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Episode 84: Inbetweenie - Trick or Truth? Six Ways to Spot Exercise for Osteoporosis Misinformation
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Welcome to Episode 84 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this Inbetweenie, Laurel and Sarah Court discuss health misinformation and practical tips for spotting misinformation around exercise for osteoporosis, “in the wild”.
00:00 Introduction
01:07 Bone Density Course update
02:22 Continuing the discussion on science and pseudoscience
04:56 Yoga U email and legal considerations
08:14 Six tricks of non-evidence based advice
20:45 Spotting pseudoscience and critical thinking
33:45 Becoming more science literate
35:45 Conclusion
SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE BONE DENSITY MINI COURSE: BARBELL 101
Links:
Episode 79: Make Yoga U Make Sense
Alignment Dogma series parts 1, 2, and 3
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
Yoga Research & Beyond podcast with Jules Mitchell & Ariana Raven
Adam Meakins on IG
Greg Lehman's Blog
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 84 of the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Laurel Beaversdorf and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Sarah Court. We are recording another In-Between-y. We are doing it together this time because typically we do these solo, but we thought we'd get together for this one because we want to talk about a couple of things that we are continuing on with that we recorded together. And so
BDC Bone Density Course Updates
00:01:04
Speaker
let's get into it. But first of all, let's talk about the course. How is BDC bone density course going, Sarah? It's going so well. I've had my first live class last week. I was and blown away by how many people showed up live. Granted in the beginning, lots of people show up and then it always peters off a little bit, but it was really great. I think because we purposely changed the times that we're teaching and I think we picked some times where more people are able to show up live. So that's been really fun.
00:01:30
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it was great to teach live and great to see some new faces, but also some familiar faces. right We had so many people retake the course with us. How many was it that decided to do this again with us the second time around? About 20 people.
00:01:48
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah, and then we had an additional 95 more people or something like that signersa we got such a huge simple to sign up yeah it's very exciting it's very yeah Yeah, and so we're going hard in the Facebook group and in the form check videos and in the live classes and the balls rolling and the barbell plates are rolling and People are starting to pick up weights and put them down and we're working moderate load, but we're going to be building over the next couple of months toward heavier and heavier
Spotting Pseudoscience and Outdated Science
00:02:22
Speaker
weights. yeah And we're laying the groundwork. Today in this in-betweeny, which we're hoping to keep short, we're doing this as a continuation or coda of our last episode, full episode of season five, which was episode 82.
00:02:38
Speaker
weird science when it doesn't all add up, in which we discuss the differences between science, pseudoscience, and outdated science, and how to distinguish between a claim that is solidly rooted in science from one that is pseudoscientific in nature, from one that draws from outdated science. We used a lot of examples to illustrate this and then used what we were calling our non-negotiable ingredients or the criteria of what is a science-based claim to distinguish between those claims that would be more pseudoscientific in nature versus science-based. In this episode, we are going to continue on along those lines with more practical tips for how to spot pseudoscience or outdated science in the wild, right? What specifically might you notice? Might you see? Might you hear? Additionally, what are some habits of thought? What are some habits of study that you can undertake to strengthen your critical thinking muscles?
00:03:37
Speaker
and to be better capable of communicating in a way that is unsudoscientific and or being able to decide what is solid evidence based in science, based in good research and what maybe isn't as much, right? So that's what we talked about today. But I think in order to do this, we should offer lots of examples like we did in episode 82. And I think we have a pretty great example of some of the things we might hear and see and notice that are what I'm going to call misinformation, red flags or ideas or beliefs or habits of thought that are really coming from a way of thinking about
00:04:24
Speaker
something like exercise or something like osteoporosis or something like health in general that are not
Legal Boundaries in Critiquing Content
00:04:31
Speaker
solidly rooted in science. So we're actually going to use an interesting example of a letter that we received from Yoga U.
00:04:42
Speaker
after we published our episode, Make Yoga You Make Sense, which I think was episode 78 or 79, I'm not sure, but we'll link it in the show notes. So first of all, what happened after that episode published, Sarah? what was What I found interesting was immediately after that episode published, it was just crickets.
