I disagree with respect to the Four Hour Body. While Ferriss is particularly good at presenting his content to a popular science audience, using enthusiasm and anecdotes to make the information salient, the scientific basis in the background isn't bad and definitely not in the same category as Shangri-La or Atkins. (I refer here to the presentation in his recent book, not the even more hypeish blog post from 2007 with the rather provocative and unrealistic link-bait title!)

What is particularly notable, and unusual for this kind of health and fitness book is the entire chapter on "Spotting Bad Science 101". It opens with a section on the difference between correlation and causation, a principle that is sprinkled throughout the rest of the book in notes and reminders. It would clearly be unfair to apply the criticism "people who assume correlation equals causation are often not the best at medical literature search and summary" in this case. Particularly if extended to the 'entire contents' of the book!

A criticism that I would level at Ferriss is that he takes weight loss principles that are fairly well known (in some circles) and repackages them under his own brand name, complete with the 'faddishness' that you mention. Plenty of blatant attention seeking all round.

I don't endorse everything in The Four Hour Body; it is not a textbook. It's just the best book that happens to be out there on the subject that is accessible to the intended audience. It models an instrumentally rational approach more so than a purely scientific one, balancing the use of established science with trying to incorporating other forms of legitimate but less rigorous forms of evidence from evidently successful professional advisors and simple experiment by hackers.

Comment author: David_Gerard 05 March 2011 10:26:28PM * 1 point [-]

I'm afraid my faith in Tim Ferriss' grasp of science and indeed epistemology was fatally shaken by looking into his claim that the ECA stack was scientifically proven. I was extremely interested by this, as I have worked on the Wikipedia article and found not even a consistent claimed mechanism from ECA advocates - what I could find gave a different mechanism each time, and was mostly terribly low-quality stuff on people's random web pages or eHow articles or FAQs that misspelled "freqently"[sic]. That Ferriss said he had a scientifically-backed mechanism was potentially great news!

So I sought out his references PDF (he doesn't put them in the actual book) and looked up what he had ... it was a long quote from an old version of the Wikipedia article. Except that that text was removed from the article because it was completely uncited, overall or in detail. And Ferriss' quote from the article carefully removed all the "citation needed" tags.

So yeah, given that example I have no faith whatsoever in Ferriss' grasp of what constitutes evidence beyond "it worked for me", let alone science.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 March 2011 10:39:52PM * -1 points [-]

You don't think "consume a @#%load of stimulants and you're going to lose weight" is scientifically proven? It just isn't a claim that is worth justifying beyond reference to whatever wikipedia has to say.

What Tim said about ECA didn't extend much beyond offhand mentions of the blatantly obvious. Including the part about dependence, ending up requiring constant stimulant use to maintain even normal levels of function and in general suggesting it is a stupid thing to do. He just isn't an ECA advocate - not even one that knows how to spell 'frequently'.

There is no way I'm going to follow you on that one. You are totally misjudging the extent to which that constitutes evidence against Tim's epistemic capability.

Extending the criticism to "the entire contents of Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss [emphasis in context]" is inexcusable. So is declaring an author incapable of understanding the difference between causation and correlation despite overwhelming evidence against your conclusion (a chapter explaining and constant emphasis where relevant) and basically no evidence for beyond 'fatal' disapproval.

Comment author: David_Gerard 05 March 2011 10:50:32PM * 3 points [-]

You don't think "consume a @#%load of stimulants and you're going to lose weight" is scientifically proven?

That is indeed scientifically proven, as I already noted in the RW article.

However, what Ferriss actually says in the book is (to cut'n'paste from the PDF I have here):

"The biochemistry was spot-on, and dozens of studies supported the effects. If E = 1, C = 1, and A = 1, the three combined have a synergistic effect of 1 + 1 + 1 = 6–10."

This sentence has a footnote, the text of which is:

"The ephedrine increases cAMP levels, the caffeine slows cAMP breakdown, and the aspirin further helps sustain increased cAMP levels by inhibiting prostagladin production."

