#67. Motivations Behind The Protein Transition - Dr. Chris Bryant

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Chris Bryant—executive director of Bryant Research and an expert in alternative proteins—to unpack the science, psychology, and politics behind the future of food. From lab-grown meat and plant-based alternatives to the social and environmental challenges of industrial farming, we explore Dr. Bryant's research on how the “protein transition” is reshaping everything from policy to plate. Expect sharp insights, dumpster-diving research methods, and a few sausage-related revelations along the way. 

Check out Bryant research: https://bryantresearch.co.uk/

Dr. Bryant and Team have published their a lot of their research in Psychology of Human Animal Intergroup Relations:  https://phair.psychopen.eu/index.php/phair

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Motivations Behind Alternative Proteins
• 8:18 Research Methods in Consumer Psychology
• 22:39 Future Directions in Research and Advocacy
• 31:22 Rise and Fall of Plant-Based Products
• 35:35 Politics and Impacts on Farming Communities
• 45:00 The Challenges of Scientific Publication
• 58:13 Final Thoughts

Transcript

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Boys, girls, and NBs, welcome back to the Smooth Brain Society.

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Last episode,

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we spoke to Chris Hopwood about the psychology of human-animal intergroup

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relations.

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We're sort of continuing this conversation further with Dr. Chris Bryant today.

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Dr.

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Chris Bryant is the Executive Director of Bryant Research,

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a company which offers social science research services to animal advocacy

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organizations,

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among other things.

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He has an MSc,

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so Master in Sciences in Policy Research from the University of Bristol and has his

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PhD in Psychology from the University of Bath.

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His expertise

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are lie in alternative proteins and he has published multiple papers on the social

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dimensions of the protein transition i do not know what he means in this context so

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hopefully we can get him to elaborate a little bit more in this episode so thank

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you for coming on chris absolutely yeah thank you so much for having me pleasure to

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be here and armor is back as co-host uh if people watching the video were wearing

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the same clothes because uh

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Yeah, we're recording the both episodes back-to-back, one after each other.

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But yeah, Armour?

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Well,

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yeah,

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I wear this...

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You didn't need to snitch on me,

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because I wear this shirt for every episode I co-host,

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so...

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Yeah,

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fair enough.

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All right.

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Awesome.

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So let's get into it.

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Chris, I said I mentioned protein transition or the protein transition.

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Could you please elaborate on what you mean by that?

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Because as someone who does molecular research, for me, proteins are amino acids, proteins.

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Maybe the most I think of it is diet related.

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But for me, the term alternative protein seems a bit weird.

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So if you could elaborate.

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Right.

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Yes.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Well, we're really talking about animal food alternatives and animal product alternatives.

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So we're talking about plant-based meat and dairy alternatives,

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as well as fermentation derived and cell cultivated.

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So a whole range of animal product alternatives.

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And the idea with the protein transition is that

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You know, we've only been doing industrial farming of animals for about 50, 60 years.

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And before that, it was sort of much smaller scale.

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And we are now discovering where there was all sorts of drawbacks to this cool

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system that we thought we had come up with.

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We now have these massive factories which are breeding new diseases.

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We're constantly having to use antibiotics.

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They're using up antibiotic supply.

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We're having to deforest large areas to feed these hungry animals,

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which then convert a very small amount of those calories into food for humans.

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So the idea with the protein transition is to go beyond this industrial animal

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farming system that we largely rely on at the moment and move towards much more

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efficient,

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much more healthy and much more ethical choices.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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So I'm guessing,

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I'm guessing,

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so this is in terms of like,

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you know,

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you mentioned a few different variations.

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These are all sort of completely different because you said cell culture food.

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So this is like when you're growing meat in a lab.

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That's right.

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Versus like, I guess, plant-based, like all your, I can't believe it's not meat kind of stuff.

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That's right.

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Yeah.

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So when, when you,

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Call yourself an expert in this.

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What do you mean?

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Yeah, so I did my PhD in public perceptions of cell-cultuated meat.

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That involved doing a bunch of surveys and focus groups and that kind of thing.

