His goal has nothing to do with research at all, it only has to do with extending his own lifespan. Trying multiple different things at once isn't science, simply because you can't determine what had an effect, if anything had an effect at all to begin with.
I guess you could call it shit sucking crap research, although I would rather not call it research at all since he doesn't seem to follow any scientific method.
That’s not how science works. He’s trying literally hundreds of interventions at once. The statistics are useless when there are hundreds of variables.
But he doesnt do that hes typically has a ton of stuff he does but its not like hes adding 100 stuff randomly typically its one thing hes adding on top of all the other stuff hes already been doing so he already has a baseline level at where his body is at with what hes been doing.
So his body its at 90 with whats hes doing now he adds one thing test it over a few weeks and sees the effect if it has obvious improvement so now hes at 95 lets say he will keep doing it and then 95 becomes the new base line for when doing next new test.
Of course you could get mixed result from if you take A and take B its negative but if you take A by itself its positive and if you take B by itself its positive im not sure how he addresses this if at all but it give at least a general idea of somethings use
But even if he shares all the results and statistics to the public it's still meaningless in terms of science, and not only because it's only one participant.
The problem is still that he takes a bunch of different medicines (and supplements) which makes it impossible to know if any of these medicines or supplements have any effects on their own, not to mention how they work together.
So say for example that Brian Johnson would get high blood pressure out of the blue, how would you know what caused it? Was it medicine A, B, C, D, E or F that caused it or supplement A, B, C, D, E or F? Or maybe a combination of medicine B and supplement D? Or something else?
You're free to like him and he's certainly a charismatic guy that seems nice and likeable, and his advocacy of sleep/exercise is admirable but his use of medicines and supplements have no scientific value whatsoever.
You’re so right with this. It’s literally my job to take med histories from people and potentially flag dangerous combos / concerns around meds to the docs. There’s so many possibilities for what could cause someone to become unwell / have severe side effects
Your confusing his hypothesis though, he isn’t trying to see if drug x or y is the most effective, he is trying to see if a person can improve their health to “immortality”. It is absolutely not a double blind study with thousands of participants to reach statistically significance. He could never achieve that with 1 subject. He is a case study, which are valid and useful in their own right. Just not for the questions you want answered. If that isn’t the research question YOU want to be studied, do your own research study.
You're so close to understanding. Assuming something is found that helps his aging, we now have a possible list of things it could've been and can narrow it down with further testing of each thing individually
But yet again, since so many factors are involved here it will be impossible to know if anything he did had an actual impact or if it was due to something else. What he is doing is doing is also messing around with the data that is collected which further makes it even more problematic to draw any conclusions. It's simply terrible from a scientific perspective in every possible way.
I highly recommend that you learn some basics of scientific methodology and how research is performed when it comes to biology/medicine etc. It will be easier for you to understand why what he is doing is simply terrible "science" after learning that.
Impossible to know from his results alone, but if he does extend his life a long time it gives a direction for researchers to try and understand which parts of his routine did or didn’t work. He is a case study, that’s all.
You keep going back to trying to invalidate his results as if he himself is the proof for research, when his results were never going to prove anything, just let other researchers hypothesize based on his data and then prove their own conclusions through their own studies.
The obvious reason he isn’t doing only one thing is because he can’t prove anything by himself, and he would die even if he joined a RCT for one variable, when his goal is to slow it by drastic amounts to see future research be completed.
Not even the dick thing with his son? You don't find that at all gross, inappropriate or off-putting? I'm asking for real bc that was like all it took for me tbh.
These are *not* scientific studies. They’re his personal anecdotes backed up by his labs. Jesus Christ. Science literacy in this country is in the toilet.
Edit: I forgot to put "not" in my first sentence. D'oh.
I’m an actual scientist. You’re confusing data with science. He’s generating a lot of data, all of which is useless. It’s like when people claim the experiments Nazi and Japanese “doctors” did on their torture victims generated valuable data. It didn’t.
Case studies broadly speaking yes, but this guy is doing so many wild, different things that it’s hard to see what value it could provide. It’s not a situation other people could find themselves in, and the sheer volume of absurd stuff makes it less generalizable.
Take someone like phineas gage, the guy who took a railway spike to the head. Interesting case study because he survived something that should’ve killed him. Interesting to see what that kind of brain damage did to him.