00:05:02
Speaker
we are nothing for a while. And so that I got to the point where I was thinking, wow, maybe they just, this is like not even on their radar or they're not that impressed with, or I don't know, they're just and using, they're going to ignore it. That's their going to be their solution. And then I think it was maybe like 10 days, two weeks after we published that episode, we got a very long email from the founder of Yoga You.
00:05:28
Speaker
We haven't talked about it. And the reason we didn't talk about it is because we weren't sure. We wanted to make sure that we stayed within legal boundaries. And there was some suggestion within the email that certain behavior, if we did it, might cause legal trouble down the line, basically. In order to preempt all of that, we paused. We didn't talk about it. We consulted a lawyer.
00:05:52
Speaker
and explain the situation, asked what we were what our what we were legally allowed to do. it Turns out we're legally allowed to do almost anything we want to, but in the interest of being polite and professional, we're not going to fully read the contents of this email, but we're going to talk about the kinds of things that were talked about in this email. And we're also going to talk about our response to this email. Perfect. Yeah, because it really does go quite nicely with the topic of this in between.
Upcoming Episode Teaser on Exercise Myths
00:06:20
Speaker
And this is also a teaser for an episode we're doing next season about Let's see what, now I have to name the episode, which I'm not ready to do, but we're basically going to talk about six things that influencers, teachers, content creators, movement educators, who are selling solutions to osteoporosis that are not evidence-based, six things you might notice them do. We'll just call these the six tricks of non-evidence-based advice around exercise and osteoporosis.
00:06:55
Speaker
I know for sure that at some point I'm going to say sex tricks. That's without a doubt that's going to happen. And I might edit it out and I might not. But there's one other thing I want to mention too, which is that right after we got that email from the founder of Yoga You, I got a little hankering to go check to see if the blog posts that we podcasted about, we took about five or six blog posts that we found on Yoga You's website and critiqued them.
00:07:25
Speaker
to see why they were problematic with regards to the advice that was espoused in them for people with osteoporosis. And all but one of those blog posts have been taken off of the website, have been removed. So if you click the links in the show notes of our episode, Make Yoga You Make Sense to the articles that we are discussing, there's I believe only one that you'll be able to access and read, which I think honestly is a good sign. Absolutely. Absolutely. and This was something that email did say, thank you for pointing this out to me. This obviously needs attention. But the full extent of what we were really saying needed attention, basically we got stonewalled on. Yeah. Okay. Let's actually talk about these six tricks. Yeah. Oh, God. It's going to go so badly for my dumb little mouth. Okay.
00:08:24
Speaker
So number one, they will likely ignore research that supports strength training and impact training and fail to mention those as evidence-based
Criticism of Non-Evidence-Based Practices
00:08:36
Speaker
interventions. They will literally just not mention it at all. So this is also probably a place where I should mention that we've been receiving a lot of emails from people and DMs from people linking to newsletters that they've received, linking to health coaches that they've ended up in their sales funnel for, who are doing this thing of selling some type of coaching or movement format for the reversal or prevention of osteoporosis. And this has sparked our desire to do this episode next season around these six tricks. So the first thing that we notice from all of the
00:09:16
Speaker
different content creators and educators and even like whole formats, right? One was from Pilates style, right? Is that they just never mentioned that people should strength train or impact train. But Sarah, why did why do you think they leave that part out? The shortest answer is it's probably bad for their bottom line because their movement modality or their advice that they're giving them what to do does not include this kind of training. So if they sent you somewhere else to do it,
00:09:43
Speaker
they're potentially losing a customer, right? So they happen to be people who don't strength train. They're not personal trainers. they They don't teach impact training, and therefore because they don't have those credentials or tools or they aren't interested in teaching that, they just then completely leave out that actually that form of exercise is the most evidence-based form of exercise that you could be doing.
00:10:08
Speaker
I sneakily also suspect that because it's overwhelmingly women who are seeking solutions for osteoporosis or seeking to prevent osteoporosis because they suffer at much higher rates than men, that a lot of these people just figure that women aren't going to strength train anyway. They they want to please the customer and tell the customer what the customer wants to hear, which is not in their minds that you should strength train. And that sort of infuriates me. I don't know if it's exactly what is happening in their brain and why they decide to leave out strength training and impact training as a solution. But to me, it just seems like an extension of sexism yes where you're somehow placating women by telling them what you think they want to hear and therefore not telling them what they really need to hear. it Yeah. It's also yeah a real easy way to play into all of the the fears around strength training that women have always been told.