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And then since then,

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I have worked with a couple of cultivated meat companies and a bunch of companies

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in alternative proteins industry more broadly,

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as well as a bunch of animal charities.

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So that's the other part of the protein transition,

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as well as having good alternative products that are going to pull people towards

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them.

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There is,

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of course,

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what you might think of as conventional animal advocacy,

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pushing people away from eating factory farmed meat.

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So I think that both of those work together very well.

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And yeah, where we come in and what I do in the company is all on the social science side.

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So we're talking about surveys and focus groups.

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We're also talking about

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white papers and economic and policy assessments, which is more like desk research.

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So there's a bunch of things to do with consumer psychology,

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economics,

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policy,

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that are all the kind of social questions around alternative proteins.

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Right.

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So you mentioned there's a few,

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well,

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you just named a few different types of ways protein-based products are made.

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I'm curious about how these different techniques came about.

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Was it out of a need for,

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after,

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say,

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the initial type of protein-based product was made,

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was there a nutritional lacking that inspired the others?

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Was it an economical reason?

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Was it the resources used?

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What were the sort of dynamics behind

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it growing and providing a different variety of different protein-based products.

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Yeah, it's a good question.

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It's a very motivated field full of people who are concerned with all these kind of

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different problems with the conventional protein production system that we have

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today.

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There's a lot of people who are primarily environmentally motivated.

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They see the vast amounts of land and agricultural resources that go into rearing animals.

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They see that we demand more and more meat every year.

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There's a lot of people who are starting from an environmental perspective and then

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saying,

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how can we make meat that's going to keep us within those parameters,

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basically.

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There are one or two people who are also coming at it from a public health

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perspective where they're concerned about

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antibiotics and or pandemics.

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I mean,

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you just have a situation in factory farms where you've got all of these animals

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packed in tightly together.

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They're in dirty conditions and they're also all very genetically similar because

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they've come from the same.

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So when they start getting diseases, it spreads super easily and mutates.

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You know, each time it spreads, it can mutate and then pass on to you.

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We've got bird flu at the moment, right?

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So there's all these kinds of problems.

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And then you do have a lot of people who are, you know, animal people as well.

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and looking at the problem and saying it's not really acceptable that we're

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actually keeping billions of animals in factory farms and right from the animal's

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perspective.

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So there are a bunch of different problems that all come together in the way that

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we're producing our food and in particular animal products at the moment.

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And as a result of that, you do have

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well,

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it seems to me like a very uniquely motivated sector full of people who are like,

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you know,

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really want to get this done and really want to spend their life's mission to do

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this and have left or,

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you know,

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foregone other potentially very lucrative careers.

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There's all these kind of,

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you know,

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top Harvard doctors that go into making culture meat and stuff like that.

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So it's,

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Yeah,

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there are some very,

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very motivated people that have all these kind of different problems that they see

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with the current production system and see a way to do it better.

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And then I think between the different types of alternative proteins,

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I mean,

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one thing that people sometimes say is...

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might cultivated meat at this stage,

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when it comes along,

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be mainly competing with plant-based meat,

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right?

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The idea is you want to displace demand for animals.

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I think there is probably a little bit of overlap in the markets,

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but there's enough non-overlap,

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right,

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where,

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for example,

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cultivated meat tends to be more appealing to men and to heavier meat eaters,

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whereas plant-based meat tends to be more appealing to women and to more like

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flexitarians,

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right?

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Yeah.

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So there's already that kind of difference in the markets that they can serve from

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that perspective as well.

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That's very interesting.

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I mean,

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I guess it makes sense that like cultivated meat would appeal more to meat eaters

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than sort of like a plant based alternative.

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So you said that you conduct a lot of surveys and do a lot of workshops around the stuff.

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So are these the kind of questions you go around asking people or what does your

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research entail in these regards?

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yeah we do so we've done focus groups where the aim will be to kind of see how

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ideas on new topics emerge in a social group often the reason that you would want

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to focus groups instead of interviews is to sort of simulate this social

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environment where people do find out new information they're watching the news

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together they can discuss it or whatever it may be right so it's

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This idea that these attitudes are like socially formed and you recreate that in a focus group.