I noticed this was the explanation from the deleted Wikipedia text. "At last, something citable!" I thought. And when I went to the reference PDF, I found a link to the old Wikipedia version with no references in whole or in part for that section and covered in "[citation needed]".

You are totally misjudging the extent to which that constitutes evidence against Tim's epistemic capability.

I think quoting an old Wikipedia article version as your crowning moment of evidence and carefully removing the "citation needed" tags is pretty damning.

Extending the criticism to "the entire contents of Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss [emphasis in context]" is inexcusable.

You have already misleadingly summarised what he says in the book in this case, as I note at the beginning of this comment, so aren't doing that well yourself.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 March 2011 11:12:25PM -1 points [-]

Our disagreement here is substantial and unlikely to change due to further conversation.

Comment author: David_Gerard comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: Pavitra 05 March 2011 11:38:51PM 0 points [-]

Downvoted for pettiness.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 March 2011 11:49:12PM * -1 points [-]

At least I have citations rather than (erroneous) rephrasings.

You incorrectly (although perhaps sincerely) infer which statements I am 'rephrasing'.

Similarly, when Ferriss mentions "dozens of studies supported the effects" he is clearly referring to the studies that do, in fact, support the effects of caffeine and ephedrine on the metabolism of fat during exercise. He does not claim that "dozens of studies support this proposed mechanism of action".

I definitely agree that Ferris would have been better off citing, for example, this paper from pubmed.

Obesity and thermogenesis related to the consumption of caffeine, ephedrine, capsaicin, and green tea.

Abstract

The global prevalence of obesity has increased considerably in the last decade. Tools for obesity management, including caffeine, ephedrine, capsaicin, and green tea have been proposed as strategies for weight loss and weight maintenance, since they may increase energy expenditure and have been proposed to counteract the decrease in metabolic rate that is present during weight loss. A combination of caffeine and ephedrine has shown to be effective in long-term weight management, likely due to different mechanisms that may operate synergistically, e.g., respectively inhibiting the phosphodiesterase-induced degradation of cAMP and enhancing the sympathetic release of catecholamines. However, adverse effects of ephedrine prevent the feasibility of this approach. Capsaicin has been shown to be effective, yet when it is used clinically it requires a strong compliance to a certain dosage, that has not been shown to be feasible yet. Also positive effects on body-weight management have been shown using green tea mixtures. Green tea, by containing both tea catechins and caffeine, may act through inhibition of catechol O-methyl-transferase, and inhibition of phosphodiesterase. Here, the mechanisms may also operate synergistically. In addition, tea catechins have antiangiogenic properties that may prevent development of overweight and obesity. Furthermore, the sympathetic nervous system is involved in the regulation of lipolysis, and the sympathetic innervation of white adipose tissue may play an important role in the regulation of total body fat in general.

As is the case with most papers that don't involve sacrificing rats for the benefit of science the discussion of mechanism must be taken with a grain of salt. The authors suggest only 'likely' and since I am not personally familiar with these particular scientists I would not go much beyond 'possibly' or 'purportedly' until someone does some serious bloodwork or rat slaughter. It is reasonable to assume that Ferriss would make approximately the same judgement.

I'm not a wikipedia editor but this paper seems worth citing. Whether or not they are right they do work in the Human Biology department in a university and know how to spell correctly.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 March 2011 12:43:58AM 0 points [-]

I'm not a wikipedia editor but this paper seems worth citing.

Looking at the wiki page I'm actually tempted to edit the 'Mechanism' section myself. Apart from neglecting the literature it makes a claim that probably warrants citation, dances on the edge of non-neutral tone and has poor grammar.

But looking at the talk page I just don't want to get involved. There is too much opinion flowing there and so sounds like 'throwing myself into the deep end' in terms of wikipedia contributions. I would want to know exactly which conventions to follow so that nobody had any credible excuse to reverse the edit.

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