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Rodents and Red Wine with Maria Konnikova · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Bushkin love that you're wearing a T shirt that says Canada,
0:24
Speaker 1: just so that we have no ambiguity whatsoever.
0:27
Speaker 2: Where are you right now? You in Las Vegas?
0:32
Speaker 1: I'm in Vegas right now. Yeah, I just got back
0:34
Speaker 1: here two days ago.
0:37
Speaker 2: Nice, very nice? Did I tell you? You know that?
0:40
Speaker 2: I was in Las Vegas and I had an afternoon
0:43
Speaker 2: and I sat in this coffee shop and there were
0:47
Speaker 2: three people next to me having the most interesting conversation.
0:50
Speaker 2: And one of the guys started talking and I realized
0:53
Speaker 2: he was talking about you.
0:57
Speaker 1: Really.
0:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a lawyer of some kind who like,
1:02
Speaker 2: was a writer, lawyer or something. I don't know. I
1:04
Speaker 2: couldn't figure it out. And I was eavesdropping in a
1:07
Speaker 2: conversation for like, and it was like the most interesting conversation.
1:13
Speaker 1: I love that story. Now you did not tell me,
1:17
Speaker 1: and I have no idea who you're talking about.
1:20
Speaker 2: Allow me to introduce a new voice to this podcast,
1:24
Speaker 2: Maria Kanakhova. In basketball, they call people like Maria Swiss
1:29
Speaker 2: army knives, people who do everything. Maria got a PhD
1:34
Speaker 2: with the famous Walter Michelle, the guy who invented the
1:36
Speaker 2: marshmallow test. She's written a bunch of brilliant New York
1:39
Speaker 2: Times bestsellers. She decided at one point that she was
1:43
Speaker 2: interested in poker, taught herself poker, became a poker champion,
1:48
Speaker 2: made some enormous sum of money. She's the kind of
1:51
Speaker 2: person that random strangers talk about in coffee shops, which
1:55
Speaker 2: is to say, my kind of person. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
2:04
Speaker 2: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
2:08
Speaker 2: and misunderstand, and I have the pleasure in this episode
2:11
Speaker 2: to bring you the fabulous Maria Konikova, who has agreed
2:15
Speaker 2: to become the first ever Revisionist History amistman, or rather
2:20
Speaker 2: honest person. She is joining the show to be the
2:23
Speaker 2: advocate for you, dear listener, to call me on my nonsense,
2:27
Speaker 2: to be a voice of reason, to participate in the
2:30
Speaker 2: kind of whimsical, meandering flights of intellectual fancy that is
2:34
Speaker 2: our trademark here at Pushkin Headquarters. So Maria, welcome to
2:42
Speaker 2: Vision's History. I could think of no one better equipped
2:45
Speaker 2: to speak truth to the power that is Revision's History.
2:49
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me on the show, Malcolm.
2:53
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about this. You know, maybe you'll change
2:55
Speaker 1: my mind maybe I'll change yours, but I think that
2:58
Speaker 1: the conversation is going to be very entertaining no matter what.
3:02
Speaker 2: Wonderful let's have at it. I am putting in your hands.
3:05
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
3:08
Speaker 1: Nice putty that's responsive and that talks back?
3:13
Speaker 2: Okay, you're driving this train, all right?
3:16
Speaker 1: Perfect. So one of the fascinating episodes of this season
3:22
Speaker 1: of Revisionist History was about the lack of iodine in
3:27
Speaker 1: people's diets and how this was discovered and how it
3:30
Speaker 1: was actually then addressed and had I actually did not
3:35
Speaker 1: know the story at all. It's such a fascinating question.
3:39
Speaker 1: You know, how do we think about these things in
3:42
Speaker 1: the present day? Would we be able to do something
3:44
Speaker 1: like this today, you know, especially like after COVID, after
3:47
Speaker 1: all of these things like add iodine to their salt
3:50
Speaker 1: or their water and see what happens. What do you
3:52
Speaker 1: think the response to something like that would be.
3:54
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting that there is a line,
3:59
Speaker 2: there's a common line of either complaint or congratulation among
4:06
Speaker 2: sciences where they say that experiment could never be done today.
4:11
Speaker 2: The Stanford's Prison experiment could never be done today. Then
4:15
Speaker 2: the Tuskegee siftless experiment could never be done. You know,
4:17
Speaker 2: there's a whole long list of things. They look at that,
4:20
Speaker 2: and they say, and that's because we are much more
4:23
Speaker 2: mindful of people's autonomy, much better about obtaining consent. You
4:29
Speaker 2: totally today could not go to Akron and dose up
4:31
Speaker 2: a bunch of schoolgirls with a ton of eyeein. However,
4:37
Speaker 2: my reaction to that argument is always the same, which is, yeah,
4:40
Speaker 2: but we simultaneously conduct consentless experiments on human beings in
4:46
Speaker 2: the present day that are probably way more consequential, and
4:50
Speaker 2: we don't think twice about it. You know, think about
4:53
Speaker 2: the way we have disrupted the lives of I don't
4:56
Speaker 2: know children over the last twenty five years, with all
4:59
Speaker 2: of these new technologies. How's that not a massive experiment
5:04
Speaker 2: done without the consent of those who were experimented on.
5:06
Speaker 2: How is the Facebook algorithm, which you know shows you
5:10
Speaker 2: only the things that are likely to evoke a deeply
5:14
Speaker 2: emotional response in you. How's it not an experiment? I mean,
5:18
Speaker 2: there's a part of me that just wants to throw
5:19
Speaker 2: out my hands and say, you know, efort, well, it's
5:25
Speaker 2: not even let's not even let's not even bother making
5:29
Speaker 2: these distinctions. Once we've conceded that all these experiments can
5:34
Speaker 2: go on. Let's just declare them experiments and let people
5:36
Speaker 2: pick and choose the one they want to be a
5:38
Speaker 2: part of.