00:11:02
Speaker
the things you're going to hurt yourself, things like that. So they get to play into that idea by suggesting that's not a thing that you need to worry about. So don't worry about that scary thing that you've been told from all kinds of different sources might be dangerous anyway. You're just going to stay over here with my nice little safe thing and you'll be fine, right? Exactly. And then, yeah, so that kind of plays into this second Of our 6 tricks now, I really have to think about it. They overemphasize all of these different modalities overemphasize the value of their own modality for bone building. And it's often based on either just cherry picked research, poor research, or sometimes it's not even based on research.
00:11:45
Speaker
And as a part of that, they also really play up the importance of alignment, right? Especially in yoga or Pilates movement modalities. And also, again, this is playing into that danger. Will Robinson fear around for people who have osteoporosis. You got to keep your spine in the right place. Don't twist. Don't extend. Don't bend forward. Otherwise you're going to hurt yourself. So they emphasize just moving within quote unquote safe alignment.
00:12:11
Speaker
And that's the best option for you versus doing something that's more high impact or greater load, which is what's actually going to. Sarah, does staying in safe alignment build bone? No. Yeah, last I checked, that's not an evidence-based way to build bone. Also, what is alignment? Yeah. We might as well link our three-part alignment. Yeah, I mean, we just have to link our entire podcast.
00:12:35
Speaker
All right. The third... It's hard to do, I see. Look, you're like, is it a witch? The third of the six tricks... There you go.
00:12:46
Speaker
...is that these folks are often unwilling, seemingly, they seem unwilling to expand their understanding of exercise science in general, to recognize that their claim that their format, which is not strength training, is osteogenic, is inaccurate,
00:13:04
Speaker
and also to then be able to promote ways of exercising that are. but but Basically just based on what we know are the biomechanical requirements for bone building, which I learned, I already knew, but was reinforced when I took my personal trainer exam and read the paragraph in the textbook that I needed to study to pass the test that the biomechanical requirements for bone building are high intensity, high loads and progressive overload. This is not something that Pilates teachers and yoga teachers learn though. There's very little if, I think it's changing, but there's very little if any exercise science education in Pilates and yoga teachers. I do think it's changing.
00:13:48
Speaker
This is an example of something that we saw in the email that we received from Yoga You, where there was no discussion, no even acknowledgement.
00:13:59
Speaker
of the fact that what we know from research, from really strong, repeated, you know, all of the criteria that we want around research, that it shows that the heavy lifting and impact training are the best ways to impact bone. It just isn't even discussed. And there was a moment, Laurel and I crafted, i that's not true. Laurel mostly crafted. I'm going to go back up. I wrote a bunch of like,
00:14:27
Speaker
angry in the moment stuff. And then we had to let it simmer for a couple of weeks. And once I was no longer angry in the moment, we crafted this email, Laurel did most of it. But there was a moment where she's mentioning, literally, have you heard of the Lyft war trial? Because that was what I was thinking as well. It's as if this whole area, there's it's just like behind a wall of fog.
00:14:51
Speaker
And nobody can access it, but it's it just seems, it seems like there's just a lack of willingness to expand beyond what you learned 25 years ago, which was yoga covers everything. And in the email, there was also mentioned that like someone on their team was working on a way to incorporate strength training within.
00:15:09
Speaker
the yoga practice, right? Which I've certainly played around with this concept and it's possible to incorporate weights and to build strength within a yoga practice. It's difficult to do and you're better off if you really want to work on strength to student strength training, but it's possible. The thing is that it's really hard to imagine doing heavy strength training within a yoga class because now you're probably going to need some bigger weights, especially for the lower body. And yeah, I wrote in the response, we crafted this together that a typical yoga class is simply not well suited to the incorporation of heavy loads, high impact or progressive overload, even if modifications are made.
00:15:50
Speaker
It's hard to envision a class where students are lifting weights heavy enough to produce meaningful changes to bone mineral density, which require higher loads, especially if they've established already a baseline level of strength and need to progress further. Therefore, unless substantial modifications are made, yoga alone is unlikely to significantly impact bone density at that point.