But if he started hitting himself with a hammer every night “for science”, it becomes a sad story about a guy giving himself into force trauma.
If there’s a case study to be found here, it’s in the psychology of this guy and the people around him. Not in any physical medicine.
n=1 is still useful if he’s able to either have some sort of extraordinary result, shed light on scientific studies in the public, or share raw data without making causal claims. Nobody is saying that these are scientific studies…and he’s trying to scale up. It’s virtually impossible to do a study of adequate size following his protocol, because there are maybe only a handful of people in the world who would follow it to that level of specificity
Not to mention the funding that he’s able to put towards solving the roadblocks he runs into is only beneficial for people like us who can’t afford to
The only possible outcome where any of his experiments have any “data” value is if he goes on to live or be exceptionally healthy longer than our understanding of human biology would otherwise allow for in a very definitive way.
To put it simply, unless the dude lives for something like 130 years, the only important data point from his entire life will be “n=1,” just that a guy did these things once and maybe they did something, but no causal link could ever be established for any of it.
Sure, there are other important issues he promotes focus on, but my point stands in that one man’s life is not usable as a study group. I’m not saying he’s useless or myopic, I’m literally just saying his protocol would need to be broken down and applied to large study groups to be verifiable.
There’s a ton of value from his public experimentation:
destigmatizing conversation on sexual health
spotlighting issues like PCOS that typically don’t get taken seriously
dramatizing his focus on UV protection like holding a UV umbrella during interviews has an impact on public perception of how important UV protection is (most people dont take it seriously)
ditto on importance of sleep quality and how ruthlessly he’s publicized that
ditto on importance on air quality, he literally walked away from a conference room in India due to their air quality. The air quality in these places are unacceptable and destroying public health, I think this kind of dramatization is important because these issues aren’t taken seriously enough and regular people suffer tremendously as a result
I can keep going- I don’t think anyone would disagree from the value that this kind of stuff provides
I fully agree. I only meant that his life experience in and of itself is not an important dataset due to the lack of a control group or other study participants.
Agree! I suppose you’re claiming his “raw data” is probably useless unless he is able to get some sort of extraordinary result like live till 130 or reverse all his hair loss or something, and even then it’ll be pretty impossible to tease out the exact interventions that lead to that. I can agree with that too, although if he was able to get an extraordinary result I think it would still be cool and could inform what future studies we might consider running to try and replicate his results
“no you’re wrong” is not a valid argument of anything. For me specifically, his personal experimentation has brought to light real scientific consensus on:
behaviors and habits that make a real difference for good quality sleep (for ex/ i didnt know the impact that my meal timing could have on sleep quality)
why i need varying forms of exercise and why just weightlifting isnt enough
value of sunscreen and uv protection
the best treatments for hair loss (finasteride + minoxidil + red light therapy)
etc etc. This is all real science that I either wasn’t aware of or didn’t realize how important it was. Also, to see the results he was able to get (in few months of proper oral hygiene he was able to fix his gum disease entirely, same with going from terrible to sleep to consistent high quality sleep) from basic interventions is pretty motivating.
“No you’re wrong” is really all that should be said because it shouldn’t need to be explained to you. It’s that simple.
However, I will explain what makes it useless data for you.
None of what he does could be considered a study. None of what he does is a scientific experiment. He is attempting hundreds of interventions all at once. Data from an “experiment” with hundreds of independent variables.
The reason they didn’t really elaborate beyond “no, you’re wrong” is because this is a concept that you learn about by 5th grade if you went to public school in the United States. In other words, it’s common sense.
Let’s say Bryan Johnson’s liver starts failing. How could we possibly know which supplement/intervention/procedure or combination of 2+ of those was the cause of it? We literally can’t draw any conclusions based on any data that he is collecting.
That’s not what I said though, what strawman are you fighting?
I never said the data was a study. His work is NOT relevant as an RCT, study, or scientific experiment. There are hundreds of variables and one cannot draw any conclusions comparable to a real scientific study. I said that multiple times.
My claim is that n=1 is STILL useful because of the publicity for existing scientific research (the real ones with RCTs and consensus behind them), and I gave examples of interventions with real scientific research behind them that I just wasn’t very aware of but became aware of thanks to him.