5:38
Speaker 1: I think there's something to that, especially because you know,
5:42
Speaker 1: at least with the iodine, right, it was there was
5:45
Speaker 1: scientific evidence for the test, right, There was a reason
5:49
Speaker 1: why they did it. There was a huge body of
5:51
Speaker 1: evidence behind this, and the study was run as a study,
5:57
Speaker 1: and so there were scientific controls in place. You know,
5:59
Speaker 1: they actually could gather data, whereas with a lot of
6:03
Speaker 1: these other things, you know, it becomes a natural experiment,
6:06
Speaker 1: which is obviously MESSI has a lot of unintended consequences,
6:11
Speaker 1: and I mean there are a lot of different questions there.
6:13
Speaker 1: I'm actually curious about flipping it around where you have
6:16
Speaker 1: something like fluoride, right, which is another additive that's put
6:19
Speaker 1: in our water. And last year, I don't know if
6:24
Speaker 1: you were following this, but in a town in Vermont,
6:27
Speaker 1: it turned out that a town official for over a
6:30
Speaker 1: decade had been lowering fluoride levels below the accepted minimums
6:37
Speaker 1: because he thought that it was a government conspiracy. You know,
6:40
Speaker 1: fluoride in your water bad. And he resigned and it
6:44
Speaker 1: was a big outrage, and everyone was outraged that their
6:47
Speaker 1: water wasn't being properly fluoridated, that they actually weren't getting
6:53
Speaker 1: the numbers that they needed for dental health, cavities, et cetera.
6:56
Speaker 1: I just did think that it was such an interesting
6:59
Speaker 1: counterpoint because normally it's, oh, don't add anything, right, I
7:02
Speaker 1: don't want anything at it that I don't know about.
7:04
Speaker 1: I want natural salt, I want natural water. I don't
7:08
Speaker 1: want you adding anything, you know, big pharma, big government,
7:11
Speaker 1: big big, et cetera. And here the town was actually horrified,
7:16
Speaker 1: which I think they should have been.
7:18
Speaker 3: You know, I'm biased, you know, I think there's good
7:22
Speaker 3: evidence that adding Florida to water is a good thing,
7:24
Speaker 3: that adding I had dined to salt is a good thing,
7:27
Speaker 3: and that when things are good.
7:29
Speaker 1: For our health and we're not going to get them
7:31
Speaker 1: in any other way, that this is a great way
7:33
Speaker 1: of doing it. But a lot of people disagree.
7:35
Speaker 2: Well, I wonder, you know, if that are they responding
7:39
Speaker 2: to the Florida They responding to what they see as
7:42
Speaker 2: as the official abusing his position, right, you can you
7:46
Speaker 2: know it's it's it's maybe it's a bit of both,
7:49
Speaker 2: or you know, you could see people who might ordinarily
7:53
Speaker 2: be indifferent to fluoride just getting pissed off over this issue.
7:57
Speaker 2: This guy's like, you're not allowed to do that, sir.
8:02
Speaker 2: Hold on, hold on, it's time for a short break.
8:05
Speaker 2: When we come back, we'll talk more about how salt
8:08
Speaker 2: and revision is history are changing lives, and also the
8:12
Speaker 2: infamous Minnesota starvation study.
8:25
Speaker 1: So let's read a letter about someone from someone who
8:28
Speaker 1: I actually I love this letter. I just saw it
8:30
Speaker 1: today and it is a very positive take on additions
8:36
Speaker 1: to food and someone who says that, you know, the
8:38
Speaker 1: Salt episode actually really changed their life. So this is
8:42
Speaker 1: from Mary P. And she writes that it was a crazy,
8:45
Speaker 1: awesome coincidence that I was listening to this episode around
8:49
Speaker 1: the same time my doctor felt a nodule on my thyroid.
8:52
Speaker 1: He told me to go get an ultrasound, and my
8:55
Speaker 1: thyroid and nodule both were large enough and suspicious enough
8:58
Speaker 1: that it was recommended automatically that I get a biopsy.
9:02
Speaker 1: So she went for her first biopsy and the results
9:05
Speaker 1: came back in conclusive. And I'm going to continue reading
9:10
Speaker 1: her letter. They sent another side for genetic texting. Meanwhile,
9:13
Speaker 1: I bought some iodized salt and started cooking with it.
9:17
Speaker 1: I had switched to kosher salt and other fancy salts
9:20
Speaker 1: over the past few years, and I'm an avid at
9:22
Speaker 1: home cook. We also live in the Midwest. I used
9:26
Speaker 1: iodized salt in moderation, of course, and thought nothing more
9:29
Speaker 1: of it. Well, I went back for my biopsy and
9:32
Speaker 1: they took new ultrasound images of my thyroid. This was
9:36
Speaker 1: about two to three months after my original ultrasounds. In biopsies,
9:40
Speaker 1: the ultrasound tech was asking me many questions and seemed confused,
9:44
Speaker 1: but kept to himself. The doctor came in and told
9:47
Speaker 1: me to sit up. My nodules and thyroids had all shrunk.
9:52
Speaker 1: My once once sentime to nodule was now around five millimeters.
9:57
Speaker 1: He had no reason to biopsy because there was nothing
9:59
Speaker 1: of concern. In fact, he would not biopsy it, no surgery,
10:04
Speaker 1: just a follow up scan in a year Hallalujah. I
10:08
Speaker 1: told him my theory about the iodine and he said
10:10
Speaker 1: that very well could have been what shrunk everything. I
10:14
Speaker 1: asked if the cancer could be in there, just smaller.
10:16
Speaker 1: He scoffed at me and said no.
10:19
Speaker 2: What a great letter, right, Wow, for all of those
10:22
Speaker 2: who doubt the healing power of Revision's history. I present
10:26
Speaker 2: you this letter. We don't we don't just we don't
10:30
Speaker 2: just rile up our listeners. We save lives. This is
10:34
Speaker 2: a resounding endorsement of years of Revision's history.
10:38
Speaker 1: And those types of coincidences are great. Right, that you
10:41
Speaker 1: hear something and it actually has such an impact that
10:45
Speaker 1: would have been a life changing thing for her to
10:47
Speaker 1: have no thyroid function, half her thyroid function for the
10:50
Speaker 1: rest of our life, that's a huge thing.
10:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a reminder. This is one of
10:55
Speaker 2: these weird things, like one hundred years ago, what she's
10:59
Speaker 2: describing was commonplace. In fact, this is a little little
11:03
Speaker 2: fact in that episode that I can never get over
11:05
Speaker 2: my head is if you went to parts of the
11:07
Speaker 2: world that were iodine to fish and some extraordinarily high
11:10
Speaker 2: percentage of the population had these massive goiters on their neck,
11:15
Speaker 2: and like that was just part of the part of
11:18
Speaker 2: the experience of going to the Swiss Alps, or part
11:20
Speaker 2: of the experience of going to somewhere around the Great
11:23
Speaker 2: Lakes was you'd walk into a small town and you
11:26
Speaker 2: know whatever, quote of the people had big grapefruit sized
11:32
Speaker 2: masses on their necks. It's just so strange.
11:35
Speaker 1: It's crazy how little we still know about nutrition. Right.
11:40
Speaker 1: Nutrition is complicated, and I think that's one of the
11:42
Speaker 1: reasons why people still have, you know, so many questions,
11:45
Speaker 1: so many issues, why we go back and forth with
11:48
Speaker 1: nutritional advice, because the body is a complex thing, right,
11:51
Speaker 1: It's a complex machine, and it's so it's very difficult
11:55
Speaker 1: oftentimes to know like this is the recommendation and it
11:58
Speaker 1: will always be the recommendation.
12:00
Speaker 2: And also, you know, it's hard. This is sort of
12:02
Speaker 2: what brings us to the miss starvation experiment, which I'm
12:06
Speaker 2: sure we're going to talk about. But one of the
12:07
Speaker 2: big impetuses for that is that one of the reasons
12:11
Speaker 2: we know so little about nutrition is that it's impossible
12:14
Speaker 2: to test hypotheses about nutrition, because how do you do
12:18
Speaker 2: it right, Like, if you think about something as simple
12:21
Speaker 2: as does drinking alcohol harm or help your health? Right,
12:31
Speaker 2: that's a question that's been irrelevant for as long as
12:33
Speaker 2: human beings have drunk alcohol, So thousands and thousands and
12:36
Speaker 2: thousands of years, we're still arguing about that. And the
12:40
Speaker 2: reason we're still arguing about it is it's virtually impossible
12:42
Speaker 2: to design a study which would satisfactorily answer that question.
12:47
Speaker 2: So there happens that which say people who drink wine
12:49
Speaker 2: and moderation seem to live long, healthy lives. But you know,
12:55
Speaker 2: the problem is that people who drink wine in moderation
12:58
Speaker 2: are people who otherwise live moderate, healthy lives. Right, They're like,
13:04
Speaker 2: you know, they're villagers in the south of Italy who
13:08
Speaker 2: are getting in enormous amount of exercise and living in
13:11
Speaker 2: bucolics surroundings. So you just don't know is it is.
13:14
Speaker 2: Are are they living long, happy lives in spite of
13:17
Speaker 2: their one consumption or because of it? Right simontanoing you
13:21
Speaker 2: know you see these so you can read. It's just
13:24
Speaker 2: incredibly I just read read the other day, like there's
13:26
Speaker 2: a new line of thinking which says, you know, all
13:29
Speaker 2: alcohol is basically like really bad for you and should
13:32
Speaker 2: be avoided.
13:33
Speaker 1: I saw that.
13:34
Speaker 2: I have no idea what to make of that, Like,
13:36
Speaker 2: I don't even know how do they manage that conclusion.
13:38
Speaker 2: It's just that that idea that we could be in
13:40
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three and still being capable of answering these
13:44
Speaker 2: questions with any degree of accuracy is fascinating to me.
13:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's totally crazy. It's so funny that you mentioned
13:50
Speaker 1: red wine, which is you know, or alcohol in general.
13:53
Speaker 1: The first one of the first studies I ever worked
13:56
Speaker 1: on as a journalist who who kind of is interested
13:59
Speaker 1: in these questions forever ago, was on resveratrol when it
14:02
Speaker 1: first came out, like the data that, oh my god,
14:05
Speaker 1: res vitrol makes you live longer, and everyone was saying, great,
14:09
Speaker 1: red wine, it's amazing. Then a few years later we
14:12
Speaker 1: find out that the quantity of versviatrol you need is
14:15
Speaker 1: just so much higher than you would ever get. And
14:17
Speaker 1: it goes back and forth, and I've seen that one
14:20
Speaker 1: question just go in circles for you know, almost twenty
14:25
Speaker 1: years now, and we we just have no idea.
14:29
Speaker 2: Do you remember was it were they Were they getting
14:31
Speaker 2: rats large doses of.
14:33
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, that's the thing, exactly, That was exactly it.
14:36
Speaker 1: It was rodents, rodence, and red wine.
14:39
Speaker 2: So the only the only thing we can say for
14:40
Speaker 2: certain is that within the rat population, those who enjoy
14:44
Speaker 2: a good bottle of wine every night are going to
14:46
Speaker 2: live a little longer.
14:48
Speaker 1: So I think that this is a good a good
14:50
Speaker 1: segue point. You know, people who were not drinking any
14:53
Speaker 1: wine were taking part in the starvation study, that was
14:56
Speaker 1: part of this season of revisionist history. So I mean,
15:00
Speaker 1: first of all that study, let's just kind of recap
15:04
Speaker 1: it very quickly. I mean we're talking actual starvation, like
15:10
Speaker 1: the number of calories that these men. So it was
15:13
Speaker 1: all men. It was all young, relatively healthy men who were,
15:20
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, not in the military, not
15:23
Speaker 1: serving abroad during World War two, and they were all
15:28
Speaker 1: brought to this place to try to control because as
15:32
Speaker 1: we've just talked about, it's really difficult to control food intake,
15:36
Speaker 1: to try to control it as much as possible, to
15:38
Speaker 1: try to do their part for the war effort to
15:40
Speaker 1: see how starvation affects the body. Is that a fair summar.
