Klatt: And I've talked with younger creators, I think are aware that nutrition has become super gimmickified by a lot of the creators before them, and want to set a good example. And as we were talking before about like how broad expertise is, and kind of like, yeah, this is why we have professional societies that get people together, like you get nutrition epidemiologists, basic science people, dietitians, like all together on a board to like tackle an issue and come up with what is consensus. And then it's like, so yeah, guys, just like, take the content that is already the expert summaries. And then like, if you want to do Psycom, just like defer to the expertise.

29:14Dr Kevin Klatt: And like, I don't know, I think that's a useful branding thing, too, of like, you know, who the experts are, rather than trying to be the expert yourself, when you've like, never touched a mass spec, you've never done, you know, dietary counseling or assessment on anybody, like trying to pretend that you have just makes you look like a bit of a fool. And it sends you down a pathway where it's, you can only speak to the people who don't know, and then you can only exploit that fact that they don't know. And all of your colleagues think that you're a bit of like a scam artist. And I've kind of noticed this with physicians, a lot of physicians, but a lot of creators in general, PhDs are not immune to this either, where they start in maybe a legit area, maybe good intentions talking about something, they stumble a couple of times, they get pushed back, they double down, and you go five years down the road, and they're like co-signing on some really scammy supplement with Mel Robbins or whatever, which just happened.

30:04Dr Kevin Klatt: And so you see a pathway I've seen happen more than a few times in big creators. And I'm just kind of like, it's this bizarre mix of like, ego, inability to admit that you're wrong, needing to center yourself and the expert. And I think like the whole social media system, like, really takes that, like, puts it on yourself, which I always tell people, if somebody always seems like they're the person telling you all the information, the expert, and isn't deferring to like, hey, this professional society that's literally specialized in this topic. And I know dermatologists can be wrong. And I'm not saying like defer only to professional societies, but where the professional society actually matches the expertise of the topic that you're talking about, like deferring to them, I think is really important.

30:46Dr Kevin Klatt: And there's a lot of opportunity to be a good creator that's putting out nuanced messaging and tackling issues while deferring to like, like you have to understand the topic enough to understand who is really expert to break things down. And because a lot of like in nutrition, and I think this probably comes about in Durham, but it's way worse in nutrition. One of the other incentives online, I think is there's so much distrust in institutions that that really gets exploited that you just say like, hey, Big Pharma or Big Food have bought out the government. Hey, you can't trust the government.

31:17Dr Kevin Klatt: The government's wrong. The government gave you dietary advice that made you fat. There's all this sort of messaging that's just rooted in some sort of anti-establishment narrative, which, I don't know, gestures at the world. Like there's a lot of reasons to feel, I think like some sympathy towards that. But then that gets that, that's like communications 101 that you need to establish shared values and trust with your audience to get them to believe you. And then people exploit that and just kind of say whatever they want. And so you see every single dietary kind of group online is, every sort of diet cult that's out there about like low carb, low fat, vegan, like they all start with every Netflix documentary in the 2010s, like pretty much did this where it's, they start with, you know, the government is bought out by this industry, they told you to eat this way, and they're actually hiding the truth from you.

32:06Dr Kevin Klatt: But the truth is like wildly disparate diets from low carb carnivore, all the way to like low fat vegan and everything in between. And so I think nutrition may be different than skincare, food brands have like pulled back a lot from sponsored posts and you now pretty much only have kind of supplement companies and as the algorithm has fueled outrage influencer economy has become like a career path that people are majoring in and need to get their entire salary coming from this like and as food brands have pulled away you've actually seen the de-centering of nutrition from the standpoint of food other than just like the fun quippy anti-establishment video that hooks people in as like oh i am a person you can trust because I get that you can't trust institutions.

32:51Dr Kevin Klatt: And then what they actually turning around and selling you is the supplement stack. And now obviously supplements have fueled their way into peptides and stuff, which started with GLP-1s. And so in 12 years of having been on Twitter and then now more on Instagram and Blue Sky, kind of interested in the diffusion of what used to be these like, you had low carb people, you had low fat plant-based people, you had paleo people, you know, the low seed oil people that should have been around for a very long time, pre RFK, those of all kind of like, I still exist in ways and you hear about it a tiny bit, but it's not like entire Reddit communities about it.

33:27Dr Kevin Klatt: Like it used to be that are super loud. It'd be, we very much moved into the commodified version of nutrition and wellness, where it's all about like what sort of supplements, Dak brand deals and affiliate codes can you sort of get, I don't know. I used to see like Chobani sponsored posts and things in like 2018 Instagram that I think most of the food companies have pulled back from. So you just hear people talking about like low seed oils, low ultra processed foods, but then the way they make their money isn't actually by selling too many products associated with that. Whereas I think in skincare, you get people like actively selling the product that they're talking about quite often.

34:03Dr Kevin Klatt: Yeah, I just wanted to say that the phenomena of the deterioration of certain experts as they come on social media, I've labeled as the quack social media pipeline. There's this temptation from the algorithms and the incentive systems there to simplify or add fear or whatever that works in the algorithm. Because increasingly, you have to appeal to that to get reached even your own followers. right now if you want to get visibility to your followers on instagram you have to have shares from non-followers and so what kind of content is going to get you quick shares especially it has to be within a certain time frame it's going to be content that is either directly misinformation or indirectly in that it's so for example simple simple that it's going to lead to a misunderstanding it's very demotivating to put so much time into content and then it to see none of my audience.

35:16Dr Kevin Klatt: I understand that. And so as you get more reach and engagement from your audience, there's that emotional factor. But then there's also the factor that Michelle was talking about earlier. If you want to have a brand partnership, like you have to have an audience. You have to have engagement. This is what brands are looking for. Compounded with the fact that if you're doing science communication, like it takes so much time to do it well and it's generally unpaid. If you want to do science communication to the degree that, for example, Michelle does, you have to have brand partnerships in place.

35:59Dr Kevin Klatt: There are different avenues that you can like find financial stability as a content creator, but like it's just the incentives on social media drive a certain type of content. I also wanted to say something about the defer or look to what your institutions are saying. And I think maybe Joe, you can talk more to this, but like this kind of comes to the issue that is internally within institutions for some of the factors driving misinformation because there are institutions that are putting out misinformation. And then what drives me wild is they're like, all of those influencers on social media are the problem.

36:42Dr Kevin Klatt: It's not us. We just had, Michelle and I had a really straining back and forth with the vice president of the American Academy of Dermatology as we were trying to, So he had taught a bunch of early career professionals through a brand that had come there. The information portrayed was that, not a dermatology topic, but I mean, they're young professionals, so they wouldn't know that mineral sunscreens reflect, chemical sunscreens absorb. Inorganic or organic sunscreens, UV filters, but people know them by mineral and chemical. The issue with that myth is the then in turn misinformation from that simplified content, because that has been, as Michelle has described really well in her content, and it's been the grandfather myth for a lot of other misconceptions.

