Kahneman and exercise science? What is the relevance of the scientific legacy of the great Israeli psychologist and Nobel laureate to the science of physical activity? It's much more than you think. A thread -- and a tribute...

Let's start from this. Imagine that you bring together the world's best physical activity epidemiologists, experts in physical activity assessment, exercise physiologists, and sports medicine physicians. You put them in a room at the @WHO headquarters and ask them to develop the next physical activity guidelines. What are they going to come up with?

In November 2020, my students and I discovered a completely fake meta-analysis, now cited more than 100 times. I notified @Hindawi but, as shown below, they have no intention to act. Each year, on the anniversary of the discovery, I re-post this thread... This is the meta-analysis in question, supposedly summarizing RCTs examining the effects of exercise in patients with chronic renal failure. Note that the APC for "BioMed Research International" is $2,550.

doi.org/10.1155/2017/7…

Steve Blair, an iconic figure in the field of exercise science over the past four decades, has passed away at the age of 84. He is leaving behind an enormous legacy. I would like to share a few thoughts... In my mind, Blair was the last of the trio of physical activity epidemiologists that gave our field a prominent place in contemporary medicine and public health. We lost Jerry Morris on Oct 28, 2009. We lost Ralph Paffenbarger on Jul 9, 2007. We lost Steve Blair on Oct 6, 2023.

This sort of headlines (what you thought you knew is actually false) are becoming increasingly common. While we can debate their scientific value, one thing is for sure: they are *wonderful* training opportunities for Kinesiology / Exercise Science students. Let's take a look... The first thing to note is that these headlines are happening against the backdrop of tremendous activity in the dementia field following the flop of Aducanumab (Aduhelm). Now, there is lecanemab, also a monoclonal antibody, with similar side-effects (brain swelling, bleeding).

Today is the first formal step toward the culmination of a 10-year process of trying to analyze and comprehend the phenomenon of HIIT within exercise science. Paper II (from a set of 6) with @NBTiller is the first to become available online (DM for PDF).

doi.org/10.1123/kr.202… In this paper, @NBTiller and I address the increasing prevalence of "spin" by examining 4 extraordinary claims that appeared in the HIIT research literature and subsequently made a splash as media headlines. We dissect the underlying research used as the basis for these claims.

When you read that power calculations determined that a sample size of "8 per group" sufficed to provide 80% power, do you get a queasy feeling in your stomach? Like something ain't right? And does the paper start to smell fishy all of a sudden? Don't you get the urge to verify? So, your stomach would be correct. Let's set aside for a moment that expecting 50% superiority from an 8-week intervention is kind-of ludicrous. Since 50% of 15 is 7.5, comparing 15±5 to 22.5±5 gives d=0.61, which requires 43 per group (not 8) to reach 80% power.

Some of you asked for an explanation why "positive affect" is NOT the same thing as pleasure or happiness and "negative affect" is NOT the same thing as displeasure or sadness. This is a hugely confusing topic in affective psychology, so let's do a short thread! In fact, this is so confusing (& goes so much against common sense) that you can use this as a "litmus test" to differentiate those who know affective psychology from those who are opportunistically jumping on the affect bandwagon because affect happens to be the flavor du jour.

We haven't done a HIIT-related thread in a while, but today I was inspired by this new meta-analysis on Sprint Interval Training (SIT), so here we go. I will teach you how you too can say incredible, mind-bending things and get them past the reviewers (in Frontiers, but still...) What did the meta find? (1) The worst you'll feel during SIT does not differ from the worst you'll feel during moderate-intensity continuous exercise (MICE), and (2) enjoyment of SIT and MICE does not differ.

"No time to exercise? What about three seconds a day?" Once Pandora's Box was opened and researchers discovered that, if you have a ton of dependent variables and you don't adjust for multiplicity, you can make headlines around the world, it was over.

ecu.edu.au/newsroom/artic… Dear researchers, we have a beautiful science that can do some good in the world. Approach it with respect, with diligence, with a sense of responsibility. Understand the impact of your press releases on public perception. Please, consider the larger implications of your actions.

So, @NICEComms released the latest draft of its updated guidelines for the treatment of adult #depression. Although the timeline can be unpredictable, we're probably getting close to the final version. Let's do a thread!

nice.org.uk/news/nice-crea… If there was ever any doubt that "evidence-based medicine" should NOT be taken to imply sole reliance on the evidence and nothing else, depression guidelines are a prime example. The problem is so large and the treatment options so poor that this is, to a great extent, political.