15:44
Speaker 2: Race, Yes, exactly, because you don't already had The impetus
15:49
Speaker 2: was this was in the middle of the war, and
15:52
Speaker 2: the feeling was that by the end of the war
15:54
Speaker 2: one of the biggest problems the world was going to
15:56
Speaker 2: face was that millions of people around the world had
16:01
Speaker 2: suffered prolonged malnutrition throughout the conflict, and we didn't know
16:06
Speaker 2: how to help them. We honestly had no idea if
16:08
Speaker 2: someone has been malnourished for a year and a half,
16:13
Speaker 2: what is the best way to nurse them back to
16:15
Speaker 2: health and literally we hit people. At the time didn't
16:19
Speaker 2: have the size clue, right, So they were trying to
16:21
Speaker 2: answer that question with some at least get some information
16:26
Speaker 2: about that. So there was the stakes here were huge.
16:29
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what gives the study, it's kind of
16:34
Speaker 2: moral force.
16:35
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting question, right, does the study have
16:38
Speaker 1: the necessary moral force to do something like this, because
16:41
Speaker 1: when back in the day, right back when this study
16:44
Speaker 1: was done World War Two, we didn't have the sort
16:47
Speaker 1: of reviews on studies that we have today. So these
16:50
Speaker 1: days you need to go through an i RB, which
16:52
Speaker 1: is an institutional review board when you're doing any sort
16:56
Speaker 1: of human research, and you need to have every single
17:00
Speaker 1: subject give informed consent. And this is crucial. The benefits
17:05
Speaker 1: of this specific study have to outweigh and potential harm
17:10
Speaker 1: to the participants in the study. And so to me,
17:16
Speaker 1: you know, when I listened to kind of the details
17:19
Speaker 1: of the starvation experiment, I knew that it existed, but
17:23
Speaker 1: I actually didn't I'd never actually kind of gone deep
17:26
Speaker 1: into it. This was the most I'd learned about it
17:29
Speaker 1: was from you. And as I was listening, I was
17:32
Speaker 1: trying to think, you know, first of all, benefits versus harm.
17:37
Speaker 1: You know, how do we think about that? And I
17:40
Speaker 1: think that's actually changed over the years. But the second
17:43
Speaker 1: part of it is how do you actually give informed
17:46
Speaker 1: consent of all the potential downsides to something like this
17:50
Speaker 1: when you're researching something where you don't actually know what
17:54
Speaker 1: the potential downsides are.
17:57
Speaker 2: Well, it's like spaceflight. You're sending an astronaut to the moon.
18:04
Speaker 2: Presumably you pull the astronaut aside beforehand and you say
18:08
Speaker 2: the benefit year is mankind will be able to say
18:12
Speaker 2: we went to the moon. But you know, in that situation,
18:15
Speaker 2: the first astronaut in space, we don't know what it's
18:19
Speaker 2: like to be out for a couple weeks in zero gravity.
18:22
Speaker 2: So I don't know how do they do consent. I
18:25
Speaker 2: guess they said, you're taking a risk of unknown quantity,
18:30
Speaker 2: you might be damaged by what you're doing. Are you
18:32
Speaker 2: fine with that? And I think the answer they were
18:35
Speaker 2: fine with it is that many of those astronauts came
18:37
Speaker 2: out of the military, and so they were used to
18:41
Speaker 2: the idea that they were called to do something on
18:46
Speaker 2: behalf of their country, which carried with it a significant
18:50
Speaker 2: risk of illness and death.
18:53
Speaker 1: I think That's an interesting example, but it's not a
18:55
Speaker 1: complete analogy, because this was their profession, right, this was
18:59
Speaker 1: their career, this is what they had signed up for.
19:01
Speaker 1: They became astronauts with the knowledge that they would hopefully
19:05
Speaker 1: be able to go into space one day. Whereas these
19:07
Speaker 1: study participants were just ordinary men who were called upon
19:11
Speaker 1: by their patriotic feelings and said, you know, do you
19:14
Speaker 1: want to do your patriotic duty. That's a lot of pressure,
19:17
Speaker 1: and that's not your life. This is not something that's
19:19
Speaker 1: your career. You're being asked to do something that's just
19:23
Speaker 1: totally out of the ordinary.
19:24
Speaker 2: Wait, you are you? Are you a Minnesota's starvation experiment skeptic?
19:29
Speaker 2: Do you not think it should have been done? No?
19:32
Speaker 1: I'm someone who wants to push back though, and to
19:35
Speaker 1: question how it was done and whether they could potentially
19:41
Speaker 1: have ever given and formed consent to something like this,
19:44
Speaker 1: especially given what we know now about the long, longitudinal,
19:47
Speaker 1: long term effects about starvation. Back then, the term epigenetic
19:51
Speaker 1: I don't think even existed. People did not know kind
19:54
Speaker 1: of what the interaction of genes and environment is. Today,
19:59
Speaker 1: we actually know that starvation has lifelong consequences. They actually
20:05
Speaker 1: change the methylation patterns of your of your genes, of
20:10
Speaker 1: your genome, and that there's actually a lot of damage
20:13
Speaker 1: that is going to be done for your entire life.
20:16
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is a lot of the data,
20:18
Speaker 1: the best data that we have on this didn't come
20:20
Speaker 1: from the starvation experiment, but actually happened from a natural
20:24
Speaker 1: experiment that came at the exact same time, more or
20:27
Speaker 1: less contemporaneous, which was basically the Dutch hunger winter. It
20:35
Speaker 1: was also during World War Two there was a huge
20:38
Speaker 1: famine in the Netherlands because there was a blockade by
20:43
Speaker 1: the Nazis and thousands of people died. I think something
20:47
Speaker 1: like twenty thousand people ended up dying. But at the
20:51
Speaker 1: same time, there were a bunch of women who were
20:52
Speaker 1: pregnant and doctors were taking all of the measurements that
20:57
Speaker 1: you would normally take during pregnancy, but these women happened
21:01
Speaker 1: to be starving, and then they ended up following the
21:04
Speaker 1: women and the babies for their lives and actually got
21:10
Speaker 1: an amazing amount of data on what starvation does to
21:12
Speaker 1: the body.