00:16:09
Speaker
We must ask whether these modifications that we are trying to make to the yoga practice are being undertaken in the best interest of the students we teach who would likely benefit more from dedicated strength training, or if they are being made to market yoga as a broad solution to problems it is not well suited to address. And this is where I think I get most bothered by this constant attempt to make yoga do everything for everyone and an unwillingness to look outside of yoga because can you just let yoga sure make changes to it and innovate and do all that stuff like I'm not one to say not to do that because that would be very hypocritical, but do we need it to solve the problem of osteoporosis, right? It's just so far afield of what I think yoga is,
00:17:02
Speaker
suited to do, right right? Yeah. All right. Okay. Six tricks. Number four. Yeah, they tend to shift focus away from the lack of evidence based proof around bolding building for their modality. So they're definitely not going to be self critical, right? They're not going to say yoga is wonderful, but it is not great for building bone mineral density.
Balance vs. Bone Density in Health Approaches
00:17:30
Speaker
Instead, they're just not going to talk about the fact that there's not any good quality research showing that yoga is good for bone mineral density and that might overplay another thing like, oh, but it's great for balance, right? And not only are they overplaying that, then they're saying,
00:17:46
Speaker
in some instances they're saying, and in fact, shouldn't balance be the thing we're paying attention to anyway? Why are we paying so much attention to bone mineral density? It's really- Yeah, don't worry about that. You're not going to hurt your bones if you don't fall, so let's focus on helping you not fall. Meanwhile, as someone who works with people who fall,
00:18:04
Speaker
Sorry, but I train my seniors we get down on the ground we get up again like I'm like here is how you get up because I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I'm going to assume that just like all the rest of us dorks sometimes you catch your foot and you fucking trip, unless you're going to wrap yourself in bubble wrap.
00:18:21
Speaker
and just roll over down the street. There's no way that you're not going to trip at some point, right? Claiming that just working on your balance is going to be enough is horseshit because even with the people that I work on balance with, I have patients come in and they're like, you know what? I tripped, I fell over, but I was fine and I used our strategies and I got back up again. I was like, bam, that's it.
00:18:43
Speaker
Don't you want to have both? Don't you want to have good balance and higher levels of bone marrow density? And more muscles while we're at it? i want to drive I want to drive the speed limit and obey the traffic signs and drive defensively. And also, I want to wear my seatbelt. Exactly. Yeah, I'll drive as safely as I can, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to wear my seatbelt. So six tricks, number five. It's so hard to say.
00:19:07
Speaker
A lot of these people don't stay in there late. So they're giving nutrition advice, but they're not nutritionists. They're giving other kind of life hacks on subjects that they are not specialized in. And it's I have lots of opinions on things that I'm not an expert in, but you just have to mention that, hey, I'm not an expert in nutrition, but what I have read is XYZ. Or my understanding from this trusted source is XYZ.
00:19:33
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And six tricks. Number six. and Nicely done. Sixy, the sixy one, the sixiest, the sixiest of the six tricks is they often fear monger movement, especially movement that is not their exercise that they teach, right? If they teach something that is not strength training, they'll fear monger strength training. They'll make it sound like strength training is dangerous, that you got to be careful or impact is bad, right? High impact is something to be avoided.
00:20:03
Speaker
They also create kinesiophobia around and needing the spine to always be neutral, right? And never twisting and never bending over. Good fucking luck with that, right? It's fine if you want to live in a fantasy world in your teaching where no one's ever going to leave neutral in your class, but I guarantee you as soon as they have to get into their car, guess what's going to happen. All right. So based on this, these are six tricks.
00:20:31
Speaker
And based on the fact that, as I mentioned, as we mentioned in episode 82, that we are just awash in pseudo scientific and cherry picked science and outdated scientific claims.
00:20:45
Speaker
If we want to spot pseudoscience in the wild, if we want to be more science-minded to protect ourselves from the influence of pseudoscientific thinking, what should we do? What might that look like? So here are some things I think we should try to recognize in folks who are making claims or who are educators or content creators or teachers.
