Nick Tiller | Skeptical Inquirer (original) (raw)
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
‘Woodpeckers Don’t Play Football’: The Concussion Repercussion
September 24, 2024
Nick Tiller
I dislocated my shoulder during wrestling practice in 2015. The nature of this type of injury leaves an indelible mark, and I can still recall it vividly nearly a decade later. I’d toppled backward, arm outstretched and externally rotated to break my fall—an amateur mistake. The pain was instant and searing. I felt a “fizzing” …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
The Boxer Who Sparked a Transgender Debate without Being Transgender
August 27, 2024
Nick Tiller
“It hurt like hell,” said Italy’s Angela Carini to her cornermen. Her welterweight contest against Algeria’s Imane Khelif lasted just forty-six seconds. The pugilists were squaring off in the preliminary rounds of the Olympic boxing competition in Paris. After absorbing a few solid right hands and fearing her nose was broken, the Italian retreated to …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Spring Energy: The Supplement Exposed by Skeptical Athletes
August 2, 2024
Nick Tiller
The United States has twice as many supplement brands as it does McDonald’s restaurants. That’s a lot of supplements. Of those 30,000 or so, only a handful have robust evidence for efficacy. Prominent among them are carbohydrate supplements—the drinks and gels of concentrated sugar that cyclists, triathletes, and marathon runners chug throughout their races (over …
From Gods to Gurus: The Evolution of Olympic Superstition and Pseudoscience
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 4
July/August 2024
Nick Tiller
Milo of Croton once outwrestled a lion. On another occasion, he tied a cord around his head and snapped the band using only the bulging veins in his temples. He drank ox blood for fuel and ate raw flesh to scare his rivals. Born in the sixth century BCE (no prizes for guessing where) and …
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The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Back Inside the UFC’s Pseudoscience Crisis
June 25, 2024
Nick Tiller
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is to professional mixed martial arts what the NFL is to American football, the NBA is to basketball, and the MLE is to hot-dog eating: the world’s premier organization for hosting and promoting the sport. In fact, in the past three decades, the UFC has had more influence on the …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Health Club Equinox Puts a Price on Longevity: Just $42,000 a Year
May 29, 2024
Nick Tiller
Bryan Johnson has spent tens of millions of dollars on a highly publicized quest to reverse the aging process. The tech millionaire follows a strict diet and fitness regimen, stacks multiple dietary supplements, obsesses over sleep hygiene, and subjects himself to a litany of medical tests to track his biological data. Harnessing his newfound celebrity, …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
The Best Time of Day to Exercise: Another Media Fail?
April 26, 2024
Nick Tiller
I was contacted in 2023 by a journalist writing for a major news outlet. In her email—which was written with the terseness that only journalists and famous people seem to get away with—she asked me to comment on a new study that had made a “major breakthrough” in the best time of day to exercise …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
From the Lab to the Layperson: A Pioneering Initiative to Improve the Translation of Science
March 27, 2024
Nick Tiller
“If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you, and you probably won’t like how they do it.” —Shirley Malcolm, American Association for the Advancement of Science. We know that complex life likely evolved from single-celled organisms. As soon as microbes emerged from the primordial soup, they were shaped by …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
February 26, 2024
Nick Tiller
David had always found ice bathing after exercise intuitive. After all, people had been putting ice on their injuries for decades, and the RICE principle—rest, ice, compression, and elevation—had been a mainstay in the management of injuries since he’d learned it at school (despite questionable supporting evidence for efficacy). He’d also seen athletes on social …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Telling True Stories: What Can the Anti-Science Community Teach Us about Sci-Comm?
January 30, 2024
Nick Tiller
Most readers won’t be familiar with Clark Stanley. And yet, to those who lived in the Old West, he was a household name. In the aging half of the nineteenth century, Stanley’s theater company was one of several that toured rural towns selling magical health elixirs. For the townsfolk, seeing a Clark Stanley convoy kicking …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Festive Fitness Fads to Know about This Holiday
January 5, 2024
Nick Tiller
Christmas is a time for giving. For the snake oil salesmen of the world, however, it’s a time for taking. The holiday sees capitalism, the pressures of gift-giving, and dietary excesses coalesce, creating the perfect storm for consumer exploitation. The commercial world swells with baseless claims and pseudoscience. After a year covering political ideologies …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Testosterone Supplements: Summoning the Specter of Tucker Carlson
December 5, 2023
Nick Tiller
I wasn’t expecting the New York Jets vs. the New York Giants game last month to trigger a traumatic flashback. A commercial for Nugenix’s “total testosterone-boosting formula” appeared during half-time, sending me spiraling through space-time to April 2022. It was the day Tucker Carlson’s documentary The End of Men received its inaugural trailer. The …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Phelps Dives Deeper into the Pseudoscience of Cupping
October 31, 2023
Nick Tiller
The world watched in awe as Michael Phelps—the most decorated Olympian in history—added another five gold medals to his record-breaking tally at the Rio Games in 2016. This he did with conspicuous purple bruises across his back and shoulders, caused by cupping therapy. Today, it’s so common for an elite athlete to fraternize with pseudoscience, …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
My Healthy but Waning Skepticism of Weight Loss Drugs.