37:34Dr Kevin Klatt: So it's harmful to set these young professionals up with the wrong information. You would expect that the institutions would give them the correct information. So when Michelle and I went back and forth to say, this is a problem, this is why, this person just refused to believe us and then just kept pushing it back on like, it's those influencers on social media. Those are the problems. Can I say on that, like professional societies that are trade groups, scientific organizations and public health organizations all at the same time, and those missions are so conflicted. And I see this in dietetics a lot where like integrative and functional medicine has been on the rise in dietetics for like well over a decade.

38:19Dr Kevin Klatt: rds are out there putting out abject misinformation it's kind of funny to see a lot of them distance themselves from it now that it's like in hhs and became mega coded but like before that like people were building their brands off of just saying ludicrous stuff and stuff with like no randomized control trial data on and often like physiologically implausible and trying to work within the academy nutrition dietetics to get them to attempt to like snuff out like not stuff out but like to regulate what people are saying and to put out information that is contrary to what they're saying. Like, hey, like there was a whole module on detox diets that was put out that was wildly supportive of detox diets, which I know, Joe, this probably hurts your soul.

39:01And I like, you know, working

39:04Dr Kevin Klatt: within the Academy and through some other channels, like took them to task on it, spent a whole over a year getting them to like basically get this reviewed, which was hard to even get them to take it seriously until like we kind of really went up the chain and found somebody internally who wasn't sympathetic and then realized how egregious it was. They broke all sorts of their own rules about like not mentoring brands and things. So they're pushing basically like a$1 ,200 nutrition assessment to tell people to eat a basically healthy diet that's organic, which I was like, I can do that for free without the$1 ,200 assessment.

39:36Dr Kevin Klatt: These organizations are just not good at policing their own. And you think they would have a long view of like, hey, we're degrading the value of our own credential here by having a bunch of people run around saying like wrong things but they're so short-sighted they're almost like corporations who can't think past like a quarterly kind of window and so I I think there's like a need and probably why we're having this podcast for people within the fields to become much more vocal and kind of calling out their own because it's strength like it gets painted as oh you're just bickering and like I'm glad Michelle is calling out dermatologists you need external experts to do it too but you need internal people to call out their own and say like to protect the value of their credential it might be initially confusing the public to see two mds or rds or whatever saying opposite things but i think you open the floodgates i think because my dms every time i call it integrative and functional medicine dieticians and how much quackery they're pushing and how bad it looks for our whole brand i get dozens of people in my dms way more than the detractors being like oh thank thank you for saying this.

40:38Dr Kevin Klatt: And I'm like, yeah, we need to do this as a chorus, guys. I have literally had physicians who are leading diabetes prevention programs and hire dozens and dozens of RDs being like, oh yeah, I don't even want to hire RDs anymore because of how many of them are deep down these alternative pseudoscience pathways. And I'm like, these are all the missed opportunities that you'll never see that no one's documenting because you won't police your own. So I think professional societies are really, really, really bad at this and need to get much better at it.

41:07Dr. Michelle Wong: So I sent him like the grandfather sunscreen myth tree and he said, I'm confused about the second graphic because it's nonsensical. Where did you get that? It almost sounds like those crazy conspiracy theorists who need psychiatric help. I'm sorry you found an organization slash group that is so anti-sunscreen. And so I told him like it's dermatologists from the AAD and he said, but I have never heard of a dermatologist promoting the conspiracy myths in the second slide. So I don't think you have to worry about that. And it's like, I've been debunking them for the last 10 years.

41:37Dr Kevin Klatt: After he started to say, well, this doesn't actually fall into, can you read that part of the definition of misinformation? To which it's like, that's my PhD topic.

41:47Dr. Michelle Wong: Let me tell you what misinformation means. I'm trying to find it. My God. Yeah.

41:50Dr Joe Zagorski: But also now we're going to be pedantic about specific definitions. I mean, come on. Oh man.

41:56Dr Kevin Klatt: It was just to Michelle and I, we had a conversation after this because Michelle and I were in this email thread with him. Each time he responded, it was within like 15 minutes of our responses. And we took a really long time to get back to him. For example, he asked for like, has there been any replications of this study? So I went and like found them all in my email and responded. And it took me a really long time. And then when I got tired, Michelle chimed in.

42:25Dr. Michelle Wong: And it was like, in this conversation, like every topic we talked about, Jen or I or both of us were more relevant experts than he was. I think it is this whole doctor thing where they cannot admit they're wrong that you were mentioning, Kevin. It was just so bizarre.

42:42Dr Kevin Klatt: But the time investment it took for Michelle and I, it took us so much time. And for us to just be like, nope, you're wrong. You're stupid. We're not the problem.

42:50Dr. Michelle Wong: It's Brandolini's law, right? Except like with an expert who should not be spreading misinformation, just, you know, like chucking misinformation at us about our topic areas.

43:01Dr Kevin Klatt: Well, I just want to say it reinforced the need for, because we wasted so much time and energy. Like it was so demoralizing to have this conversation. We shouldn't have had it internally because this was just a waste of our energy. After this, Michelle and I, our agreement was like, this is a waste of our time. We should not be having this back and forth behind the closed doors of our emails. We should be having these conversations transparently. Okay, Joe?

43:33Dr Joe Zagorski: Well, there's a lot that's been discussed. So I'll try to touch on as much as I can. If I missed something or you have a question, let me know. But sometimes definitely the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak. I agree. I wish that more professionals steeped in the field would be willing to kind of put their head above the parapet and say, hey, no, that's not correct. Because ultimately what some of even on sometimes how studies are done. So I think of, for instance, food is a very good example of this because food is such a complex matrix. And a lot of times people treat an ingredient as if you can just pluck it out and look at it.

44:18And it's going to act the same as if it was as a whole, a part of the whole conglomerate.

44:24Dr Joe Zagorski: And a good example of this is titanium dioxide, which is used in many products, including sunscreens and whatnot. But it's used in food and it's banned in Europe. It's under the label E171, I believe. And it was based on some, honestly, some pretty questionable tox approaches where they put titanium dioxide in the drinking water of rats along with an agent that can cause DNA damage. And they found, what do you know, these rats had precancerous nodules in their colon. I believe they call them aberrant cryptphosi. A few problems there. One, we don't drink titanium dioxide in our water. We also don't drink it with additional chemicals that can cause DNA damage.

45:11Dr Joe Zagorski: And so when you follow up the study, putting it in food, which is where we are actually exposed to dietary titanium dioxide, nothing happens. But it was a good example of someone having a legitimate question, but going about testing that hypothesis in a way that doesn't jive with other expertise. We here, I'm at Michigan State University and their Center for Research on Ingredient Safety. We've had to push back on that a lot and say, hey, when you actually test this the appropriate way, nothing happens. But we also have gotten some discourse, let's say, from individuals essentially saying that the other study is still beneficial, et cetera, et cetera.

