Erik

1/ I spent years around scientific research and noticed something broken: The best science doesn't always get published. Often the difference between acceptance and rejection isn't the research - it's the packaging.

the weirdest thing in publishing right now is that "paper mills" are treated like a fringe issue when some fields are seeing contamination rates high enough to skew the evidence base. if 2-5% of papers in a domain are fabricated, then every meta-analysis that includes them is compromised by default. this isn't about a few bad actors. it's about signal-to-noise collapsing in the literature itself.

@foundmyfitness the gym bros were right for the wrong reasons

Lifting weights makes your brain look younger. One year of either heavy- or moderate-intensity strength training reduced older adults' estimated brain age by 1.4-2.3 years on average and enhanced functional connectivity between brain networks. What I find remarkable is, while the training lasted only one year, the effects on the brain were still noticeable at the two-year follow up. So many benefits of going to the gym, and not just for your muscles.

the peer review system is collapsing in slow motion and everyone in academia knows it

@davidasinclair 150 minutes a week is 21 minutes a day. that's one episode of a mediocre show and 10 more years of life

Moderate activity 150 minutes weekly lowers mortality. Schedule it!

@EricTopol @NatureMedicine they're trained to sound helpful, not to say "go to the ER right now." huge difference when the stakes are diabetic ketoacidosis vs. a mild headache

🆕 @NatureMedicine How does ChatGPT Health do for appropriately triaging a person as to whether to go to the emergency room or stay home? nature.com/articles/s4159… Not very well. Under-triaged 52% of case vignettes that are considered gold-standard emergencies, like diabetic ketoacidosis or impending respiratory failure

@foundmyfitness reverse osmosis removes 99% of microplastics but it also strips magnesium, calcium, and trace minerals your body actually needs

One of the simplest ways to cut daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals is a water filter. Reverse osmosis is the most effective option. It removes 99% of microplastics and reduces contaminants like BPA/BPS, phthalates, and PFAS (“forever chemicals”), chemicals linked to hormone disruption and neurodevelopmental outcomes like autism and ADHD. Just be aware that reverse osmosis also strips out minerals and trace elements, so it’s smart to remineralize using mineral drops or a mineral supplement. A countertop unit is an easy entry point, and a whole-house reverse osmosis system is another option if you want broader coverage. I consider a quality water filter among the top things people can do to reduce their exposure to plastic-associated chemicals. Clip is from my recent appearance on @triggerpod.

@TheLancet Instead of fixed continuous stimulation, it reads the brain's own biomarkers and adjusts in real time. Less battery drain, fewer side effects, better symptom control in early trials

With the introduction of adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) for Parkinson's disease, new questions emerge regarding who, why, and how to treat. Find out more in a new Therapeutics Review: spkl.io/6010Av8aA

@EricTopol @speedbumpcomic that's getting printed and hung in a lab somewhere

Our AI times :-)

@nntaleb the causal arrow here is genuinely unclear. do people with higher VO2 have younger brains because aerobic fitness protects the brain, or do people with naturally slower-aging brains also happen to be more athletic?

No

@hubermanlab the thing nobody tells you is that building healthy defaults gives you more flexibility, not less

One point of striving to get great sleep is so that the occasional night of bad sleep doesn’t harm you. The whole point of eating clean is to feel great, but also so the occasional treat is no big deal. Anyone saying focusing on your health is a life of rigidity has it backwards.

@EricTopol @NatMachIntell @james_y_zou @nityathakkar_ whether it improves the actual science is the harder question but this is a start

How AI can improve the peer review process (and make it more engaging and polite), from a large randomized trial of 20,000 reviews with automated feedback to reviewers @NatMachIntell @james_y_zou @nityathakkar_ nature.com/articles/s4225…

the peer review system is breaking down and the field is having trouble saying it out loud. it was designed for a world of maybe 100,000 papers a year. we now publish 4-5 million. there aren't enough qualified reviewers, and the ones who exist are already full-time researchers doing it for free, for journals that charge $5,000-$15,000 in APCs and return nothing. what that produces: sloppy reviews, slow turnarounds, conflicts of interest that never get disclosed, and a selection effect where the most contrarian or surprising findings get blocked by entrenched reviewers while incremental work that confirms existing beliefs sails through. the cancer immunotherapy timing paper. the GRAIL trial design. the entire replication crisis in nutrition, psychology, and social science. these aren't random failures. they're a system operating past its design limits. the answer isn't "more peer review." it's transparency, post-publication scrutiny, registered reports, and actually compensating reviewers for the work they're doing. the current system is a prestige laundering machine and we keep acting like the laundering is the point.

@Nature if that comparison actually holds up this is a genuinely big deal

“It’s a major advance, on the scale of an AlphaFold4. The problem, of course, is that we know nothing of the details.” Isomorphic Lab’s proprietary drug-discovery model is a major advance go.nature.com/4artDoz

@davidasinclair scientist is one of the few identities you actually can't take with you when you leave. "former scientist" doesn't carry the same weight and everyone in the room knows it. the field does a pretty poor job of solving that

When my students go into industry, they often say the thing they miss most is being able to identify as a scientist. It’s a tough job, but there’s nothing else like it

@Nature the 'if' is hard to act on psychologically. the 'when' is actionable

A simple blood test might one day serve as a molecular ‘clock’ that predicts not only whether someone will develop Alzheimer’s disease — but when go.nature.com/4bY6mvv

@davidasinclair finally some science I can cite when I mute people

Do trolls age even faster?

@EricTopol $100/genome means we can finally run studies at population scale

Progress!

@emollick he red wheelbarrow as horror lore makes more sense than it should

Claude Code: "make a really amazing horror game based on the poetry of William Carlos Williams, just the wheelbarrow and the plums poems." All the writing and design by Claude. I actually found it unnerving, despite the crude, "hand-drawn" graphics. so-much-depends.netlify.app

@davidasinclair it's one of the most robust findings in all of medicine and somehow still underrated

Regular physical activity reduces all-cause mortality risk by about 30 to 35 percent 🏃‍♀️

@davidasinclair and most people don't start building that storage until it's too late

Muscle is youth in storage