September 26, 2023
Nick Tiller
“Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” —Richard P. Feynman The Gila Monster is North America’s only venomous Lizard. The reptile can grow to twenty-two inches and has a vicious bite that’s as toxic as that of the western diamondback rattlesnake. While studying the lizard’s venom in the 1990s, …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Novak Djokovic and the Pseudoscience Grand Slam
August 28, 2023
Nick Tiller
When it comes to Grand Slam titles, Novak Djokovic has eclipsed every other male tennis player in history. He’s the only man to be the reigning champion of all four majors simultaneously across three surfaces, and by securing his twenty-third trophy at the French Open 2023, the Serbian national perhaps cemented his place as the …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Magic Jewelry and the Irony of Ignorance
July 24, 2023
Nick Tiller
The plot for the epic fantasy series Lord of The Rings centered on, well, a ring. Not just any ring, but a magic ring. The “one ring to rule them all” bestowed immense power on its owner: the power of invisibility, the power to dominate the wills of others, and power over the bearers of …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Ozempic and Wegovy for Obesity: Landmark Therapies with Forgotten Flaws
June 23, 2023
Nick Tiller
How desperate to lose weight would you have to be before you’d let a surgeon slice a hole in your abdomen and remove three-quarters of your stomach? This is called “sleeve gastrectomy,” a common bariatric surgery that reduces the stomach’s size and decreases appetite by blunting the release of ghrelin—a hormone that stimulates hunger. More …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Inside The UFC’s Pseudoscience Crisis
May 17, 2023
Nick Tiller
It’s hard work beating people up for a living. A professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter typically trains year-round, fusing fighting disciplines such as boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and Brazilian Ju Jitsu with concurrent resistance and endurance training. They must carefully balance stress and recovery to bring improvements rather than injuries and infections, and then, during …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Electric Muscle Stimulation: The Devil Is in the Detail
April 27, 2023
Nick Tiller
I used to be obsessed with martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. I watched all his movies, read his books, and studied his moves (quite ineffectually). Aside from his martial arts skills and philosophies, it was Lee’s physique that distinguished him from other action heroes of the time. Standing five feet seven inches (172 cm) tall, …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
The Physical Toll of Your Smartphone Addiction
March 27, 2023
Nick Tiller
The least-used app on my phone is “phone.” The diverse functionality of the smartphone—texting, talking, video streaming, gaming, social networking—has changed the way we work, play, and communicate. I still wonder if Steve Jobs, when he introduced the iPhone at the Macworld San Francisco Keynote Address in 2007, anticipated the influence Apple’s revolutionary creation would …
Ten Health and Wellness Fallacies Every Skeptic Should Know
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 2
March/April 2023
Nick Tiller
If my recent work as a health and wellness skeptic could be distilled into a single lesson, it would be this: Marketing companies understand our biases better than we do. In a commercialist culture, saturated by big business and bad science, I believe this is a fundamental lesson in determining objective truths and making sound …
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Science and Pseudoscience in Health and Wellness | Nick Tiller
February 23, 2023
Nick Tiller
The global health and wellness industry is worth an estimated USD $4 trillion. Marketing regulations are disturbingly lax, and many products are sold on baseless claims, pseudoscience, and questionable evidence of safety and efficacy. Profits derived from health club memberships, diets, supplements, alternative “therapies,” and thousands of other products and services. The industry has expanded …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Barefoot Running: Conspiracies and Controversies
February 17, 2023
Nick Tiller
All doctrines have demons, some more literal than others. What I mean by this is that ideologies tend to endure because they’ve a common antagonist against whom proponents can rally. For example, the Abrahamic religions brandish the Devil; politicians demonize members and policies of the opposing party; athletes and supporters unite against an opposing sports …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Health, Wellness, and the “Quick-Fix Fallacy”
January 25, 2023
Nick Tiller
Health and wellness scams have endured the ages by exploiting (1) scientific naiveté and (2) our innate desire for simple solutions to complex problems. The Mesopotamians made substantial contributions to science and technology. They were the first to use irrigation in agriculture, the first to forge tools from bronze and iron, and the first to …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
The Liver King, Lies, and Logical Fallacies
January 6, 2023
Nick Tiller
The media backlash was swift and severe. More severe, in fact, than if an Olympic athlete had tested positive for a banned substance. For years, Brian Johnson—a.k.a. The Liver King—has marketed his brand on the core values of primal living founded on his self-derived “Ancestral Tenets.” Primarily through viral social media coverage, Johnson purportedly made …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
The Backward World of ‘Retro Walking’
December 1, 2022
Nick Tiller
In terms of medical knowledge, the ancient world was primitive by modern standards. It had no germ theory to prevent the spread of disease, no anesthetics to pacify patients before surgery, and no evidence-based medicine to counteract the belief that “humors”—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—influenced the body and its emotions. The ancients were …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Is Sport A Breeding Ground for Pseudoscience?