45:55Dr Joe Zagorski: But I'll leave that for interpretation. I do think that whenever, in terms of expert-led misinformation, whenever something involves what's perceived to be health, the average person assumes that the individual they need to talk to is a clinician. As Kevin already pointed out, and Michelle, both you and Jen have also pointed out, that's not always the case because they are trained in a certain way to suss out health abnormalities that are occurring. For myself, they are not versed in experimental design, statistical analysis, understanding molecular pathways for toxicology. They may not understand the different terminologies, like a lot of daily intake or reference dose or threshold of toxicological concern or point of departure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

46:58Dr Joe Zagorski: When you go to those individuals too frequently, and let me back up and say, after my PhD, I spent four and a half years working for a health system. So I worked with clinicians every single day. And there were good ones who understood, hey, I'm a clinical expert. I am not a scientific expert. And then there were the others who thought they were both. The danger comes in the ones that think that they are both and say, oh, well, I read a paper. And it's like, well, you didn't look at the weight of evidence. You looked at one data point, essentially. What happens is because they are seen as the experts in all things health, and you have also an incentive structure that exists on social media, their content of concern has traction that the content of somebody saying, well, hold on, you're missing a lot of nuance here.

47:54Dr Joe Zagorski: this actually, there's not much to be seen, gets lost in my experience, at least. I am certainly not a social media expert, you know, checking my expertise here. What happens is, you know, at least looking at from the, through the tox lens, you'll have someone who will, let's say, look at, again, I'll just pick the dirty dozen and say, look at the presence of these, of these pesticides. Here are studies that are showing these pesticides involved in things from cancer development to neurodegenerative disease, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We shouldn't be eating these. And they lack the expertise to ask the follow-up question of, okay, you have now identified a hazard.

48:43Dr Joe Zagorski: What is the dose necessary, the exposure necessary to actualize that hazard? Are we below the threshold of concern? All these things that a different expert who is an expert in toxicology would ask, don't get asked. And it is a very easy, convenient picture is portrayed to the public. And ultimately, that's what the public, in my experience, wants. They want the easy story. They want the quick answer to their, is this safe question? Because the unfortunate and inconvenient truth of it is the answer is almost always it depends because very few things are dichotomous safe, unsafe. It's this spectrum and continuum of where are we in terms of risk.

49:33Dr Joe Zagorski: That discussion very frequently doesn't occur. I think some of it is due to the fact that, and as a scientist, I will absolutely take some of the blame here. We're not trained as communicators. Now you have people that may be trying to do the best that they can without the training to do it appropriately. So you kind of get this feed forward loop of maybe trying to do the best they can, maybe getting defensive, but trying to get information out. but they don't have the whole picture, it really snowballs really, really quickly. And then on top of that, even mainstream media organizations a lot of times lack the staffing to break apart good sources from bad.

50:20Dr Joe Zagorski: Some of the most convincing producers of misinformation on social media are credentialed. Looking at tox, the number of times I've had to say an MD is not a toxicologist. There are MDs that have expertise in toxicology, but just because you have an MD or a DO or an RD does not mean you are steeped in the nuances of toxicology. I see this a lot in the ultra-processed food space where there's so much more that we don't know than we do. And it's this unnecessarily large umbrella that can include things from like yogurt and protein powders to processed corn chips. And honestly, in my professional opinion, I think we're actually looking at not necessarily an issue with the processing itself, but with lack of nutritional density in food.

51:15Dr Joe Zagorski: But I would defer to the expert on that.

51:19Dr Kevin Klatt: That could be its own podcast.

51:22Dr Joe Zagorski: Or plastics and plasticizers, and especially the question of micro and nanoplastics, which that one we certainly, I mean, that field is in its infancy, but people will make very, very firm claims on shaky evidence on the safety of these different things. And a lot of that I see coming from, honestly, credentialed clinicians. I think it maybe is coming from a good space, but they're out in front of their skis in terms of what the data actually shows. And I think part of that is because they haven't had to be neck deep in the data. They look at headlines, they look at a few studies and not the weight of all the evidence together.

52:07Dr Kevin Klatt: I think it's even worse than you're painting it a little bit. You're painting a bad, not so rosy picture, but like, I think it goes beyond clinicians with impacting PhDs. And over the past, I've been in academia for a bit over a decade. And I think with resource scarcity on grants, people are forced to say that their science is on the brink of translation. It's kind of what we're talking about here is premature translation, stuff that should just be an idea that gets debated about and worked out until consensus emerges. There's this jump to say, oh no, this is the new hot thing, because if you want to get your next grant, you kind of have to do that.

52:47Dr Kevin Klatt: And you've seen university press offices take a huge role in sourcing misinformation where they are advocating for the value, the societal value and implications of the work that's happening at their universities, even if it's a mouse model, even if it's, you know, really super, super, super preclinical type stuff that really would have limited role in any regulatory science. And then you add to that that, like, I think on the clinical side and even on the PhD side, Joe, we have a whole conversation about how environmental health sciences and toxicology have split off into separate fields with one side being, with EHS being extremely advocacy oriented.

53:26Dr Kevin Klatt: And we see this in nutrition a lot too. And I think you see it with endocrinology, with endocrine, like endocrine disrupting chemicals. The endocrine society has gotten overtaken in a way, at least the subset of it has, and kind of pushing a preformed conclusion. But in nutrition, like I've seen graduate students who fully arrive for their interviews saying, I want to prove this in my PhD. And I'm like, ooh, that's a bad approach. You got the conclusion there. Like I was like, you mean you want to test the hypothesis, right? And so there's just, and like, and a lot of it is rooted on I think really good intentions of like people like social justice, concerns about disproportionate cancer rates, obesity, all these sorts of things.

54:05Dr Kevin Klatt: But it's, I think it's a bit short-sighted and, you know, shoehorning the data to fit a conclusion rather than looking at all the potential causes of something and really whittling down to what it is and then helping to build policy kind of around it in a smart way, which I think we're seeing. The UPFs is like ultra-processed foods is a really interesting angle to view all this in. You have like Lancet pieces on it that are almost entirely devoid of food scientists and dieticians and made up by epidemiologists who use a food frequency questionnaire that they guess what is an ultra-processed food on it and then try and argue that there's like Bradford Hill criteria for causality met for it.

54:43Dr Kevin Klatt: And so you have like fracturing of different academic disciplines and then co-opting of the kind of powerful prestigious entities like the Lancet that are used to push kind of pseudo consensus and a narrow viewpoint. And then painting of anybody who says the opposite is a sort of industry bought out. And gosh, it spirals a whole bunch. But I do worry that like, you know, there was there's no such thing. I don't think it's like true objectivity in science. Everybody has their biases, but I see just sort of being a free for all of people not even attempting to check their biases. And we're not even training people to think about their biases.

55:20Dr Kevin Klatt: We're training them to think about how to get the next grant.