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Then on the survey side,

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usually the most useful thing in surveys is getting like a representative view.

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Obviously, you're not going to have that many people in focus groups, right?

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But in a survey,

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you can get a thousand people today and be all different represented demographics

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and everything.

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So that's good for saying, you know, overall, this is what people think or would vote for.

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And then you can zoom in and say specific groups like men or older people or whatever it may be.

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But then some of the most interesting stuff I think is experimental research where

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we'll have people exposed to different messages and then filling in the same

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measures and we can see

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you know,

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the people who saw message A versus message B.

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We've just wrapped up a really nice big study where we had some decent funding to

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do a good amount of advertising on social media,

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but also to actually get a retail data set of like sales figures from retailers on

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pork.

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And that was really great because usually we are relying to a large extent on like

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survey responses.

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And of course,

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People are not always honest.

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People don't always remember what they've eaten.

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There might be all sorts of reasons that people are giving incorrect answers.

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Whereas when you've got retail data, it's very expensive to get.

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Retailers just have it on a spreadsheet and they'll sell it to you for a few thousand pounds.

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So it's very expensive to get, but it is accurate to the sausage.

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So we ran these big...

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there was sort of like grim videos of pig farming on Facebook adverts in four

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regions of the UK.

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And then we had pork sales for all of the UK during that period.

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And we could see the regions where we've run the ads,

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it has an effect on pork sales compared to the regions without ads.

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So that kind of thing is quite cool because it really cuts through all of the

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unreliability of humans, I guess.

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Like you did buy sausages, doesn't matter what you're filling in on the survey, right?

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We can see kind of the direct impact of the behavior in different places.

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So I think for me, the experimental stuff is some of the coolest.

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Now,

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are we sure those sausages aren't just filled with couch stuffings,

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the cheap types and not the actual ones with pork?

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That's the unreliability of the supplier now, isn't it?

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Well, that's right, yeah.

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So we've done pork measures.

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We've measured pork and frozen pork and also plant-based pork alternatives and

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frozen plant-based pork alternatives as well.

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And we had two different versions of the ad where one is saying don't eat meat and

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one saying try plant-based instead.

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So we look at, like, sort of different variations of...

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of how that might work.

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We also try to end the sort of left-wing and right-wing areas politically.

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That's kind of interesting.

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So there's all sorts of things that you can do to,

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you know,

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look at the best way of doing these kind of campaigns.

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Cool.

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I want to sort of, like, pick on that a little bit.

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So you don't need to talk about things which you have not published,

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but of the stuff which you have,

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have you found,

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have you done any sort of experiments like this which you have sort of published?

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Because you said this one was, you just recently completed.

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So have you done any stuff which...

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you have already published which we can talk about yeah yeah the uh actually the

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social media ads with the retail data was kind of an upgrade from a study that we

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did i guess a couple of years ago where we we didn't have the budget for retail

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data this time and so you know one of the things that food choice researchers will

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burn a lot of fuel on is like how to how to actually measure this right like say

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survey is pretty imperfect

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Retail dates are very expensive.

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What we did in this case, we ran some billboards about dairy.

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In this case,

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it was a picture of a dairy cow and it says dairy cows cry when we take away their

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babies for milk.

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And then we ran these big billboards in Bristol.

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and uh had a control city where we didn't have any billboards and then my research

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assistant and i went around um residential bins in the area and took photos of the

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food packaging that people were throwing in the trash so we literally went to

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blocks of flats blocks of apartments with the big sort of communal trash skips

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took a photo of the cross-section of that and then took them all home,

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got all the photos and say,

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okay,

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this is,

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you know,

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how many litres of milk versus how many litres of plant-based milk.

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Did that twice in Bristol and twice in another city.

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And then we can see sort of before and after, you know, the difference in differences.

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And so that involved us literally putting on high-vis,

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going around,

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opening up the bins in random people's flats.

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And that was really...

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a lot cheaper but not worth it we didn't quite get to any significant results from

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that either so that was a waste of time it's also hard what if like some people

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just don't throw their trash out until all the trash in the trash cans are from

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before the ads bins haven't been taken out what do you do then you're relying on

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the council as well to be on time with there

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Yeah,

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I mean,

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there's all sorts of things that are,

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like,

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imperfect about that way of measuring,

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to be fair.