21:14
Speaker 2: What does it do?
21:15
Speaker 1: Oh well, we're still finding out. There are lots of
21:18
Speaker 1: things that end up happening later in life. You're more
21:21
Speaker 1: prone to gain weight because your body is prepared for
21:24
Speaker 1: starvation and has been prepared for from in utero. It
21:29
Speaker 1: also ends up, you know, affecting your the way that
21:34
Speaker 1: your kids are going to develop. So if you were,
21:37
Speaker 1: I guess, a fetus during during this time, then by
21:42
Speaker 1: the time that you're you're an adult, when you have
21:45
Speaker 1: your own kids, you're actually going to pass a lot
21:47
Speaker 1: of these epigenetic changes further on to them. They are
21:53
Speaker 1: also going to be effects on how you're going to
21:59
Speaker 1: just think and do in life. It turns out that
22:03
Speaker 1: there are labor market effects, hospitalization effects, so you know,
22:08
Speaker 1: it actually puts you down a notch. But this is
22:11
Speaker 1: once again we're talking about the people who were who
22:14
Speaker 1: were fetuses during this time, which is very different from
22:16
Speaker 1: the starvation study, but it ends up having a lot
22:19
Speaker 1: of downstream effects, and those studies are still being done.
22:22
Speaker 1: So there are you know, there's a new paper at
22:25
Speaker 1: least once every few years using this cohort which shows
22:31
Speaker 1: that you know, you didn't there are lots of things
22:34
Speaker 1: that you didn't know you were signing up for. If
22:36
Speaker 1: you thought that this was just going to be an
22:38
Speaker 1: easy you know, I starve myself completely and then I'm
22:41
Speaker 1: all better and this will never actually follow me throughout life.
22:45
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to me that I think some of
22:47
Speaker 1: our best data comes from a natural experiment, as opposed
22:50
Speaker 1: to something where a bunch of men said, okay, starve
22:55
Speaker 1: me and let's see what happens.
22:56
Speaker 2: So imagine that we were doing a version of the
22:59
Speaker 2: Dutch starvation thing involving pregnant women. But it was an experiment, right.
23:07
Speaker 1: All right, magic wandftly measure.
23:10
Speaker 2: And what we learned from that is that actually starving
23:13
Speaker 2: people when they're pregnant has incredible as unanticipated long term
23:19
Speaker 2: consequences not just for the mother but for the child
23:22
Speaker 2: and even maybe for the child's children child.
23:27
Speaker 1: So absolutely so.
23:29
Speaker 2: In other words, and we had no idea of this before.
23:32
Speaker 2: So this is a kind of like, this is a
23:35
Speaker 2: this is a earth shattering, huge bit of understanding about
23:41
Speaker 2: human beings. Why wouldn't this be an argument. Why wouldn't
23:47
Speaker 2: the magnitude of what we learned from that such an
23:50
Speaker 2: experiment be an argument for doing the experiment?
23:53
Speaker 1: Not?
23:53
Speaker 2: Right, It's so important that hundreds thousands, millions more people
23:59
Speaker 2: could be helped from the knowledge gleaned from that experiment
24:02
Speaker 2: than those who were who were harmed by it, And
24:05
Speaker 2: if the people who signed up for that experien had
24:10
Speaker 2: a at least a kind of reasonable suspicion that what
24:14
Speaker 2: was learned from the from them putting themselves at risk
24:18
Speaker 2: might help many, many, many, many many more people, then
24:23
Speaker 2: to my mind, that settles it. It's fine. I mean,
24:26
Speaker 2: this is what I was trying to get to in
24:28
Speaker 2: the podcast, is that we're so indifferent to people who
24:31
Speaker 2: have altruistic motives. That isn't where is the altruistic motive
24:36
Speaker 2: data point in the consent algorithm? Like you should be
24:40
Speaker 2: able to say, I know it's going to harm me,
24:43
Speaker 2: but I think it's going to help a lot more people,
24:45
Speaker 2: and I'm fine with that.
24:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like I said, when you asked me, am
24:49
Speaker 1: I a skeptic of this? I said, I'm not necessarily
24:51
Speaker 1: someone who said this shouldn't have happened. I just think that,
24:54
Speaker 1: you know, there are lots of issues to consider. So, yeah,
24:57
Speaker 1: there is this. There's definitely an argument to be made that,
25:00
Speaker 1: you know, what we learned from Dutch famine shows that
25:04
Speaker 1: studies like this are incredibly important. But in this particular case, right,
25:09
Speaker 1: I think in the pregnancy case, you're also giving consent
25:12
Speaker 1: for your fetus. Right, So it's one of these things
25:16
Speaker 1: where that's even if you're an altruist, I think that
25:22
Speaker 1: that would be a very strange definition of altruism, because
25:25
Speaker 1: you're being altruistic for the world, but not for this
25:29
Speaker 1: one specific human who has no say in this whatsoever.
25:32
Speaker 2: But I would say this like so, for much of
25:36
Speaker 2: human history, continue to the present day, a large percentage
25:40
Speaker 2: of the world's population suffers from prolonged malnutritionolutely, So one
25:46
Speaker 2: really important historical question is what can we do to
25:50
Speaker 2: convince the wealthier parts of the world that this is
25:55
Speaker 2: such an urgent problem that it needs to be addressed immediately. Right,
26:01
Speaker 2: wouldn't it make sense to try an extreme experiment of
26:04
Speaker 2: this sort to try and bring the world around?
26:09
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think that's a very valid point.
26:11
Speaker 1: And you actually had a letter from a listener, Robert A,
26:14
Speaker 1: who asked a question that kind of circles around what
26:17
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. He asks, who is responsible for
26:20
Speaker 1: a system which both restricts voluntary breakthrough research like that
26:25
Speaker 1: conducted by Ansel Keys and the conscientious Objectors, and that
26:29
Speaker 1: which fails to take accountability when mistakes are made? So
26:33
Speaker 1: there's a that's I think an interesting question because you
26:36
Speaker 1: do have those two sides of it. So we do
26:38
Speaker 1: have a system that now does restrict that kind of
26:41
Speaker 1: breakthrough research quite often. I mean, when I was in
26:43
Speaker 1: grad school for psychology and I needed to do an
26:48
Speaker 1: experiment that had deception, I just I couldn't get it approved.