Adapting Beliefs with New Evidence
00:21:07
Speaker
Number one, they change their minds. They don't have the same beliefs or take the same approach forever. And in fact,
00:21:15
Speaker
When they learn that their prior beliefs were outdated or incorrect or not science-based, when they encounter new, better information, they don't fall prey to the backfire effect where they double down on what they believed or they fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy, which is, I've sunk my whole career into this belief system. I've sunk my whole career into this approach.
00:21:36
Speaker
fuck if I'm going to throw it all away. No, I'm going to double down. They they don't do that. What they do is they change their mind. yeah They change their teaching. They change their approach. They even go back and correct the things that were incorrect. I don't know how many emails I've written trying to correct this idea that there's this good safe alignment because I was a massive yeah super spreader of that idea, I think. I'm doing my best to undo. It's hard to undo these beliefs though. But yeah, I think that's really important that you change. Yeah. And that change comes from another thing that so non pseudo scientific people do, what science minded people do, which is they actually look for education, learning opportunities, right? They look for ways to understand information,
00:22:27
Speaker
better, new information better. They stay up to date on research. They look at there for a lot of, for physical therapy, I don't know if this is in other practices, but there are what are called clinical practice guidelines. And these get updated. And so I don't always agree with what's in them, but when they get updated and I go, let's see what they've updated and what they're saying now, maybe they're saying something that's a little more current. And they also tend to be pretty wary of like new trendy treatments. People come into the clinic all the time and ask me, like what do you think about XYZ? What do you think about cold therapy? What do you think about cupping? And I'll tell people what I think of it. But I'm not out here being like, oh yeah, you guys, you should all be doing cold punches because it's really good for you. It's like we're we're paying attention to new research that's coming up, but at the same time,
00:23:15
Speaker
We're not just latching on to the newest, hippest thing to try and make a bunch of money until that thing's not trendy. Completely.
Strengthening Critical Thinking through Logical Fallacies
00:23:25
Speaker
I think that another thing we can do is try to learn about logical fallacies. There are a lot of podcasts on how to spot logical fallacies. There is a great book that I don't know the title of right now, but it's in my Audible, and I will share it in the show notes that goes into depth about every logical fallacy you've ever heard of or could imagine, and it's a pretty entertaining book. but
00:23:51
Speaker
Learn about logical fallacies. It's like thinking about thinking, right? It's very easy for our human minds to fall prey to fallacious logic where we get caught in corners of logic or go in loops or unbeknownst to us, engage in like magical thinking a little bit. It's very human. And I do it all the time. We all do it all the time, actually, but it becomes really helpful when you can spot it from yourself and other people. We're like, wait, that's actually a logical fallacy.
00:24:20
Speaker
So, for example, one just happened to me this morning or in the comments section of a post that I recently made. Basically, I got straw-manned. Okay, so I made a post about how we should, a for teachers of self-massage or restorative yoga, just avoid fear-mongering, high-intensity exercise, cardio, and strength training, which I think does happen, not amongst all teachers of self-massage and restorative yoga, but it's this bias of everyone would be better off if they just relaxed more and rested more, but meanwhile, probably less than 20% of people are meeting the physical activity guidelines. So I made a post about that and it got a lot of attention and someone weighed in and was like, so what you're saying is that unless people exercise, they don't deserve to rest. And I was like, wow, that is actually not what I said. Even remotely. That is an example of a logical fallacy called a straw man where someone will attack an argument you didn't make maybe because they they are feeling triggered or maybe because they just don't have a good response to the argument you actually made.
00:25:18
Speaker
And they didn't like the argument you actually made for some reason, right? Kind of made them feel some feelings. So there are other logic file ah fallacies that you can learn about that are really important. For example, appeal to authority. So it's important to remember that just because a doctor said it, just because a scientist said it, just because the president of the United States said it.
00:25:36
Speaker
Just because Sarah and I said it, just because it was, you read it in the New York Times. Stay tuned for a couple more in-betweenies about New York Times articles. This authority that you gained your information from is not beyond being questioned, no matter who they are. And so when someone suggests that you have no right to question them or some resource or some idea because of who or what it came from, this is an appeal to authority.