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Because, of course, yes, like you say, maybe, you know, we literally did it.

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We went,

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took photos of the bins,

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ran the billboards four weeks,

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and then four weeks later went back and did it again.

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But it's, I mean, there's all sorts of unreliable things about that, right?

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Maybe someone was on holiday that week.

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Maybe they didn't, right, whatever.

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So in theory, if you're doing enough bins, you know,

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It's one of those things where hopefully there's the same number of people on

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holiday in Bristol as there is in the other city.

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So it kind of evens out.

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But I mean, it's much less reliable than just looking at the retail data.

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The other thing which I want to ask, because you said Bristol and the other city.

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City demographics in the UK, I have noticed, are very different based on which city you are.

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you are in.

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Like, so does that play a part as well?

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Because in sort of your control city, which you're going to pick in this regard?

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Yeah, that's a good question.

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So there will be,

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yeah,

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Bristol is like quite left-wing,

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quite bohemian area,

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probably more vegans than average,

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right?

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So there is a bit of that.

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So in this study design,

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We had two – so we have a measure in Bristol before and a measure in Bristol after,

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and we also had a measure in the control city before and a measure in the control

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city after.

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So you have four points, and each of those is like –

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what percentage of the total milk consumed was plant-based.

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And it was a pretty small, it was like 5% or something when we worked it out, right?

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But you can say, okay, so in Bristol, it went from 5% to, I think they actually both went down.

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So anyway, despite that it was 5% to like 4.5%, let's say.

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But in the other city,

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even if it started lower at 3%,

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well,

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it went down to 1%,

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so it's a bigger difference.

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And so that accounts the difference in the cities,

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but it also kind of cancels out trends that might be happening over time generally.

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So,

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for example,

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maybe during that period,

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there was a bad news story about plant-based milk or whatever it may be,

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or a good news story about dairy milk,

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and that made that percentage go down everywhere.

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But...

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because we can see the difference in our city with the billboards versus the

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difference in some other city without the billboards,

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you can do what's called difference in differences.

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And therefore you can kind of control for both of those factors in theory,

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at least,

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but you know,

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it is,

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it is messy.

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Did it take into account,

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I haven't lived in the UK for a long time,

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just a couple of summers in the previous decade,

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but is there much fluctuation in price of,

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products based on supply and was any consideration taken to that during this period

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so for changing price of meats so if say for example the price of fork went up with

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the data could that have been an effect of the reduced purchase of fork yeah for

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sure there it so

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We actually weirdly did see fresh pork sales going down slightly everywhere and

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then frozen pork sales going up actually quite massively everywhere.

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But there's a small amount, so a 50% increase.

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It can still be quite a small amount like net.

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Yeah.

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so yeah i mean there are sort of nationwide trends that will go with pricing where

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you do get difficulties is sometimes they will do like regional promotions so that

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you know the two for one deals in your sainsbury's might not be the same as the two

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for one deals in my sainsbury's so that that can make it a little bit different

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because maybe there's you know really great pork promotions in our test regions so

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yeah there will there will be some uh difficulty around things like that but in

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general

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For me,

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I think that's one of the tightest studies that we've done in terms of really

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demonstrating,

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you know,

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these are real ads that we put out there in the world.

(00:18:49):
Here's some real retail data of people buying the stuff.

(00:18:52):
It works, right?

(00:18:53):
So it's,

(00:18:55):
yeah,

(00:18:56):
oftentimes you're working with many more assumptions and constraints than in that

(00:19:01):
situation.

(00:19:05):
And... Sorry, I lost my train of thought.

(00:19:10):
Um,

(00:19:11):
uh,

(00:19:12):
I'm,

(00:19:13):
I'm thinking of sort of how all I can think of is like,

(00:19:18):
I'm trying to think of other sort of confounding variables.

(00:19:21):
The one which I thought of was the one which you said about promotional deals,

(00:19:25):
certain,

(00:19:26):
certain like places would have them certain places.