55:22Dr Joe Zagorski: I don't disagree with that at all. That is absolutely rampant in academia. I think it's irrespective of focus because we're all competing for the same pieces of a dwindling pie. I mean, I see this when I go to national conferences where we're no longer, well, I shouldn't say no longer, but not to the same degree as we used to be asking the question of, at least again, just looking through the tox lens of translatability. You can dump as much of a chemical as you want on some cells and something's going to happen, but it doesn't mean that that's a meaningful conclusion if you're at 100 ,000 times normal exposure levels.

56:01Dr Joe Zagorski: I see this actually a lot in like the PFAS field where there's a whole lot of research out there looking at two of the 15 ,000 chemicals and looking at exposure levels at, you know, tens of thousands of times above human exposure levels. You know, it makes you wonder like, well, okay, well, if you did stuff at levels of normal human exposure, would you see the same thing? Yeah.

56:25Dr Kevin Klatt: Not just exposure. Like I always, I followed that literature a little bit and I'm like, oh, they're just putting it on top of cells at crazy concentrations also in DMSO and not bound to albumin like it normally would. And so like just the physiological context is completely removed, but that becomes a PubMed screenshot for some physician who's helping you live your tox-free lifestyle line. And then they, of course, have a course and they've got product affiliate codes for all their green toxin-free versions of things. It's like a bit of a health game.

56:56Dr Joe Zagorski: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and even in like, I talk about this all the time and I feel bad for the person whose poster this was, but I don't know them and I don't know their name. So it doesn't, you know, they'll probably never hear this. But I was at the Society of Toxicology meeting a couple of years ago. So my background is immunotox. So I was looking, there was a poster looking at microplastics causing oxidative stress in human immune cells. So I go to the poster, and whatnot, they were adding something like 10 to the 6th or 10 to the 7th particles per cell in the dish. There's literally millions of time, millions and millions and millions and millions of these particles.

57:40Dr Joe Zagorski: And it's like, well, of course, you're causing oxidative stress in these cells. You completely messed up the gas exchange balance. And but boy, they got a lot of they got a lot of attention at the meeting because here is this topic that is very, and it's an important question about the effects of these particles on health and environmental health. Nobody was stepping back and saying, well, wait a minute, you don't have 10 million plastic particles per cell in your body. Why are we testing it this way? In order to get publications and additional funding, you do need to have positive data. In toxicology, we end up with a lot of hazard identification and which doesn't necessarily translate into a lot of human risk.

58:30Dr Joe Zagorski: It is a self-inflicted wound for the field, in my opinion, that it makes it hard to approach because as we've touched on, when you start to point these things out, it's like, well, you're just siding with big whatever the heck, you know, you know, earlier this year, I was making a post about strawberries. Well, you're just, you know, siding with big strawberry. And it's like, I didn't know that was a thing. I'm just talking about this one blog that tested two containers of strawberries and tried to make conclusions and talking about how this is ridiculous. And you'd have to eat like 170 pounds of strawberries a day to be to be at risk of adverse outcome.

59:12Dr Joe Zagorski: When you push back the oversimplification of the situation of, well, if you don't agree with us, you must be bought. My family lives in the same environment. They're eating the same things. I want them to be safe. I'm just trying to help you not be so stressed. Like, so I don't know.

59:30Dr Kevin Klatt: Jen, I know we have other questions, but I just want to say that like, I'm in my back of my mind listening to this being like, God, I kind of envy other fields a lot of time for even just debating about the data. Because in nutrition, so much of what's out there, there's not even data. Like, it's just totally made up, hand waving. Like I'm currently struck by the amount of women's health narration that's going on online where they will like literally say in one breath, women's health has been understudied. We have no data, blah, blah, blah. And then tell you, well, I have the solution. Take my supplement.

1:00:07Dr Kevin Klatt: Creatine's amazing for you. All these sorts of things. And I was like, you just said there was no funding for any of this stuff.

1:00:14Dr. Michelle Wong: A lot of the people pushing the supplements keep saying women are not small men, but then And their supplements are based on rat studies. And it's like, so women aren't small men, but women are big mice. Anyway.

1:00:26Dr Joe Zagorski: They're hairy rodents, yes. It's amazing how many people can point out the problem and just so happen to have the cure for it for a quick monthly subscription.

1:00:37Dr Kevin Klatt: Yes, I'm currently – somebody on my feed this morning was saying that we were sold low-fat diets and low-fat diets lower cholesterol. And cholesterol is required for steroid hormones. And so low fat diets like disrupted steroid hormones. I keep seeing this over and over again. And I'm like, it's just wild because it's like the reality that is like low fat diets might lower the circulating lipoproteins that contain cholesterol in your bloodstream, but they actually don't affect cellular cholesterol levels and the hormone producing tissues. And so like it sounds so convincing, but like there is literally zero data to even talk about with this other than just like constantly kind of knocking down like, hey, this has no physiological basis and so that is like makes it very hard to do psych home when there's almost no data in your field and then you're constantly just saying well that data doesn't exist and then you get painted as like oh you're just being like negative about this and like well this person who said it had good intentions and it led to a dietary advice that's like otherwise fine like the whole low-fat diet thing like sure you don't need to follow a low-fat diet but i'm like we also don't need to scare people and lie to them about like why you don't need to follow a low-fat diet and also clearly this is just fueling an anti-establishment argument against the government and these sorts of things like they have other political motos but the person making absurd claims gets given all the grace in the world and then you get kind of painted as like a negative nelly and i'm like oh no i'm just like a researcher writing grants for the like small drops of water that compared to the flood of cash that is in the nutrition and wellness world where like yeah it's it's kind of just, it's really wild.

1:02:16Dr Kevin Klatt: I used to worry so much in grad school. I did my PhD in maternal and child nutrition and did some randomized controlled trials of nutrient supplements in pregnancy for a nutrient that is not in prenatals, which is choline. I remember the time, like some of that work is industry funded, worrying so much about conflicts of interest. And I'm like, man, if I'd only known that I could have like, like in 10 years, there was going to be brand deals based all this stuff. And like consumers don't really care. And watching like surveys of Gen Z where they think products are more or people are more reliable if they have brand deals than less.

1:02:47Dr Kevin Klatt: And I'm like, it's a really kind of wild time and the mental gymnastics that people just jump through for why they trust who they trust. But what little data we have, I think is just like kind of unsexy enough to fuel a psychom career in nutrition that is at least monetarily fruitful.

1:03:05Dr Joe Zagorski: Well, I think you'd touch on something that I think is really important, and that is we shouldn't give free passes to people that put out bad information just because we land on a good point. The ends don't necessarily justify the means of getting there because ultimately we are cheapening science and building in long-term distrust. I think of an example of this, at least in the U.S., is a few years ago when they did like four different PFAS compounds and addressing their acceptable levels in water. putting pfos at like four parts per trillion i believe it was which is And I've not seen any data that would suggest five parts per trillion would be unsafe.

