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Field Notes

On changing your mind about food

A short history of dietary certainty, and what the pattern of reversal teaches

The past four decades have produced a series of public reversals on dietary fundamentals. Saturated fat, dietary cholesterol, eggs, salt, red meat, low-carb diets, seed oils. Each was confidently declared dangerous, then re-evaluated, sometimes reversed. The pattern of reversal is itself the lesson.

#nutrition #contested #evidence #seed-oils #ageing

By Mick

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Field Notes

The lectin question, examined

Steven Gundry, The Plant Paradox, and what to make of a popular thesis the field has rejected

Gundry argues that lectins — a class of plant proteins — are responsible for chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, and obesity. The book has sold millions; the mainstream nutrition community has dismissed it. A closer look at where the argument is right, where it falls apart, and why elimination diets keep producing apparent results.

#nutrition #contested #evidence #seed-oils #supplements

By Mick

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Longevity Practice

A framework for evaluating supplement claims

Three tiers, one worked example, and a way to keep one's wallet shut

The supplement industry generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue from claims that range from well-evidenced to fabricated. A three-tier framework helps separate what is worth taking, what is worth experimenting with, and what is worth ignoring entirely.

#supplements #evidence #mental-models #biomarkers #habits

By Mick

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Flow & Focus

Flow isn't what you think it is

The state the literature describes, and the one the marketing sells

Csikszentmihalyi's original research describes a psychological state with reasonable scientific support. The popular literature has converted that descriptive finding into a prescriptive performance hack. The distance between the two matters.

#flow #deep-work #neuroscience #evidence

By Mick

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Field Notes

"Science is fifteen years behind" — separating the real from the rhetorical

Translation lag is a real phenomenon. It is also the most common defence used for unsupported claims.

A rhetorical move common in wellness discourse: mainstream medicine is decades behind what is already known, and current critique can be dismissed as a temporary lag. The phenomenon is real. The deflection is mostly not. Distinguishing the two is one of the more useful skills available.

#contested #evidence #mental-models #supplements

By Mick

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Energy & Recovery

The blue light glasses question, examined

Lab findings, RCT results, and where the popular advice goes wrong

The blue light glasses market is large and growing. The premise — that filtering short-wavelength evening light prevents melatonin suppression and protects sleep — is half-supported by the laboratory research and contradicted by the real-world trials. The science is real. The product is mostly not what the science is about.

#sleep #circadian #light #contested #evidence #chronotype

By Mick

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Field Notes

Does TV really "eat your dopamine"?

What the neuroscience says about passive consumption and reward, and where the slogan overreaches

The claim that television "depletes dopamine" has spread from Lembke and Huberman into general health discourse. The underlying neuroscience does not say what the popular version claims it says. The behavioural concerns about passive consumption are real, and largely independent of dopamine.

#contested #neuroscience #habits #attention #evidence #social

By Mick

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Field Notes

You are not the average of the five people you spend the most time with

The Jim Rohn quote, the Christakis findings, and what social-influence research actually says

A well-loved aphorism with the rhetorical force of a research finding. The actual research on social influence is real, more modest in its claims than the popular framing, and tangled with a confound the slogan does not acknowledge.

#contested #evidence #social #mental-models #behaviour-change #learning

By Mick

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Mind & Method

The rapid skill acquisition claim, examined

Ericsson, Kaufman, and what "twenty hours" does and doesn't get you

Josh Kaufman's argument that any skill can be acquired in 20 hours pushed back usefully against the popular misreading of Anders Ericsson's expertise research. It also overcorrected. What 20 hours actually buys, and where the "creativity over facts" framing breaks down.

#learning #evidence #deep-work #contested #focus #behaviour-change

By Mick

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Energy & Recovery

Chronotype and the personal sleep schedule

Why the eight-hour mandate misses what the research actually says

The eight-hour sleep rule, taken as a universal prescription, papers over a finding that is more useful to know: people are biologically different in their sleep timing. The chronotype literature has been documenting this for four decades.

#sleep #circadian #evidence #light #chronotype

By Mick

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Flow & Focus

Single-tasking, attention residue, and the cost of switching

What the task-switching literature actually shows

The popular framing of multitasking as a moral failure misses what the research describes: the brain does not multitask, it switches between tasks, and the cost of switching is larger and more invisible than the people incurring it typically realise.

#deep-work #focus #attention #evidence #neuroscience

By Mick

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Mind & Method

The goal-setting research, briefly summarised

What Locke and Latham actually found, and the implementation intention research that followed

Goal-setting theory is one of the most-replicated findings in industrial psychology. The popular literature has built itself around the surface features while sometimes missing the conditions that make the underlying mechanism actually work.

#habits #mental-models #evidence #behaviour-change

By Mick

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