Robb Wolf addressed a question about Jack Kruse and thermogenesis in his recent podcast and in his response, he spoke to what he called the “really nasty divisive kind of scene growing up within the paleosphere.”
I have been uncomfortable about the tone of some of these discussions despite greatly respecting many of the folks involved. I thought Robb said what I felt and decided his response needed a bit more visibility, so I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing it.
I have no illusions that we’ll all join hands and go skipping down the lane, but maybe it’s the semi-Buddhist in me, I’d like to put a plug in for a middle way.
This isn’t the entire answer (which was nearly 15 minutes long) and it’s been lightly edited for readability. My two cents afterward.
I’m not that far off of where Jack is coming from. Like I see some benefit to cyclic ketogenic eating, I see some benefit to eating with the seasons, havng a little bit of an eye directed towards seasonality and locality. I don’t think there’s any doubt that different hormetic stressors, both cold and heat, can definitely be beneficial.
I think Jack’s way more emphatic about it than I am. I think that there’s a variety of stressors, both heat and cold, that could be highly beneficial. Whether you or not you should be on a ketogenic diet all the time, I think is a little subject to your activity level and that. …
I see this really nasty divisive kind of scene growing up within the paleosphere, whatever the hell you want to call it. And you have some folks that are really strict adherents to this ketogenic approach, you have people that are pushing this “safe starch” kind of gig. … It’s intriguing to me that a lot of the clinicians, the people who are actually dealing with patients on a day-to-day basis (although I wouldn’t put Chris Kresser in this, he kinda straddles this thing; he deals with a ton of people but he’s also cognizant that a ketogenic approach isn’t a one size fits all for everybody). But it’s interesting, a lot of people who are in this kind of practitioner role, they see huge benefit for low-carb paleo intervention.
And then you have a lot of other folks that are kinda out of this academic scene, they don’t actually work with people, they don’t actually help people on a day to day basis, they spend a ton of time kinda pontificating on the Internet and stuff like that and they spin out on all these tiny minutia details kinda things about what’s optimum and what’s not, but they’re not actually doing anything on a day to day basis to work with or help people.
And this thing has grown into this really fucking nasty scene. And it’s a bummer for me, because up until pretty recently, I think that we’ve been able to navigate stuff with a certain amount of humility and a mutual respect, and I see that stuff just disappearing and it’s definitely too bad in my book. …
There’s a lot of people out there that are getting really nasty about this topic and I would just caution folks to not do it, it’s not really doing anybody who needs help any good. There are millions of people that need to hear some sort of a moderate, measured message in order to save their life. And I think that that should be kinda the primary goal. Should we talk about the nuances of this stuff and figure out best practices? Absolutely. But not at the expense of kicking each other in the balls.
And I see a lot of that stuff going on. … Jack has been pretty viciously attacked in all this stuff. Is some of what he’s putting forward controversial? Is the way that he’s doing it kinda wacky? Yeah, but you don’t need to publicly assassinate the guy. I’ve seen that go down from other people, fitness luminaries, and it’s just ugly, worthless stuff. … I would just encourage people to try to maintain a little bit of respect and decorum about this stuff and not just go for the jugular.
I’m not particularly religious, but I am generally more comfortable with St. Augustine’s concept of “love for mankind and hatred of sins.” I totally get we’re not all the same (and I noticed Emily Deans still hasn’t added Paul Jaminet’s blog back to her blogroll after removing it for Paul’s Mercola posts), and in fact, I’ve been known to go there myself (ref my Taubes “dick move” tweet at AHS11).
Now, it’s possible that Robb is channeling Kevon Bacon (see below), but maybe not. Anyways, for the record, here’s a +1 for respect and decorum.
Nice post! I am a lay Buddhist, but have been known to get very very critical when it comes to analyzing evidence put forth by paleo authors.
There is indeed a fine line between arguing the facts and arguing the personalities. But there is a further level of being chill-people have different ways of reacting to stuff, and some people like to vent. I try to keep that in mind, but have a difficult time with it. We all have biases towards our own thoughts, some just have stronger biases than others.
Of course he’d advocate people like me shutting up. I’m the one, after all, who called him out for selling soybean oil frozen dinners as “paleo.”
And of course it’s OK to kick vegans in the balls as much as you want (Don Matesz most famously, but look at the way people talk about people like Campbell who have a lot more science on their side than Kruse). Just don’t hurt our nice little low-carb friendz (TM).
The people I support are the people not pushing anything. Pushing is the real problem here.
I think your Twitter point is a good one. It’s the infighting (or appearance of) that perhaps is what’s really at play here. But it’s still not my style to go there unless pushed (I’m the kind of person who’ll let someone in front of me in traffic if they are waiting, but will risk damaging my car to prevent someone from cutting me off … go figure), and the recent dinging of AHS12 certainly has left me uncomfortable. Maybe I’m wrong, but I figured I’d at least put it out there. And maybe if the folks you referenced do the same, we could make some real progress.