1:03:51But the communication around that was like, well, yeah, but it's a good thing.

1:03:56Dr Joe Zagorski: We should be trying to eliminate these from drinking water, which I have zero argument against. But then when it turned, what it does is it causes undue concern for people saying, well, wait a minute, is my water source contaminated with this thing that could reduce antibody production and that can be carcinogenic? And then later on now, when EPA then reverses course, then the headlines become eliminating regulations on cancer causing chemicals. And it's like, you guys, one, the flip flop doesn't look great. But two, the original, like, yes, we should the end place of we should have as little of these chemicals in our water as possible is good.

1:04:43Dr Joe Zagorski: But the way you got there has caused us long-term headaches for the field as a whole and a lot of distrust. And so I feel that in my bones. I don't think we should give individuals a pass for landing on the right answer with the wrong data and interpretation.

1:05:02Dr Kevin Klatt: pushback that I've been getting of late has been that correcting scientists who are perpetuating or physicians who are perpetuating misinformation is like creating a distraction. They're trying to address misinformation. We should all be working together. So there's a little bit of that of like, we're just like being petty. Michelle and I are often, I think people just certain people just think that we're petty bitches. But then the other side of it, so strain in this fight against misinformation, which I would say misinformation, fighting misinformation has become, it's like the latest iteration of people wanted to work with clean beauty influencers.

1:05:45Dr Kevin Klatt: Now they want to work with debunking influencers. So there's that. The other side is that people then have said, well, you're creating more distrust by showing or saying that physicians may have or scientists may have said something wrong. By addressing them, then you're sowing distrust in our institutions. This is what I know Michelle and I both have been told this. So maybe you guys have as well. And since I've been talking about you, Michelle, do you want to go first for this

1:06:20Dr. Michelle Wong: question. I mean, it's fine. It's good. It's much more harmful to not see pushback from the same sorts of experts because then it's like, oh, if a dermatologist, let's say, is like, this is the point I keep telling dermatologists, they should debunk each other because if you have dermatologists saying this stuff and all the other dermatologists are quiet, people just assume that all dermatologists agree. Like that one dermatologist saying something and the rest not saying anything, they must agree. so that must be representative like the person putting the misinformation forward. If I debunk them it's actually worse for dermatologists in a way because then it looks like they're bad but then if I don't and everyone's quiet then it looks like chemists and dermatologists are all just completely wrong and ignorant about this very obvious issue.

1:07:04Dr. Michelle Wong: So no it's much more harmful to see no pushback and at the moment we're actually seeing this play out with sunscreen as well. So there's this long running attitude from US dermatology that every single person needs to wear sunscreen every day. Black people need to wear sunscreen to prevent skin cancer. There are no benefits from sun exposure. If you're vitamin D deficient, just take a supplement. And it's like, there's a lot of evidence that shows that there are benefits from the sun. It's been recognized in Australia, where I'm from, since the 90s. Our public health guidelines actually encouraged sun exposure in the middle of winter.

1:07:41Dr. Michelle Wong: And we only recommend UV, like if the UV index is three or over, then you take some, you do some protection measures if you're outside for less than an hour. The big problem is that the conspiracy people are like, well, the sun has benefits. There are peer-reviewed benefits for sun. There's all these studies showing people live longer, even when you control variables, if they get more sun exposure, they just go, science is completely wrong. How did science mess this up completely? There was this article called like, is sunscreen the new margarine that was saying um yeah sunscreen is so bad for you that it's like margarine which isn't actually that bad for you but anyway um yeah so the line there was just like all of science is incorrect but then it's like actually it's just the loud people who are incorrect it's just there are so many less Australians saying this stance and then yeah back in 2016 I did a video on this and I got told I was encouraging people to get skin cancer and I now in hindsight I really wish I talked about it more because maybe we could avoid this whole like everyone in science is lying to you situation so yeah no we do need to correct misinformation from experts it's good if experts correct other experts because otherwise it looks like we're either all corrupt or we're all just daft like there's no good solution it is better for us to self-correct and do it openly plus it also helps with science literacy.

1:09:04Dr. Michelle Wong: There's this huge issue where everyone thinks science is like facts you read in a book and they are set in stone, but it's an evolving process. And seeing, you know, polite, sensible debates, seeing all of like many experts from other fields dunking on someone who is very obviously wrong and deserves it. This is healthy for us. This is showing that we aren't all just terrible people. Anyway.

1:09:27Dr Joe Zagorski: I completely agree. I think it's much more damaging to not have that correction. I think it adds legitimacy to someone to be fallible and to acknowledge the fact that they are fallible. So here at Chris, we talk about our three T's, truth, trust, and transparency. If I were to present information, and frankly, I have been wrong in the past and had to correct myself on something, being able to say, you know what, this is why you go to the experts. That person is an expert on this thing. I misunderstood the data. I think is good and healthy because it shows to the public that they can go to you and you will tell them when you don't know.

1:10:17Dr Joe Zagorski: You will tell them when you have made a mistake versus no matter what, if you always have the answer, that should probably be met with skepticism because nobody has all of the answers. I completely, completely agree on that front that we really need to be better at self-correction so that way we can foster trust with the public because we already have a credibility issue. Some of it is our own fault, not all of it. My concern is, and I don't think it's concerning enough to not correct, is that we also need to do a better job of promoting scientific literacy with the public. Because especially coming out of COVID, when people were experiencing the scientific process in real time.

1:11:13Dr Joe Zagorski: And decisions were trying to be made on limited data sets that grew as time went. And so then alternate choices were made as more information came in. It was honestly, to somebody in the field, it was a great example of how science can grow and progress. And in growing in that nuance, we can make different decisions. And you know, the whole, when you know better, you do better. But the public, at least a subset of the public, took that as they don't know what they are doing, or they are making things up, or they are politically motivated. As we are correcting one another, it's important to point out that this is the beauty of science.

1:12:02Dr Joe Zagorski: The beauty of science is that when done correctly, it is self-correcting. So that way we can, you know, reject a hypothesis and move forward. Or, you know, there may be a legitimate question that we test and make these small incremental gains in knowledge and insight. And once we have enough of those points put together, we can say, hey, this is an issue or it isn't. But jumping to conclusions before we have enough of those points is ultimately detrimental.

1:12:38Dr Kevin Klatt: Probably already made my perspective clear that I'm pro like correcting misinformation from experts. But I think I do that with like a bit of an asterisk or like an approach for caution that I've seen people correcting other people and then like spreading misinformation in their correction. Like it's sometimes cringy to watch. You see lots of these back and forth response TikTok videos or like the whole series. I'm like, oh God, like I think like, doing it with your own humility in mind, doing it with like in nutrition, at least there's so few things that are like hard and fast. And so I, I try, I mean, sometimes I just pop off physicians because I'm annoying and I'm not always the kindest, but there were other RDs and even PhDs too, you know, trying to be as forgiving as you can give a nod to like, like restating why you think they were thinking that way to like give, give some grace and then kind of calling out where there's like uncertainty.