Promoting Independent and Skeptical Thinking
00:26:06
Speaker
Anyone can question anyone. You don't have to be a doctor to question a doctor, right? You have to recognize that you're not a doctor while you're questioning a doctor and that the doctor is a doctor who you're questioning, but no one is beyond being questioned. Another logical fallacy is this what's called an appeal to tradition, right? It's always been done this way. This is the way we do it. Therefore, this is the way we should continue to do it, right? This idea that it's going along with this idea of not questioning things only now instead of not questioning a person, we're not questioning a habit or a long held belief.
00:26:39
Speaker
Right? Yeah, that's one. Yeah, there's this appeal to nature, which we see a lot in. situations with nutrition, right? Like healthy, healthy, quote unquote, natural food. But the in the movement world, there's also this idea of natural human movement or even functional movement. Yeah. As this is the best. This is the only way to move and you shouldn't move in ways like this is the best is the most important babies squat for 12 hours a day or whatever. shit I'm like babies also don't have kneecaps. So why don't we talk about that and their heads are like as big as their rib cage.
00:27:13
Speaker
or bigger. Another one that we have is the post hoc fallacy, which is just because something happened and then something else happened. It doesn't mean the first one caused the second one. My favorite is a story from a while ago. I remember where a teacher was talking about how they had a student come into class, hadn't been coming to class for six months because they had a frozen shoulder. They rolled on some balls and their frozen shoulder was suddenly better. And I was like, maybe, or maybe it was because frozen shoulder has a natural history.
00:27:41
Speaker
that takes somewhere between six months to a year. Maybe they just waited long enough and their shoulder is able to move again. Yeah. Cool. The other thing you want to look out for is bias. We all have that too. Don't kid yourself. But does the person making the claim or espousing this information, whether it be around exercise for osteoporosis or functional natural human movement or the benefits of self-massage, whatever it is, do they have a financial interest in upholding their bias or proliferating that narrative? If they do, they're likely much less inclined to entertain the counter narrative. And this is where we have what I like to think of as like the intersection of skepticism and humility.
00:28:33
Speaker
where we all are biased, we all have a financial interest in something. Because we all got to live in this world where we need money. okay But when you have bias, you're much less likely to be skeptical of the thing that you are financially interested in, right? And you're also much less open, likely going to be open to counter narratives, to things that call into question that thing. So it's difficult. I went through with alignment, right? Where I started to hear like horror stories of like alignment not being as important as I thought. And I was like, what the fuck?
00:29:14
Speaker
Oh my God, now what am I going to do? What do I teach now? Speaking of Instagram posts, I get just got alignment shamed on a post that I put up this morning showing how hyper mobile my shoulders are, right? Like in a big way. So yeah, that's a hard one to let go of. I was just thinking this morning.
00:29:32
Speaker
that tennis is so good for impact for your bones, right? Because it's not it is the kind of movements that you're doing are not like ah graceful. You're not trying to land lightly. It's not like ballet or something like that. And I was imagining a future world where it was the research showed that tennis was all you needed to build bones. I had the in that world that Laurel and I would suddenly become tennis teachers.
00:29:56
Speaker
and not continue to say, no, that's not right. Our thing is right. That would be super hard though. All of a sudden, all this research started coming out about how actually tennis is the only way to go. The only way, yeah. Even I would have to take a good hard look at what we're up to and sign up for tennis. First, I'd have to learn how to play tennis better than I currently do, which is not good.
00:30:17
Speaker
and then learn how to teach, it would be, we would have to, pivot it would be a big pivot. We would have to pivot in a big way. But yeah that's that kind of humility that that ultimately is the underpinning of this, right? Yeah. Are you willing to be skeptical of the very thing you teach? Do you have skepticism towards your own source of income, towards your own beliefs? Are you skeptical of yourself? It sounds like a bad thing to be, but it's skepticism I think is sexy, yeah right? It's something that we often think of as a bad thing. like Oh, you're cynical and you're closed-minded and you're just like, oh, bullshit, I only believe what I want to believe and I'm skeptical of everything else. When actuality,
00:30:57
Speaker
I think skepticism requires a big open-mindedness, that big open-minded energy of being able to go I believe this, it sounds right, it seems true, but it might not be. Let me just create a little space around my attachment to it being true or being the solution or being the thing that we have to all do now and instead entertain the idea that maybe it's not the only solution, maybe it's not the best solution, maybe it's not the solution at all.
