> I’ve also been disappointed for some months to see how many people I respect (and some I don’t respect) have been using it/promoting it. Taking unapproved drugs is a bad idea, no matter what rationalist bloggers with MDs, porn star/escort/sex researchers, Twitter guys, or conservative firebrands who get sick immediately after taking the unapproved drug tell you.
The "rationalist community" has always been quirky and edgy, but iterations in recent years have felt increasingly reactionary and contrarian at all costs. Being anti-FDA has been a meme in the rationalist community for several years, especially since Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten) started writing anti-FDA pieces. (Side note: The conservative firebrand they're talking about is a person who was caught using a pseudonym to post extremely biased, racist material, who has somehow remained prominent in the community despite the revelations).
This appears to have primed the community for "FDA bad" takes, which has triggered their contrarian tendencies to assume that anything that goes against the FDA must therefore be good.
A supplement maker publicly defying the FDA and pushing out a miracle treatment without the normal rigor of human trials and safety reviews is the type of behavior that would have triggered skepticism from the rationalist community. Yet because the community has been primed with "FDA bad, anti-FDA good" memes for years and the person pitching this supplement is vaguely connected to the rationalist community, this product has triggered a lot of adoration and praise from the community.
The product also exists in a space that is difficult to disprove: The effects of any anti-cavity product can only really be shown over very long periods of time in controlled settings. Anyone who gets a cavity while using this product will surely be dismissed as having a pre-existing cavity growing, or poor oral hygiene, or being a statistical anomaly, or any other number of excuses. At the same time, I'm sure we're about to hear endless anecdotes from people who have been taking the supplement and haven't had any cavities (while ignoring the fact that most people also don't get cavities in a given year, even without this magic probiotic).
It feels like the perfect storm for a grift, and this company is taking the lead and running with it. It's weird that a blog post advising some caution and skepticism for a supplement pusher making extraordinary claims who has refused to participate in the normally expected clinical trials. It's equally weird to see the self-described rationalist community throwing scientific rigor to the wind and embracing marketer's claims.
I don't entirely understand what's going on here, but I think it's strange that an article advising a modicum of skepticism for supplement pushers is now considered a contrarian take in the rationalist community.
I'm sure it's been posted to HN before but Scott Alexander's writing on the FDA is pretty nuanced. "Beyond "Abolish The FDA"[0] is pro-FDA but contains the section "What policy proposal closest to abolish-the-FDA would I feel comfortable supporting in the real world?"
He's been pretty explicit on Lumina too:
"My real opinion, as precisely as I can express it, is:
* Advance of approximately the same magnitude as fluoride: 5%
* Good on balance, comparable to other beneficial dental treatments: 35%
* Doesn’t work in its current form, but could easily be modified into something that does: 10%
* Doesn’t work at all and never will: 50%
* Causes minor side effects for some people, same scale as Tylenol: 30%
* Causes medium side effects, same scale as tricyclics: 5%
* Causes disastrous side effects, same scale as thalidomide: <1%"
To be fair to the anti-FDA people, the number-one source of FDA hate is actually having to interact with the FDA. They are not a pleasant agency to work with.
But I'd still rather have the current state of affairs than no FDA! I don't even have to think about that one!
I don't think we have to have this subthread, but opinion on what happened here is anything but unified --- if you're talking about Alexander. If you're talking about Hanania, calling what happened to him a "doxing" would be closer to a fringe opinion.
I think the idea that an organization like the FDA could have thought hard about ideas like “thinking about risk and probability” before contrarian bloggers arrived to save us from ourselves is offensive to rationalists.
The "rationalist community" has always been quirky and edgy, but iterations in recent years have felt increasingly reactionary and contrarian at all costs. Being anti-FDA has been a meme in the rationalist community for several years, especially since Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten) started writing anti-FDA pieces. (Side note: The conservative firebrand they're talking about is a person who was caught using a pseudonym to post extremely biased, racist material, who has somehow remained prominent in the community despite the revelations).
This appears to have primed the community for "FDA bad" takes, which has triggered their contrarian tendencies to assume that anything that goes against the FDA must therefore be good.
A supplement maker publicly defying the FDA and pushing out a miracle treatment without the normal rigor of human trials and safety reviews is the type of behavior that would have triggered skepticism from the rationalist community. Yet because the community has been primed with "FDA bad, anti-FDA good" memes for years and the person pitching this supplement is vaguely connected to the rationalist community, this product has triggered a lot of adoration and praise from the community.
The product also exists in a space that is difficult to disprove: The effects of any anti-cavity product can only really be shown over very long periods of time in controlled settings. Anyone who gets a cavity while using this product will surely be dismissed as having a pre-existing cavity growing, or poor oral hygiene, or being a statistical anomaly, or any other number of excuses. At the same time, I'm sure we're about to hear endless anecdotes from people who have been taking the supplement and haven't had any cavities (while ignoring the fact that most people also don't get cavities in a given year, even without this magic probiotic).
It feels like the perfect storm for a grift, and this company is taking the lead and running with it. It's weird that a blog post advising some caution and skepticism for a supplement pusher making extraordinary claims who has refused to participate in the normally expected clinical trials. It's equally weird to see the self-described rationalist community throwing scientific rigor to the wind and embracing marketer's claims.
I don't entirely understand what's going on here, but I think it's strange that an article advising a modicum of skepticism for supplement pushers is now considered a contrarian take in the rationalist community.