1:13:34Dr Kevin Klatt: Oftentimes people are just like overstating the certainty of evidence on things or they're like sexing it up a little bit. I try and, you know, explain why. Like one time I'm on Twitter, this is a while ago, but like gotten a bit of a debate with another RD about like calling out Cleveland Clinic was branding that like eat carrots because they have beta carotene and they're antioxidants and it's magic. And like it was way overstated. And I was like, oh, this is like not helpful. And the person disagreed with me. And I'm like, you know, I understand why you think this might be good. But like we live in a world where there's like a million antioxidant supplements out on the marketplace.

1:14:10Dr Kevin Klatt: If we're going to start saying like you should eat carrots because the antioxidants like this is just an extremely slippery slope into people going and seeking out antioxidants in other ways. And like we one don't have any trials that meaningfully say that the antioxidant components of carrots are why they're particularly good for you. And you can recommend eating carrots without doing all that. And we don't need to compete with influencers by lying. But we have like a back and forth, which I guess was reasonably cordial for given given current back and forth, maybe a little bit spicy for the time.

1:14:39Dr Kevin Klatt: But I think like there is a way to call out that kind of has a call in element to it, at least give some grace. And like people, I think onlookers can trust that a little bit more, too. So sometimes people are just like such bad faith actors. It's really hard to kind of give any grace. And when they're repeat offenders, it's extremely hard. But I think for the everyday, like you see something wrong, like with a colleague who's maybe new to Psycom or not typically that bad, like I think a DM version of this and trying to go that route can be helpful. So the calling out doesn't always need to be public.

1:15:10Dr Kevin Klatt: And you don't always have to call out the person. A lot of times I am seeing things like I actually don't think I really call out individuals all that much because it would be a full time job. I would need to clone myself a thousand times over if I was going to address everything individually so i try and look at like patterns and trends of like all these people are saying the same wrong things they're like why does it seem like seed oils everyone has a disparate topic on it why does it seem like you know well let's break down the carnivore diet kind of whatever's hot that day and rather than like do a mass call out and then acknowledge in that of like hey you're hearing this from you know you're hearing misinformation from like the influencers who maybe have a financial conflict or whatever or this is their whole business but like it's coming from MDs and RDs as well.

1:15:54Dr Kevin Klatt: And I think it's really important to just acknowledge that broadly when we're talking about misinformation on a topic that there's misinformation on saying it's like, it's not just the health coaches that are pushing this out there. There's credentialed people who have broadly done this or stated these things. Calling out our own doesn't need to be like a hyper-specific individual call out, but it can just be at large like, hey, I'm seeing a ton of misinformation from RDs on whatever. And these things can be really tough. Like I would say over the past 10 years, apart from integrative and functional medicine, which is sort of like the rebranded alternative medicine that RDs have been very involved in and nutrition science people in general, but like health at every size, which I think is rightly trying to de-stigmatize fat phobia, basically like larger bodies and call out fat phobia often went so far as to just like completely gaslight any science that would ever suggest that anything related to body size or adiposity could ever be causally related to disease risk.

1:16:53Dr Kevin Klatt: And it ended up spreading, I think, quite a bit of misinformation. And those folks now are still, there's still some of them around saying things that are just abjectly wrong about G.L. who are receptor agonists and their utility as a medical medicine class. And it's very hard to touch on those things because you're like diving into a major social justice issue, most of which I agree with, but then like also So the misinformation is like tied to that. And so it can be really hard. So call folks out, but do it, I think, again, with like some good faith, establish shared values of like, hey, I'm here for all the things you're doing, but like this is actually wrong and this is why I think it's wrong.

1:17:28Dr Kevin Klatt: And this is why I think there's like harm from that wrong information is a good way to think about it. Another thing that I have noticed anecdotally, although I'm pretty confident in my analysis

1:17:41Dr Joe Zagorski: here is that when female experts do the correcting, it is interpreted as being aggressive and as being harmful. Because when I have done some correcting, one of two things happens. I just get ignored, whatever, or it's taken a little more in good faith. Whereas some of my female colleagues are absolutely berated and we will be commenting on the same thing and I will be ignored and they will be berated. I think there is a underpinning of sexism that is happening here as well. So I just thought it would be worth pointing out that it's not lost that, Jen, you and Michelle as women are being taken a certain way as you put forward your expert bona fides to people that are not very receptive.

1:18:48Dr. Michelle Wong: Thanks for saying that. Can we clip that and post that? Because it's so hard to convince people when you're the woman and you're saying this, and they're like, oh, you're just being a victim. You're just playing the victim. But when a man says it, that is extremely, extremely helpful for us. I mean, I have seen it in some of my own communications

1:19:08Dr Joe Zagorski: where I'll say, well, you know, for instance, BPA. So there was a documentary on Netflix about plasticizers and fertility, which I honestly find problematic. And overstating the science, for instance, BPA, the affinity of BPA to the estrogen receptor is one ten thousandth of endogenous estrogen. But, you know, that gets that gets ignored. When I point that out, I literally nobody nobody engaged with what I had to say as the toxicologist. But then a colleague of mine says very similar content and she was eviscerated. And it's like these are happening side by side. Two experts saying the same messaging.

1:19:58Dr Joe Zagorski: One is either ignored or not engaged with. And the other one is absolutely laid low. And so I, yeah, it's sexism is real in this space.

1:20:09Dr Kevin Klatt: So my next question is maybe I'll ask this one to Michelle and then Kevin and Joe, if you have anything to add, by all means. The reason why I'm asking it to Michelle is because we made a framework to do this. So do you have any tips for the everyday person? And this can also extend to journalists or conferences or brands or whoever else is looking for an expert to work with or expert to find information from. Do you have any tips for finding credible experts online?

1:20:46Dr. Michelle Wong: So we made up this mnemonic a while back called mudcaps, which did you forget? Surprise. We do have one. It's called mudcaps and it's called mudcaps because it's like how to spot dodgy experts to protect your brain from the mud. And so M stands for misleading credentials. If someone is presenting themselves as someone they're not, if you check their LinkedIn or if you try to check what their actual background is or if they're shifty about it, then that's probably a red flag. If they're pretending to be someone else. U is undisclosed everything and anything. So if they're not disclosing conflicts of interest, if they're using a whole bunch of filters on their video, if they're not disclosing ads properly, if they're hiding like hashtag ad at the very, very bottom of their caption or like in the middle of a whole bunch of hashtags, that is probably a red flag if they're not upfront about things, because if they're bending the truth in some areas, they will probably bend the truth in other areas as well.