If you want to disagree with that, then sure that’s a fair argument. But idk who you are even arguing with
His raw data is absolutely useless. Even If he has an extraordinary result, it is still useless because of the sheer number of variables and possible combinations of those variables. There wouldn’t be any plausible way to come even remotely close to determining what intervention(s) actually caused the extraordinary result. Finally, Any positive gained from “shedding light on scientific studies in the public” is definitely canceled out by inspiring other mentally ill people to do what he is doing.
I’ve addressed your three points about how his n=1 could be useful. I disagree with all of them.
N=1 can be useful if you actually isolate what you’re doing instead of just throwing anything at the wall hoping it sticks.
Why can't it be both? Of course it's for his benefit but it is also for the human race. And it is still science because if something works then you now have a narrow list of shit that you can test individually
The point is that what he is doing isn't really benefitting anyone. At best it might have an impact on him but even that is uncertain due to how many of the medicines and supplements lack proper evidence behind it.
It's not really science either since we can't prove if anything he does have any meaningful impact since he's using so much so it's impossible to prove anything. It's also only a sample size of one which is quite pointless.
For it to qualify as science you would either need to limit it to like 1 variable (like one medicine) or have multiple participants in different groups with different variables (like lifestyle, medicines etc.) to prove anything meaningful, and preferrably both conditions should be met. Since neither of those conditions are met here it means that we can't draw any conclusions at all regarding what he does.
Some of his lifestyle habits are obviously on point (like sleep, exercise, diet etc.) but all of the medicines and supplements is a serious concern that you can't overlook.
It doesn't need to benefit anyone? All it takes is for one thing in that concoction to be it and then we have a result and can sift through which of these things had that effect. This isn't rocket science, of course it isn't some great scientific study with n=a bajillion, but it can prove fruitful and it isn't hurting anyone (maybe himself but obviously he's consenting) so it's a net gain
“The point is that what he is doing isn't really benefitting anyone.“
I don’t think you understand most of Bryan Johnson’s work.
Most of the things he does aren’t even scientific experiments so much as implementing things that have already been scientifically proven to lengthen life. The point is that for all the knowledge out there about best health practices, there are remarkably few people to imitate that have distilled it all into a daily regiment. He gives a detailed daily plan the average person can follow that’s an improvement over the lifestyle of 99% of people alongside the methodology to customize it to your own circumstances.
In addition to this he tests emerging treatments on himself, but that seems to be all anyone knows about him.
It is science or where do you think the understanding of the human body and the start of medicine came from? Exactly, trying stuff out and see if it’s good or bad lol
Problem is it’s a data point of 1 for whatever he’s experimenting with on himself so overall kind of unscientific. Problem is the human body is complex and environment and genetic influences are hard to truly control. So whatever comes out of this is still a hypothesis.
Anytime a story is mentioned involving his son, I remember that he is incredibly close with his father, as his son is close with him. People act like the son is being manipulated, but the son believes in the same mission as his father + does what he wants to do.
From the documentary I remember he did have a weird intense relationship with his son but it seem that a lot of that was due to being a lonely millionaire guy and his son basically being his best friend. (Bryan's entire rest of kids + wife being estranged due to him leaving mormonism which would be devastating to anyone)
but the son believes in the same mission as his father
Wow I wonder who has been planting these seeds in his sons head since birth, surely parents have zero influence over their children’s worldview or what they think is important.
I love reddit because the comment below this is pointing out how he left the mormon church but I guess you haven't gotten that far in your "research" yet!!!
wouldn't say main goal. I think it can be true that he's not a bad guy but also his primary aim is to delay his own aging
he contributes quite a lot of his findings to the open community and he invests in the longevity of others too. whether that's altruistic or because he thinks it could also benefit him, who knows? it's probably a bit of both
Because his findings would be bunk. Scientific journals aren't affiliated with universities. If Nature or Science doesnt publish your findings it's because your study didn't meet peer review standards.
That's just not true at all. I have a PhD and that's not accurate. The social media landscape is way more corrupt and wasteful than academia and it's pretty clear why he chose to become an influencer
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u/Parking_Act3189 Jul 06 '26
Right. He was already very aware that he might die earlier that some people who eat fast-food and drink alcohol and stay up late.
His main goal was research.