00:31:30
Speaker
And I think skepticism also requires that humility of being willing to know that you don't know. You don't know everything. Contrary to popular popular belief, Laurel and I don't know everything. If we are your only source of information, I would definitely recommend you find some other sources as well.
00:31:49
Speaker
Hey, I can feel the cognitive dissonance from listeners in this moment and it is ah painful. So another thing that you want to start to pay attention to is what, how high demand groups work and especially how high demand group think works. High demand groups are the casual word would be a cult, but there are certainly groups that are high demand that aren't quite cult, but they're like cult adjacent. So there's some things that you tend to see with these types of groups. They tend to have charismatic.
00:32:18
Speaker
leaders, they tend to stick to very black and white thinking, they tend to say a lot of things that sound like they mean something, but then when you try to parse it, it actually is just a word salad. But the other thing that they do that Lauren and I were talking about before this episode is that they actually get the members of the group to do the group thinking for you so that everyone is just passing around the same message to each other.
00:32:42
Speaker
which in some way kind of solidifies but must be true because this person's saying it and this person's saying it and that person over there is also saying, right? and Yeah, like the guru often has, or the charismatic leader often has favorites, yeah star students, who then go on to basically exert control of the leader over other group members who are not as accepted into the inner circle or the circle of power, right? So basically you get policed by the group and the guru is basically benefiting from that group think. yeah
00:33:16
Speaker
And you're much less likely to go against a group of people as well. So it's extremely powerful because you feel like you can't go against the group because then you'll be shunned or abandoned or kicked out, right? Where people were tribal, we want to be a part of groups who want to be accepted. We depend on being accepted into groups for survival, basically. We did an episode on this called Somatic Dominance, which was forever ago. I don't even remember what episode it is, but we'll stick it in the show notes for you.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
Resources for Enhancing Science Literacy
00:33:45
Speaker
So what can you do? You can also read research and become more science literate. Jules and Ariana Raven just re-upped their yoga research and beyond, I believe is the title of their podcast, which was Oh my gosh, the first of its kind. I want to say many years ago, four, five, six, seven years ago, I don't even know, but they've ah started recording again as a duo and they take a look at a research paper every episode. And I've listened to three or four episodes and have taken away some absolute
00:34:18
Speaker
gems that I know will make me a more science literate person. So check their podcast out. And then we're big fans of Adam Meekins. You should follow Adam Meekins on Instagram. If you're on Instagram, he does a really good job of breaking down research in slides, carousel slides that take very little time to read. And then I'm a big fan of Greg Lehman and his blogs are staples and he's extremely steeped in the research and wonderfully articulate down to earth and funny. So those are three resources we recommend to become more science literate. And then the bottom line as well is that there's a chance that you're going to get tricked.
00:34:55
Speaker
from time to time because one of the things that's very hard with pseudoscience is it makes some sense and it's scientific and then the spices that go on top, the little extras are these like pseudoscience nonsense, right? and And the person themselves might be a medical professional or they might be very charismatic or quite attractive or all of the above, right? And you're like, this person must be telling the truth. Some of it I know is true. So therefore all of it must be true, right? It's not always easy to see it in the wild, right? but Again, the more we can put on that kind of pair of skepticism sunglasses and take a look at what's actually being said and and say, wait a minute, yes, that part's true, but is this part also true? The better off we're going to be overall. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:35:40
Speaker
All right, did we do it? I think that's it, right? Okay, we did it. All right, let's just wrap it up then.
Conclusion and Call to Support
00:35:45
Speaker
All right, we hope that you enjoyed this in-betweeny on how to spot misinformation, red flags, and be more science-minded in the wild. If you like this episode, you like what Sarah and I are doing, you can support our work by subscribing, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow us on Instagram, where we are We're weird content creating machines at this point. Pumping out high quality value added content for your social media pleasure and so follow us at movementlogictutorials.com. We also have a free barbell mini course if you link
00:36:30
Speaker
Click, rather, the link in our show notes. Get our free barbell bone density building mini course. I think that's it, Sarah.