1:21:40Dr. Michelle Wong: D is defensive. If they're really hostile, when you're asking them very polite questions. It often means they're not confident about what they've just been saying. This is sometimes not a great red flag because sometimes they are just brand new to social media. They're not expecting their video to go viral. So again, all of these are red flags. They're not like, you know, hard and fast. This makes someone dodgy. It should be applied with nuance. C is credit. So are they crediting their sources? Are they referencing their sources? Are they deferring to a relevant expert? Are they copying someone and hiding that?

1:22:13Dr. Michelle Wong: Because chances are they're trying to look smarter than they are. A is authority, which is overusing appeal to authority. So if they're not explaining things properly and they just keep on going back to, I am a whatever expert, then that's probably a red flag. They should be able to explain their reasoning. P is peers. Do they associate with and promote dodgy people? This is again, a sign of poor judgment, maybe they're unwilling to be uncomfortable and they're happy to mingle and promote people that you might also not trust. And S is probably the most important one. S is spotty track record. So everyone makes mistakes and that is fine.

1:22:50Dr. Michelle Wong: But if someone makes a lot of mistakes or they're doing lots of inconsistent things, like one week they love vitamin C supplements, the next week they're like shilling some other alternative. If they're changing their mind too much, changing your mind is good. But if they're changing their mind too much, then at the very least, it's probably a sign that they might change their mind on whatever they're presenting this week. So it's probably good to look for a separate source as well. And one other sign that we've been meaning to add into this is an extra A, which is AI slop. So if they're posting a lot of AI slop, AI text is very difficult to fact check.

1:23:26Dr. Michelle Wong: It's almost designed to purposely make your eyes slide over it. So if someone is posting a lot of like very unaltered AI text, then that is a massive red flag that they're not checking properly. And AI chatbots are not reliable for fact-based information.

1:23:43Dr Kevin Klatt: Joe and Kevin, do you have anything to add? I have a couple of things I would add, but I don't have a good mnemonic. I was sitting here trying to mud caps.

1:23:54Dr. Michelle Wong: Maybe we can help you at the end of this.

1:23:56Dr Kevin Klatt: Yeah. Well, in nutrition stuff, like if every video is shirtless, that's usually a good sign. selling an aesthetic more than they are data and it usually dovetails with a number of other things like lacking credentials and things it's like take my peptide stack and supplement stack because abs and then not really any any meat beyond that meat and then um in nutrition i often find sort of there's like a nutrition wellnessy things like i call like a pan scope of practice so it's Like there's nothing that they won't talk about super confidently. And it often is not even just like, you won't catch me talking about how to feed an infant in the NICU who's just survived necrotizing enterocolitis and has short bowel.

1:24:41Dr Kevin Klatt: Like that's NICU dietetics. That's not my area necessarily. I know a tiny bit about it, but like I'm not going to walk in and feed to the NICU and feed those people, let alone like tell you about it on, on Instagram. And so again, I have the things I know about and can talk about confidently and I just typically avoid the things that I don't. But you've got chiropractors out here talking about medicines, peptides, nutrition, adjustments, and naturopaths do the same. But a lot of physicians increasingly are doing the same under brands where they call themselves lifestyle medicine experts or integrative medicine or functional medicine.

1:25:15Dr Kevin Klatt: All these things are just intentionally to expand their scope of practice without them actually having any training or expertise within it. They always talk very confidently about it despite really having no confidence in it. Yeah, I think those are the last one is I think like kind of like value exploitation where every single thing is like, again, similar to the shirtless thing, like science light overall. There's not really any hard rationale or data cited for anything, but they're reeling you in with like a shared value, which might be something very meaningful. social justice, anti-eutophobia, these sorts of things, or just like general distrust of government, distrust of big industries and these sorts of things.

1:25:59Dr Kevin Klatt: That might be fine in and of its own, but it doesn't make an evidence-based conclusion. The reason not to trust some other entity is not in and of itself a reason to trust that person and their recommendations. But I think it's sort of an ipso facto sort of thing that happens all the time and really shouldn't. And so So I had actually on a skincare front, I have a friend who was kind of in the DEI space. And I told him one time, like one of the skincare products he bought was probably a bunk. And he was like, but it was, he's an African-American. He was like, oh, it's from an African-American creator though, an African-American brand.

1:26:32Like they wouldn't lie to me.

1:26:34Dr Kevin Klatt: And I was like, oh, and like they do a lot of branding around that. And so it's sort of like an abuse of an identity politic or value politics happens, I think, a lot of the time. And like, I'm not out here calling out those people all that often. But I think it's tough to do well. But I see it everywhere where, you know, the government's been lying to you. So therefore, everything from carnivore to vegan is the right answer. And it's like, well, no, you actually have to have data for saying carnivore or vegan is the right answer. You can't just say you shouldn't trust the government because they're bought out by the food industry.

1:27:05Dr Kevin Klatt: So yeah, I would add the aesthetics kind of focus, the value exploitation is a big thing. And then I'm already forgetting the other one that I said.

1:27:16Dr Joe Zagorski: there's going to be a lot of redundancy in what i'm about to say because well there's only so many takes you can have right so number one is if if you are able ask what their expertise is and then follow that up with do they have the credentialing to back that expertise and is that credentialing real so for instance like functional medicine is not uh an ama may recognize specialty. So not saying that they don't, by no means saying they don't know anything, but if they're leaving their lane, take it with a grain of salt. Chiropractory, for instance, I've seen chiropractors putting a lot of vaccine misinformation out there, understanding that, well, that expertise doesn't have to do with immunology.

1:28:04Dr Joe Zagorski: So why are we trusting someone with no background or limited background to give us information on that. Understanding their incentive structure is incredibly important. I think you can ethically have partnerships with people that provide monetary gain as long as they are transparent and disclosed. If someone is pointing out the biggest problem that you could ever encounter and they just happen to have the cure for it, probably give that a little side eye. Oversimplification is a major red flag for me. If the answer is presented as though it is true in every situation for every person, that's generally not how anything works.

1:28:49Dr Joe Zagorski: Even our best designed medications on the market, different people will react differently with. And so oversimplification of a problem or a solution is generally a major red flag. Trying to get a diversity in sources, I think, is incredibly important. So this isn't necessarily pointing out a red flag, but a way to avoid them is try to leave your bubble. If you are getting information from shirtless grocery store aisle walkers, and that's it, you are only getting one type of information. So that makes you more susceptible to misinformation. The best way to keep yourself safe from dietary toxins and toxicants is a diverse nutrient-dense diet.

1:29:35Dr Joe Zagorski: The best way to keep yourself safe from misinformation is a diverse information-dense diet of content. Does it mean that there's more work there for an individual to do? Absolutely, it does. Do I think that the average person will do that? I absolutely do not. But it is the best way to kind of immunize yourself from falling victim to one-off drifters on social media. So other than that, I sign on to everything else that was just said.