We’ll never make real progress with normal people if we have a guy on the helm telling people to soak themselves in buckets of ice…
But why do you think that all of these other folks at the helm (who seem pretty smart to me) aren’t as concerned? I mean besides Robb?
They are, they just haven’t gone public for some reason.
Yeah, well inviting him to all their events is certainly sending a mixed message if that’s the case.
He’s a neurosurgeon. Instant cred.
Dr Kruse certainly poses an interesting problem.
On the one hand he is popular drawing people in with what he says and his style is a good motivator for some people. Also most of his advice is not new even if is often taken to rather novel extremes.
However on the other hand he is spreading a yet another dogmatic form of advice giving the same recommendations for everyone while not accepting any human variation. He dismisses people who question or disagree with anything he says as dogmatic and ignorant. He also displays a rather relaxed attitude to factual accuracy, although his writings are so extensive and full of technical language that this can be difficult to identify.
The shear volume of his writing and their rambling nature makes it very difficult to critic effectively without spending many hours on it which few have the time to do. It is also often difficult to pin down exactly what points he is making among all the neurobiology, hibernating polar bears and ketogenic Sherpas. Pointing out individual errors seems so small compared to the total volume as to seem rather pointless. I think this causes people to focus more on things like his style and attitude than they otherwise would. I suspect this also means that many people such as Robb don’t have time to read what he writes and just look at his final recommendations so missing out on the many more eccentric parts.
I’m sure Jack is a nice guy in person who does want to help people and if he stuck to advice based on his personal experience I think few would have a problem. However he is now spinning a grand theory to explain everything that is filled with technical jargon that few can judge the accuracy of and consisting of strict protocols and diets. I feel the complexity and dogmatism of his advise is only going to increase divisions between people rather than lessen them.
So I guess the dilemma is do you welcome in someone who is a popularist and will bring in more people and money at the expense of losing your own credibility because they says some things that agree with you and at the same time allowing them to spread inaccurate and dogmatic information with your approval. Or do you call people out on their inaccuracies and reliability even if it means causing arguments and losing fans.
He is definitely a Marmite personality, to use a British expression.
Well here’s the thing. He’s *been* welcomed in (at least by the de facto leadership of both the academic and practical paleosphere … if their actions are to be believed). And to be fair, it’s not just him, right? We’ve got Taubes, we’ve got Guyenet. We’ve got Rosedale, we’ve got Jaminet. And so on. Emily Deans pooh-pooh’d my comment that the paleosphere was looking awfully political, but we seem to have quite a bit of partisan gridlock! I’m not sure if the outlook is any better for paleo than it is for our democracy.
You can’t put any group of people together without politics happening :)
Thanks for getting this down for posterity, Beth.
Robb also said that it’s important to debate with literature, with evidence. I obviously agree. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with “calling” people out, but I do think there’s a respectful way to do it and a not respectful way to do it. And the not respectful way just reflects badly on the person dishing it out. Disagreement and debate are good. Mud-slinging and name-calling are not, and it turns off a lot of people because that’s not what we’re here for. Sadly, it doesn’t even make for good entertainment.
I’m beginning to interpret a lot of the recent n=1 advice as a passive-aggressive response to the infighting. Folks like Sisson and Wolf don’t want to get in the middle of things, but they’re secretly telling us that if we want to explore food reward or starches for ourselves, that there’s a way to do it to see if it works for us. There’s only one way to know, and that’s to try it, because theorizing about it on some blog’s comments ain’t gonna make the issue any clearer.
You’re welcome. Part of my discomfort with the mud-slinging and name-calling is self-serving, because the reality is that *I* feel like some of this is being thrown my way for not being as critical of folks like Kruse or Shanahan or Gedgaudas. Heck, I *liked* Nora’s book despite disagreeing with her position on carbs and I am very grateful she pointed me towards neurofeedback.
Ultimately I don’t have the education or conviction that these folks do that what these folks are bringing to the party is just crap (like Robb, I do think there’s something to cold thermogenesis, just not sure we Kruse’s approach is necessarily correct). But I get the point that not everyone is as comfortable picking and choosing.
I think Melissa has put her finger on it tho … this mud-slinging is fine when we’re all in on it together (like with Campbell). But when it’s essentially in-fighting, it’s like the family get-together when the in-laws hate each other. Hard to see a way out of it.
I’ve tried to read JK. I can’t even read what he’s trying to say. I can’t even object to what he’s trying to say because I can’t even read it.
Yeah, he’s not exactly the world’s greatest communicator ;).