Kevin tackles pseudoscience on social media, the ethics of free speech, and who’s accountable for harmful fitness claims. Hear about a shocking case of “slapping therapy” gone wrong and why critical thinking is essential in navigating misinformation.
Kevin tackles pseudoscience on social media, the ethics of free speech, and who’s accountable for harmful fitness claims. Hear about a shocking case of “slapping therapy” gone wrong and why critical thinking is essential in navigating misinformation.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello listeners and welcome back to the show. This week I would like to talk about some interesting, lets be kind and called it pseudoscience I saw on my instagram feed.
The back story to this ties in nicely with what is, you wont be surprised to hear: PHILOSOPHY. At this point I think quick and dirty tips should just give me a philosophy podcast and we can debate the meaning of everything. What do you think? Answers on a postcard to the usual address. Anyway, the philosophical concept is that of Freedom of Speech. Which usually falls under ethics.
Now, I get it, I really do. The truth can be boring, tedious and involve complex reasoning steps. But when people present total nonsense, I get to flex my humungous brain and use logic to gain the upper hand in arguing against such charlatans. So, lets say here that I believe that free speech is a good general principle in any liberal society. But this is very different from me saying that free speech equates to the total lack of restriction on any speech. If you disagree, then I’d push back by saying ok: do you think I should be able to run up and down an aircraft shouting ‘Bomb!’. That is clearly ridiculous, so most reasonable people would agree that unrestricted speech and free speech is different.
How does this all tie into fitness? Well, because I frequently see a total lack of restriction on claims being made in social media posts. These claims, I would argue SHOULD be restricted because they can result in injury or harm. Last week in the podcast, I responded to an email from a listener and one part of the email was that customers of a gym should take responsibility for things like injury and should look into things like the program design to make sure it is good. I disagree totally and I will tell you why. Here is a thought experiment for you. Tomorrow, one of those drones over New Jersey (has anyone seen one> let me know!) Touches down and an entity says ‘take me to your leader’. These aliens come from a different dimension and the laws of things like physics work differently. If you held a baseball out in your hand and asked them what they think will happen if you let go of it, what do you think they would say? Keep in mind they don’t have gravity in their universe, physics work differently. They COULD say the ball will fall, but they could equally say it will fly out the nearest window of its own accord, or it will burst into flames or it will turn into a frog. If you have no experience of something happening and have never seen the effects of a certain cause, then on what basis would you be making your predictions? The same goes for the gym. If I have never been in a gym before, ever had a personal trainer before or played a sport, then what kind of experiential data would I be marshalling in favour of a belief that the gym program was either good or bad? That’s why I am paying a membership. Expertise!
So I can’t agree that the onus is on the end user for faulty information or a faulty product. The responsibility is on the person selling said product or making such claims. I would also argue the social media networks have a responsibility also. Lets say I own a gun and you come to me and say you want to use my gun. You then go and commit a crime with my gun. Am I responsible? Well the answer here is I am culpable. I would be culpable in the UK under the Firearms Act. In the U.S. there are recent cases of gun owners being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. If you provide the platform and facilitate the spreading of misinformation, then you are culpable. This is where I circle in my story about this week and what I saw on my own feed.
In July 2024, here in the UK, an ‘alternative healer’ was found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for 10 years. He was a practitioner of what is called ‘Paid Lajin’ which is a slapping therapy. Practitioners say that the slapping expels toxins from the body. A woman and a six year old child died after his therapies. These claims that the bruising from the slapping is toxins is frankly, mind boggling. But, in spite of the fact that at least two people have died from consulting with just one of these therapists, I saw an ‘alternative’ healer on instagram making a whole post about this exact thing! Now, I’m also not talking about someone that doesn’t have a big following. He has 154,000 followers himself, the company he works with has 1 million followers and the video he made about slapping has so far had 143,000 views!
The description tells you how to slap yourself, which for obvious reasons, I am not going to tell you how to do, but then goes on to say: This unblocks energy pathways, detoxifies the body and is a non invasive way to get stem cell therapy. Someone asks in the comments: ‘Is the bruising from the treatment?’ And he replies ‘It isn’t a bruise, it’s stagnant stuck energy being released from the body’. I honestly have no words. These are the kind of people you’ll see a Netflix documentary about in ten years.
But all this is to reinforce what I have said before. I would recommend learning how to find and read primary sources, not social media posts, learn to analyse and critique and to remove emotions from the equation. Make sure your position is based on deductive logic. It honestly frightens me that platforms like instagram are happy to host and facilitate the spreading of information that has so far resulted in deaths and a ten year jail sentence. We can do things like learn how to investigate the validity of claims, but this just brings us back full circle to my original claim that as a non sophisticated user, I cant tell the difference between right and wrong in this situation. I can make a deductive inference, but can I? A deductively valid argument has true premises that lead to a true conclusion. The most famous is: all humans are mortal, socrates is a human, therefore socrates is a mortal. But if one premise is false, our conclusion could also be false. If I dont have enough knowledge, then I can’t tell if the premise is true or not. If I have chronic back pain, then the claim I can slap myself a few hundred times and the energy channels that cause my back pain will release whilst looking suspiciously like bruising, then why would I doubt this?
What do you think? Do you agree with me that user platforms have a role to play in choosing what we see? Or should users be allowed to post whatever they want under the guise of free speech?
If you have any questions or would like to just say ‘hi’, please email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brennan Goetchuss and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app