26:53
Speaker 1: I had to jump through so many hoops, and eventually,
26:57
Speaker 1: you know, with the support of all the senior faculty
27:00
Speaker 1: in the psychology department, it was just this silly thing.
27:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a major deception study, but we needed
27:08
Speaker 1: We couldn't tell them that we were studying self control, right,
27:10
Speaker 1: because that would actually have defeated the purpose of the
27:15
Speaker 1: entire study. And how many studies are not done because
27:19
Speaker 1: of that. So that's kind of the one side of it.
27:21
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, there's a reason for all
27:23
Speaker 1: of these safeguards because you have things like the Stanford
27:25
Speaker 1: person experiment, right, you have things like Tuskegee. You have
27:29
Speaker 1: things that really crossed the line without informed consent, with deception,
27:35
Speaker 1: with a lack of understanding of what was going to happen.
27:38
Speaker 1: I mean, one nutrition study that was done, I don't
27:42
Speaker 1: know if you remember this one, but it was done
27:45
Speaker 1: in Washington on some young men who were working, you know,
27:50
Speaker 1: around DC at the time, and they were basically they
27:53
Speaker 1: agreed to be poisoned. They went to the Congressional cafeteria
27:56
Speaker 1: in their diet was very strictly controlled and they were
28:00
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out how different food additives work.
28:02
Speaker 1: And some of them got incredibly sick because it turns
28:05
Speaker 1: out that they were eating very toxic amounts of things
28:08
Speaker 1: they should not have been eating. So that was that
28:12
Speaker 1: was a study gone a bit off the off the
28:14
Speaker 1: rails when it comes to nutrition. But so you have
28:17
Speaker 1: those two extremes and how do you how do you
28:20
Speaker 1: weigh that, how do you balance that? How do you
28:23
Speaker 1: not in retrospect where we can say, Okay, you know
28:26
Speaker 1: this is what we learned from this study and it
28:28
Speaker 1: was really good, but before it happens, how do we
28:31
Speaker 1: how do we think about that? How do we kind
28:34
Speaker 1: of how do we walk that line?
28:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say that there is there is one
28:41
Speaker 2: area on this where I am I'm the you know,
28:46
Speaker 2: I've been talking so far about how I would I
28:50
Speaker 2: tend to be pretty laissez faire about giving researchers the
28:53
Speaker 2: freedom to do things that are a little bit risky.
28:56
Speaker 2: Or there's another area though, where I'm on the exact
29:01
Speaker 2: opposite side of the fence, And what am I referring to, patience, grasshopper?
29:09
Speaker 2: When we come back more from my conversation with Maria Konakova,
29:31
Speaker 2: we're back, and I was telling Maria that I'm pretty
29:33
Speaker 2: laissez fair about letting experiments go forward, except in the
29:37
Speaker 2: case of what might be the most awful natural experiment
29:41
Speaker 2: we're living through right now. I am incredulous at the
29:47
Speaker 2: idea that thousands of pages of text and hours of
29:51
Speaker 2: argumentation is spent on the ethics of one medical experiment
29:55
Speaker 2: or another. And at the same time we are, you know,
30:00
Speaker 2: completely indifferent or cavalier about the levels of violence that
30:05
Speaker 2: are present in media every day. Now, there had been
30:08
Speaker 2: moments every now and again, periodically there are moments where
30:11
Speaker 2: various interest groups get upset about depictions of violence on television.
30:16
Speaker 2: Was a big deal I think in the seventies, for example,
30:18
Speaker 2: and then it sort of went away, and then the
30:20
Speaker 2: people who were complained about this got painted as kind
30:24
Speaker 2: of buffoons or as naive sewer in the middle of nowhere.
30:28
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't want to give it away,
30:30
Speaker 2: but I had in the course of an episode of
30:35
Speaker 2: I'm Doing in this upcoming season where I have these
30:38
Speaker 2: long conversations with trauma surgeons who deal with gunshot wounds,
30:42
Speaker 2: and what they have to say on this very specific
30:46
Speaker 2: matter is incredibly interesting and disturbing. They're They're not like
30:53
Speaker 2: hiding their head in the sand about this. They are
30:55
Speaker 2: fully aware of it. The people who are who have
30:58
Speaker 2: a I believe a morally objectionable position, or the people
31:01
Speaker 2: in Hollywood, many of whom are self described liberals, who
31:06
Speaker 2: will go on and on and on about the you know,
31:08
Speaker 2: the terror need for gun control in America and how
31:12
Speaker 2: outrageous all the Second Amendment people is. And meanwhile they're
31:15
Speaker 2: making movies well like twenty people are slaughtered in the
31:18
Speaker 2: first fifteen minutes. Like, I'm sorry, this is just like
31:21
Speaker 2: completely incomprehensible behavior, right. This drives me nuts.
31:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that there's a lot to be said
31:29
Speaker 1: for that. It's like we've never outlived the instinct for
31:33
Speaker 1: public executions right where everyone would come to the town square.