There is no official announcement from Stanford yet but there is enough chatter to suggest that the legendary Albert Bandura has passed away. We know this day was coming (Bandura was born in December, 1925) but it is still a very sad day in the history of psychology. A tribute... I think it's fair to say that few people have been able to read (and understand) Bandura from the original. Most know Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory from simplified and abbreviated secondary sources. His language seems wordy but is densely packed with meaning.

Of all the diseases, the ONE that is most often thought as something that can be treated with #exercise is, of course, #obesity. But, instead, obesity is commonly treated with #drugs. Who would like to know more about the history of FDA-approved obesity drugs in the US? A thread! For economy, let's skip the part about the 1st wave of obesity drugs being based on amphetamine & methamphetamine (to speed up metabolic rate), either alone or in combination with a "downer," to balance the stimulatory effect of the meth/amphetamine on the central nervous system.

Something remarkable, from several angles, happened yesterday. The @US_FDA approved aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the first such approval in almost 20 years! This decision is a major blow to Evidence-Based Medicine and introduces new standards. A thread... As many of you know, besides brain atrophy, there are two microscopic biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease: (a) plaques made up of β amyloid and (b) tangles make up of another protein called τ. These can be detected in cerebral spinal fluid through a spinal tap or via PET imaging.

The paradigm shift in exercise prescription cannot / will not come from the propagators of the paradigm. Kuhn told us that "almost always" those who achieve "fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change." Kuhn predicted that paradigm change will come from iconoclasts and "mavericks": "being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, [they] are particularly likely to [...] conceive another set that can replace them."

"Affect and DMT useless for HIIT." Inspired by this thoughtful and incisive assessment of Dual-Mode Theory (DMT) by Dr Little (who has clearly "moved beyond petty name calling"), let me again offer some thoughts that may help colleagues better understand what the issues are here. Let's start from some basic points. First, the "debate" over HIIT is not really about "options" or about public health in general. As explained in a recent thread (see link), nearly all people avoid vigorous-intensity (let alone "high-intensity") activity.

https://twitter.com/Ekkekakis/status/1321287090315972609

I teach a Critical Appraisal course to seniors in Exercise Science & Pre-Health. Our 1st project is to redo a published meta-analysis. Students always find errors of various degrees of severity. But yesterday, they hit the jackpot. A meta that is so made-up, it's funny. A thread. The paper is published in "BioMed Research International," a @Hindawi journal indexed in PubMed, and has been cited 39 times in 3 years as having shown that exercise benefits patients with end-stage renal disease (e.g., see below). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28316986/

Inspired by the proposal of this large multinational collaboration, consisting of many outstanding colleagues from the field of exercise science, I wanted to share some thoughts that may be useful to readers who wish to place more emphasis on vigorous intensity in public health. Let's begin with the argument that vigorous/high intensity is needed because it provides "time-efficient" physical activity options, & time efficiency is the answer to the primary barrier to PA participation, namely "lack of time." The argument is popular for the past 15-20 years

Inspired by the latest article by @GretchenReynold in @NYTHealth about how even initially reluctant adults discover how pleasant HIIT can be, I wanted to share some tips for colleagues who review related manuscripts. This is what to look for. A thread... The first thing to check is the participants. Look for signs that the participants were not exercise-science students of the researchers. Usually, such students already know what the researchers want to find, have seen their videos online, and their posters on the walls.

I am really surprised that, when I comment on the myriad of (mostly HIIT-related) studies involving tiny samples (e.g., 5-10 per group) and a large number of dependent variables and tests of probability, most people do not see what the problem is. doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.… In short, the combination of these two factors essentially guarantees two things: (1) you will find something "significant," especially if you don't take any steps to address the inflation of alpha, & (2) whatever you find will likely be non-replicable -- in other words, a fluke.

Since we haven't done a critical-appraisal quiz in a while and people seem so fascinated with the finding that "High-intensity exercise [is] best for improving memory," let's do one. The person who identifies the most problems wins.

standard.co.uk/lifestyle/heal… So, we have two versions of the sample-size calculations, arriving at the conclusion that either N = 61 or N = 64 provides adequate power for a THREE-group trial (i.e., roughly n = 20-21 per group). The 1st is from the original thesis, the 2nd is from the peer-reviewed paper.

Word of caution: Neologisms such as "affective attitudes," "affective judgments," and "anticipated affective responses" are certainly NOT "affective determinants of behavior." They are cognitions. As such, interventions to change them rely on information, not lived experiences. If you catch yourself thinking that, to change someone's "affective determinants of behavior," all you need to do is TELL someone that she or he will feel better when they exercise, please stop. And read our chapter, in which we try to clear the confusion.
doi.org/10.1093/oso/97…