November 10, 2022
Nick Tiller
Earlier this year, the world’s most successful male tennis player, Novak Djokovic, was deported from Australia—not for misconduct on the court or for doping, but for violating Australia’s border policy that mandated COVID-19 vaccinations.1 Djokovic is one of many professional athletes who have refused the vaccine, a list that includes Czech tennis player Renata Voráčová; …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Ten Health and Wellness Fallacies Every Skeptic Should Know
September 23, 2022
Nick Tiller
If my recent work as a health and wellness skeptic could be distilled into a single message, it would be this: Marketing companies understand our biases better than we do. In a commercialist culture, saturated by big business and bad science, I believe this to be a fundamental lesson in determining objective truths and making …
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 5
September/October 2022
Nick Tiller
In a 1980 Newsweek essay, Isaac Asimov wrote, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as …
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The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Kinesio Tape: A Magnificent Marketing Machine
August 22, 2022
Nick Tiller
Kinesiology tape, also known as Kinesio Tape, KT Tape, or just K-Tape, is made from 100 percent cotton fiber and “specialized elastic cores” that stretch in length but not width, allowing it to move and flex with muscles and joints.
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Social Media Fitness Influencers: From Pseudoscience to Psychopathology
July 22, 2022
Nick Tiller
He is one of the most talented and recognizable athletes on earth. He is also one of the most well paid, earning £25 m ($30 m) per year playing soccer for Manchester United. Yet by endorsing an array of brands and businesses, including Coca-Cola, LiveScore, Free Fire, Nike, Herbalife Nutrition, and Tag Heuer, on his …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
When Medicines Go Rogue, Part 2: Oxygen
June 23, 2022
Nick Tiller
When the ancestors of modern reptiles emerged from the water and committed to air breathing, they triggered an approximate .300-million-year evolutionary journey that led us to the wonderfully complex network of tubes, membranes, and muscles we presently call the human respiratory system (West, Watson, and Fu 2007). Its primary purpose: the movement of oxygen (O2) …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Ten Health and Wellness Buzzwords Every Skeptic Should Know
May 26, 2022
Nick Tiller
The word rhetoric, derived from the Greek noun “rhetor” meaning “speaker,” was once considered the art of verbal persuasion. Up to the late nineteenth century, rhetoric played a prominent role in the western education of orators, lawyers, counselors, historians, statesmen, and poets (Conley 1990). In fact, rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers, thereby …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
When Medicines Go Rogue, Part 1: Methylene Blue
April 20, 2022
Nick Tiller
The notion of an “exaggerated health claim” is as old as the wellness industry itself, but only in the past few decades have health claims benefited from being periodically shared by the world’s social media “influencers.” The exposure they afford a product is invaluable, amplifying the marketing claims, and occasionally conceiving new ones, to millions …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Using Fear to Sell Fitness: The Health Trends that Are Preying on Our Insecurities.
March 30, 2022
Nick Tiller
“Fructose is a poison,” he said repeatedly. “You gotta’ stop eating fruit.” “I don’t understand what you mean,” I replied. “In what way is fructose a poison?” “Well, it causes disease and … it’s a poison!” It quickly became clear that he could not articulate what he meant by “poison” or, indeed, how fructose supposedly …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Intravenous Nutrient Drips: An Expensive Solution to A Nonexistent Problem
February 21, 2022
Nick Tiller
On the ground floor of a shopping mall in southern California, nestled between a kiosk selling hot pretzels and another selling mobile phones, customers relax in carefully arranged leather sofas while drip bags containing clear liquids drain slowly through veins in their forearms. These “treatments,” which cost between 200and200 and 200and500, are increasingly popular, with …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
How To Use Critical Thinking to Inform Better Health and Fitness Decisions in 2022
January 25, 2022
Nick Tiller
Making and breaking New Year’s resolutions is a long-standing tradition of Western Culture. Starting with a clean slate is appealing because it allows us to erase errors of the past year and instill a sense of hope for the new one. Most New Year’s resolutions revolve around health and fitness, with “Doing more exercise,” “Losing …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Can You Breathe Your Way to Better Health? The Science and Pseudoscience of ‘Training Your Lungs’
December 20, 2021
Nick Tiller
The respiratory system has long been a target of the commercial health and fitness industry. This is due to several reasons, the most recent being the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has focussed attention on respiratory health and the means (proven or otherwise) to enhance it. We’ll get to that shortly. Even before COVID-19, chronic respiratory …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Diets, Detox, and Other Delusions
November 18, 2021
Nick Tiller
We’re in the midst of a pandemic! No, not that pandemic. I’m referring to the rapidly increasing worldwide prevalence of obesity, defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a condition of abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. Obesity is a serious problem. At the last assessment in 2016, obesity …
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science
Cryotherapy: The Cold, Hard Truth
October 26, 2021
Nick Tiller
The health and wellness industry is worth an estimated $4 trillion. This extraordinary valuation encompasses the sale of health club memberships, exercise classes, fad diets, supplements, alternative therapies, and thousands of other products and practices, all vying for our attention. In this, the inaugural article in “The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science” column, I chose …