31:37
Speaker 1: Instinct is still alive and well, it's an important tangent
31:40
Speaker 1: to go on, and it is related to everything we've
31:43
Speaker 1: been talking about about how do you study this? You know,
31:46
Speaker 1: what are the benefits, what are the harms? And there's
31:48
Speaker 1: you so kind of coming full circle back to the
31:52
Speaker 1: starvation experiment, there is one thing that we haven't talked about,
31:55
Speaker 1: which was an important point that one of the listeners
31:59
Speaker 1: brought up. And this is an important point about a
32:01
Speaker 1: lot of the research not from that day, but that
32:04
Speaker 1: continues to be done to this day, which is how
32:09
Speaker 1: realizable are the results to the segments of the population
32:12
Speaker 1: that might actually benefit most from it. So Maura, this
32:16
Speaker 1: listener wrote, how can we treat eating disorder patients primarily
32:20
Speaker 1: young women using data collected exclusively on white men. How
32:24
Speaker 1: can we use this to study the impact of dieting
32:26
Speaker 1: and weight loss when dining is more prevalent and pressured
32:29
Speaker 1: upon among women. How can we use this to study
32:32
Speaker 1: obesity when non Hispanic black adults and Hispanic adults have
32:36
Speaker 1: the highest prevalence of obesity in the United States. That's
32:41
Speaker 1: the end of her letter, But I would just go
32:42
Speaker 1: on and on. When we're talking about malnourishment and we
32:44
Speaker 1: realize that most of the malnourished population of the world
32:47
Speaker 1: is not white men, So that is kind of an
32:51
Speaker 1: interesting side note, and this is actually still a huge problem.
32:53
Speaker 1: That's not something that we left behind in the forties.
32:56
Speaker 1: To this day, most medical data comes from men, not women,
33:02
Speaker 1: and it's a very kind of that's an interesting way
33:05
Speaker 1: of looking at you what are the actual benefits from
33:09
Speaker 1: us to the people who need them, and how general
33:11
Speaker 1: of isable is.
33:12
Speaker 2: If you're trying to develop actionable policies and guidelines and
33:18
Speaker 2: approaches to affective populations, it absolutely does matter. And you know,
33:23
Speaker 2: we went through this with I think with our understanding
33:26
Speaker 2: of heart attacks right where we started off testing a
33:32
Speaker 2: lot of these hypotheses in men, white men, and that's
33:36
Speaker 2: how we got our baseline knowledge. But then we tried
33:39
Speaker 2: to use that information to kind of understand how to
33:44
Speaker 2: deal with women without realizing that the biology of a
33:48
Speaker 2: lot of these problems, physiology of a lot of these
33:50
Speaker 2: problems in women's very different. So I think it depends
33:53
Speaker 2: where you are in the kind of stage that you're at.
33:56
Speaker 2: And the mistake we make, I think is we don't
34:00
Speaker 2: honor this distinction between kind of basic understanding and actionable research.
34:07
Speaker 2: If you talk to somebody body who is works for
34:11
Speaker 2: a pharmaceutical company and is involved in drug trials. You know,
34:15
Speaker 2: they will talk your ear off on this, and what
34:18
Speaker 2: they will say is, do you know how hard it
34:20
Speaker 2: is to put together a study population. It's insanely difficult
34:24
Speaker 2: to find someone. I actually thought of I was going
34:27
Speaker 2: to volunteer for a trial about lime disease vaccine. And
34:32
Speaker 2: then I add that the first thing to do is
34:34
Speaker 2: you have half an hour conversation with someone. And they
34:37
Speaker 2: detail that I would have to go to drive to
34:39
Speaker 2: Albany an hour away, seven times and have to set
34:43
Speaker 2: aside half a day on each of those occasions. And
34:46
Speaker 2: I wasn't clear whether I'd be part of the treatment
34:48
Speaker 2: group or the pacibo group, right, So I listened to that.
34:51
Speaker 2: I was like, I can't do that. I'm not taking
34:54
Speaker 2: you know, somewhat selfishly, I decided I don't have that
34:57
Speaker 2: much time to devote to this, so I'll let someone
34:59
Speaker 2: else carry the burden. So it's like, it's really hard
35:02
Speaker 2: to do these studies. So when you if we say
35:05
Speaker 2: these studies have to be perfectly representative, you're just making
35:08
Speaker 2: it less likely that the study gets done in the
35:10
Speaker 2: first place at a certain point. Right, So that's the
35:12
Speaker 2: trade off. It's an impossible trade off.
35:14
Speaker 1: Sure, No, I think, I think there's a lot of
35:16
Speaker 1: truth to that. That said, I do think that even
35:19
Speaker 1: baseline knowledge studies these days should at least include women
35:22
Speaker 1: because you know, if you're omitting more than half the
35:24
Speaker 1: population and the basic biology is different, then but.
35:28
Speaker 2: You couldn't have done the starvation experiment with women.
35:32
Speaker 1: So that's the other thing, right, what are we proposing
35:35
Speaker 1: in the starvation case? Do we want women there? And
35:38
Speaker 1: Hispanic and black where it's much more difficult to actually
35:42
Speaker 1: obtain consent because especially back then, but even to this day,
35:46
Speaker 1: you know, these are populations that have had a lot
35:51
Speaker 1: of negative research done without consent, and it's actually much
35:56
Speaker 1: more difficult, I would say, and the burden of proof
35:59
Speaker 1: is much higher to ask for consent from vulnerable population.
36:03
Speaker 2: You can't do a starvation experiment like that in Minnesota
36:07
Speaker 2: on young women because if it has consequences for their
36:11
Speaker 2: fertility than you have So what are you going to see?
36:13
Speaker 2: Does so are we going to use are we going
36:16
Speaker 2: to use postmen apausal women only? But that brings up
36:19
Speaker 2: a whole different set of issues because now you have
36:22
Speaker 2: an older population that's going to be less susceptible to
36:25
Speaker 2: whatever risks you're exposing them to it's tricky. This reminds
36:29
Speaker 2: me we talk in the season about magic wands experiments
36:34
Speaker 2: we could do if we could wave a magic wand
36:36
Speaker 2: this one doesn't actually you require a magic wand, although
36:38
Speaker 2: it would be very hard to do in the real world.
36:40
Speaker 2: But you mentioned that natural experiment in Holland which gave
36:47
Speaker 2: us information that would have been almost impossible to get
36:51
Speaker 2: otherwise in a formal experiment. And it goes to the
36:53
Speaker 2: larger point that this is the great thing about natural
36:56
Speaker 2: experiments is that when you can find a good one,
36:59
Speaker 2: they almost invariably tell you stuff that you could never
37:03
Speaker 2: find out other way. They're incredibly productive kind of experiment.