1:30:10Dr Kevin Klatt: Joe, I like your diversification point. It reminds me, I often joke with just friends when they're asking me about someone, I'm like, okay, look up the signs of a cult. And if you're following of that person where there's like authoritarianism, no tolerance for dissent, they've isolated you and seem to be controlling what you believe, make grand claims about what the truth is, and then exploit you, like the signs of a cult, like maybe you're following a cult leader more than you're following like scientific consensus. And I think that often happens where people develop a parasocial relationship with people and become sort of acolytes more than they are just like getting informed information about how to make their lives better.

1:30:51Dr Joe Zagorski: Absolutely. I point out to people all the time that a red flag to me when I'm on social media is if someone is trying to use my emotions as a hook, then that's generally not coming from a place of sound science because sound science should be able to step back from emotion and say, let's look at all of the evidence. And not saying that the conclusion can't play into something that would impact emotions, but if they are trying to convince you of their point based on fear, based on the love of your children or someone else, then chances are they are not giving you the whole picture or an accurate picture of what's actually happening.

1:31:31Dr Kevin Klatt: And maybe I'll just say that the pneumatic that Michelle and I made, we were inspired by another pneumatic. That was by Dr. Jess Tuxparis, who is a research nurse. I'm not sure exactly. Nurse educator. Nurse educator. But the CRABS framework, the acronym is conflict of interest. references, authors, buzzwords, scope of practice. She has a article to explain more on her website. I'll conclude with my final question that I ask all of my podcast guests. Do you have any final take-homes that you'd like to leave with my audience and or are there any messages that you think are important to this discussion that we haven't had a chance to recovery ads.

1:32:32Dr Kevin Klatt: Joe, do you want to start this one?

1:32:34Dr Joe Zagorski: Sure. My takeaways would be science is complicated. Because it is complicated, it requires diverse expertise. I think it would behoove everyone, experts included, to understand where their expertise starts and stops and someone else's starts and stops. On social media, that might mean doing a little extra due diligence to make sure that you are engaging with creators or content that is accurate and telling you the state of the science, not just, you know, this one paper says chemical X is going to kill us all. Utilizing the mnemonic that you put out there is a great start. Ultimately, I think it's okay to say, I don't know.

1:33:21Dr Joe Zagorski: It's okay to say you should talk to someone else. Or if you are approached by someone who is a subject matter expert to display a little bit of humility and say, you know what, my understanding was incorrect and listen to this other individual. So those would be my takeaways.

1:33:43Dr Kevin Klatt: Kevin, do you want to go next? Sure. I suspect a lot of people listening to this might be have their own expertise and maybe sitting on the sidelines. And I think we talked a lot about professional societies who are homes to experts. And I just want to highlight that they run on volunteerism. And it's unfortunate, but it is usually the most motivated people that are doing that volunteering. And the people who are motivated are the ones that often, I think we've talked about several societies getting kind of overtaken by some sketchier things. I think we need, I'm not saying everyone has to do it.

1:34:17Dr Kevin Klatt: Everyone's busy, but more people volunteering, pushing back, making their voices heard more largely within their professional societies. You can't just sit back and be mad at the 10 year decline in the value of what your professional society pushes and then try and change it. It's very hard. Yeah. And there's no better time than today. So make sure that in 10 more years, you're not really disappointed in it. So I would encourage folks to get out there as much as they can and make sure that their professional society knows what they're happy about and not happy about. And make sure that the people running groups within your societies are like, I encourage you to join them, maybe if you don't believe in a lot of what they do.

1:34:55Dr Kevin Klatt: The integrative and functional medicine practice groups within dietetics world could use some more dissenters along the way. So volunteer to the degree that you can if you are an expert. And if you're a consumer, because I'm from the US, but now living in Canada, I have to say it can be very hard to know who and what to trust right now as institutions that you've historically trusted collapse and there's reason not to trust. But the rest of the globe matters. So looking for a consensus is something that we talked about a lot in this. So just like you don't want to follow a single influencer and become part of a cult, you want to kind of follow a bunch of people and figure out what the consensus in cosmetic chemistry or nutrition is.

1:35:34Dr Kevin Klatt: You can look to broadly, like if you're concerned about diet and nutrition right now, like New Zealand, Australia, Norway, the UK, Canada are all putting out dietary guidelines. They're honestly relatively very, very, very similar that you can look to if you don't trust the US. But I don't want you to despair and think there's nobody to trust after this conversation. I think it's more just about not trusting single individuals over broader scientific consensus because expertise, as we started this conversation with, is extremely narrow. And many of the things that you're interested in are many, many, many people's expertises.

1:36:09Dr Kevin Klatt: And that's the whole reason that we have governments and professional societies and these sorts of things that you can look to and see the consensus of for what we know now. And to put your time into things that matter, there's so much out there that you're constantly being fed that's like magnanimously important every single day. Maybe this supplement's good for me. Maybe I need to avoid this toxin. Maybe I need to buy this skincare product. These are zero-sum things from a money, time, and energy standpoint. And so you should be, I think, looking for what the consensus is about what matters the most to actually impact your life meaningfully and feel it.

1:36:42Dr. Michelle Wong: I mean, I don't have tons to add. I agree with everything that's been said, I think it's good to remember just to re-emphasize that experts correcting experts is good for science and it's good for experts. For specific expertises, you do want people self-correcting. This is good to do in public. For the general public, be skeptical, check people's expertises, check against different sources. Also, try not to tone police people who are correcting misinformation because it is usually not a very incentivised activity. People are usually doing it to their own personal detriment. They're doing it, they're opening themselves up to a lot of criticism, both from the public and from their own colleagues.

1:37:21Dr. Michelle Wong: So please try to be nice to people. Keep that in mind if you want there to be more correct information out there. And as part of this, I think it's important to check your own biases because, I mean, right now at time of recording, I've actually, I've been debunking a dermatology resident who's been recommending diaper cream as sunscreen. He has a bachelor's in physiology. He is a resident. I have been correcting him with my 15 years of excellent track record on sunscreen science. I have a chemistry PhD. This topic is chemistry. Dr. Dre has been correcting him. Dr. Dre is a board certified dermatologist who, again, has a 10 plus year track record online of being correct about sunscreen.

1:38:05Dr. Michelle Wong: But because this guy is confident and he is a guy, not just me pointing this out, there are also men pointing this out in the comments. A lot of people are supporting him and bashing us. So I think this is one of those examples where it's good to remember you are not immune to propaganda. Be skeptical of everything, including your own thinking.

1:38:25Dr Kevin Klatt: Why chromosomes are not special.

1:38:28Dr. Michelle Wong: I mean, they are, but, you know, not in a good way necessarily.

1:38:32Dr Kevin Klatt: They need help, actually, as a chromosome. Thanks again to Kevin, Michelle, and Joe for joining me for this episode. Hope you enjoyed the discussion. quick reminder if you're not already subscribed to the podcast please do and if you haven't already please give the podcast a review if you enjoyed this episode please share and if it's accessible you can also support the podcast on patreon at patreon.com slash the eco l thank you again to all my patreon supporters who've supported my science communication efforts over the years that's all for this week thanks for tuning in