37:07
Speaker 2: So why can't we engineer actual experiments? So imagine this.
37:11
Speaker 2: Imagine if someone came to you and me and a
37:15
Speaker 2: million other people and said, we're at the stage now
37:19
Speaker 2: in our in technology where we can put little sensors
37:23
Speaker 2: on you which can continuously monitor every one of your
37:28
Speaker 2: physiological signs and vital signs in real time. Would you
37:32
Speaker 2: agree to be basically monitored for the next whatever ten
37:38
Speaker 2: years and you and two million or ten million other
37:42
Speaker 2: people agree to be part of this, and we will
37:46
Speaker 2: we will simply wait and see what happens to you
37:49
Speaker 2: and use that massive data set to kind of improve
37:56
Speaker 2: our understanding of the kinds of things that lead to
37:59
Speaker 2: various sorts of diseases. I mean, if you had ten
38:01
Speaker 2: million people and they were giving you ten years of
38:03
Speaker 2: their life and every conceivable indicator and vital sign was
38:08
Speaker 2: being monitored on a moment to moment basis, you would
38:12
Speaker 2: be able to understand stuff that right now we have
38:16
Speaker 2: no clue about, right and all it takes is for
38:19
Speaker 2: people just they don't even take in a risk, They're
38:22
Speaker 2: just being willing to be monitored and donate their data.
38:25
Speaker 2: That's essentially engineering a natural experiment. I don't understand why
38:28
Speaker 2: that hasn't been done. Privacy, no one who cares this
38:33
Speaker 2: is don't even me started on privacy. Privacy drives me
38:36
Speaker 2: just nuts. It's like, what an absurd thing in this
38:40
Speaker 2: day and age to be concerned about. Like, basically, as
38:44
Speaker 2: far as I can tell, every single fact about Malcolm
38:46
Speaker 2: Glovel is known by like some combination of Facebook, Apple,
38:50
Speaker 2: Google and someone else.
38:52
Speaker 1: And so I meant to ask, Malcolm, what is your
38:55
Speaker 1: mother's maiden name? I just have a few more questions.
38:58
Speaker 1: Before we were at I.
38:59
Speaker 2: Know it's like a ludicrous and so it's fine for
39:03
Speaker 2: those guys to scour, you know, the Internet and put
39:06
Speaker 2: together massive dossiers of everything, every fact about me. But somehow,
39:10
Speaker 2: if I want to allow someone to peek into my
39:14
Speaker 2: is it physiological, you know, for the benefit of mankind?
39:18
Speaker 2: That's a problem. Just drives me crazy.
39:21
Speaker 1: It is a problem, And I didn't know that I
39:23
Speaker 1: hit a nerve with that one word privacy. But here
39:25
Speaker 1: we are, so that I think is a nice place
39:29
Speaker 1: to wrap up our starvation study, except for one final question.
39:34
Speaker 1: One listener was really fascinated by the cinnamon role of
39:39
Speaker 1: recipe from the episode of the Starvation Study Tara A.
39:43
Speaker 1: She said, thank you for these episodes, Malcolm. So, Malcolm,
39:46
Speaker 1: thank you for these episodes. Any chance you know how
39:48
Speaker 1: we could track down that cinnamon roll recipe. I was
39:51
Speaker 1: thinking would be nice to make some and share in
39:54
Speaker 1: my community and for a refresher for listeners who don't
39:58
Speaker 1: love cinnamon roles as much as I do. So did
40:00
Speaker 1: it immediately light up at this detail. So there was
40:03
Speaker 1: a character in the episode, Lester Glick, who was part
40:07
Speaker 1: of this study and one of the things that mentally
40:10
Speaker 1: fortified him. Although I think for me it would have
40:12
Speaker 1: probably had the opposite effect. As he carried around a
40:16
Speaker 1: picture of a cinnamon roll and he had it with
40:19
Speaker 1: him always, and it was something that kept him going.
40:22
Speaker 2: And then later he would for the rest of his
40:25
Speaker 2: life he would make them obsessively for family and friends,
40:28
Speaker 2: by the dozens. It was the defining one of the
40:32
Speaker 2: defining acts of the rest of his life.
40:34
Speaker 1: Now, I love cinnamon rolls, so I also wanted to
40:37
Speaker 1: track down that recipe.
40:39
Speaker 2: We will post it online in all those brave souls
40:41
Speaker 2: who want to recreate the famous cinnamon rolls can do that.
40:45
Speaker 2: That was fun. Thank you, Maria. That's really fun, of course.
40:48
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bye bye, Maria, Maria, Maria, thank you so
40:58
Speaker 2: much for agreeing to take on the role of revisionist
41:01
Speaker 2: histories inaugural homless person. Just so all of you know,
41:06
Speaker 2: we hope to make Maria a regular on the show
41:08
Speaker 2: in the future. You may have thought she went easy
41:11
Speaker 2: on me this time. Let me just say I have
41:13
Speaker 2: no expectation that will ever happen again. Oh, if you're
41:17
Speaker 2: wondering why I said it takes bravery to make the
41:19
Speaker 2: cinnamon rolls, let's just say the recipe involves among other
41:23
Speaker 2: things mash potatoes. Go to our website and see for yourself,
41:28
Speaker 2: and thank you to the Glick family for sharing that
41:31
Speaker 2: with us. Maria will be back soon, So send your questions,
41:35
Speaker 2: your challenges, your gripes, and your stories to all of
41:39
Speaker 2: us at revisionististory dot com. Revision's History is produced by
41:44
Speaker 2: Leaming Gestou, Amy gains Kiara Powell, and Jacob Smith. Our
41:47
Speaker 2: showrunner is Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering
41:52
Speaker 2: by Sarah Braguaire and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Fact checking
41:56
Speaker 2: by Mishelle Williams. Special thanks to Julia Barton. Subscribe to
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Speaker 2: pushkin plus to hear all our episodes of Revisionist History
42:05
Speaker 2: add free, and as of this year, get our shows
42:09
Speaker 2: two weeks earlier than the rest of the world. I'm
42:15
Speaker 2: Malcolm Pampa.