(00:19:29):
If the pork's going bad, for example, they might want to sell it off quicker.

(00:19:33):
So they'd like put those reduced labels on them.

(00:19:36):
whatever uh with your with your sort of retail prices when you when you get this

(00:19:41):
information do you also get sort of that that like these sales were on at these

(00:19:45):
times and things like that or is it because you've this study is sort of like

(00:19:50):
really large you have enough data from enough places that you can sort of counter

(00:19:56):
it based on just like put it in variance

(00:20:00):
Yeah,

(00:20:01):
we didn't have data on specific regional promotions which might have been going on,

(00:20:08):
which would be kind of a more detailed way that you could look at it.

(00:20:12):
One interesting part of it that we did do was...

(00:20:17):
two left wing and two right wing areas as I mentioned we ran ads in and the ads in

(00:20:27):
the right wing areas where they so what they were is two areas which had the

(00:20:34):
highest proportion of green votes and then two areas which had the highest

(00:20:37):
proportion of reform votes so the right wing areas were

(00:20:45):
a much lower cost per click on the ads.

(00:20:48):
So to our surprise, higher engagement.

(00:20:51):
But we think that a lot of that was people clicking on to comment and argue,

(00:20:56):
basically,

(00:20:57):
rather than click.

(00:20:58):
Do you know what I mean?

(00:20:59):
So it was a bit more of a novel message,

(00:21:02):
probably,

(00:21:03):
in these right-wing,

(00:21:06):
presumably heavier meat-consuming areas than it would have been in

(00:21:09):
you know, Brighton or whatever kind of Bohemian left wing area.

(00:21:13):
But yeah, we did see.

(00:21:17):
And then we paired up those areas because obviously one thing when we're looking at

(00:21:21):
the data,

(00:21:22):
then we're looking at these quite unusual four areas compared to the whole rest of

(00:21:26):
the country,

(00:21:27):
which is a little bit unusual.

(00:21:28):
So we paired up with...

(00:21:32):
some sort of control left and right-wing areas,

(00:21:34):
basically,

(00:21:35):
which was like the second highest voting reform area.

(00:21:39):
And so we can do that comparison as well.

(00:21:42):
Okay,

(00:21:43):
the left-wing areas with ads consumed less pork than the left-wing areas without

(00:21:48):
the ads sort of thing.

(00:21:49):
So you can do sort of more granular zooms in like that.

(00:21:53):
But yeah, I mean, I've always found it kind of interesting thinking about

(00:21:58):
I suppose,

(00:21:59):
research design and how you can try to cancel out or account for different

(00:22:08):
confounders that can come in.

(00:22:10):
But yeah, it's very difficult.

(00:22:12):
And I think that's one of the...

(00:22:14):
trickier things about social science than sort of in the lab or hard science is

(00:22:20):
that you can never really actually cancel out everything.

(00:22:22):
You can never have a perfectly controlled social experiment.

(00:22:26):
Um, whereas you, you can have pretty close to that and a lot of, you know, hard sciences.

(00:22:32):
So it's,

(00:22:33):
it's always have,

(00:22:33):
you know,

(00:22:34):
asterisk is always coming with the results in social science.

(00:22:39):
So from there,

(00:22:40):
I would ask you,

(00:22:41):
to progress with these experiments,

(00:22:45):
progress with the study,

(00:22:47):
what would be the next step you're going to be taking?

(00:22:50):
Yeah, good question.

(00:22:52):
I think, honestly, I'm thinking a lot about research.

(00:22:57):
doing it and executing it now.

(00:23:00):
Now we're a research organization and we are here to research the things which will be done.

(00:23:05):
But I am increasingly feeling we've got,

(00:23:07):
we're getting a good handle and getting a closer understanding of how you would go

(00:23:16):
about actually changing things.

(00:23:19):
So for example,

(00:23:20):
with the social media ads,

(00:23:21):
I think that's pretty,

(00:23:23):
when that's published,

(00:23:23):
I think it'll be pretty

(00:23:26):
solid proof that this worked um will it be the most cost efficient thing uh i don't

(00:23:35):
know maybe there will be you know an effective animal advocacy which is kind of

(00:23:42):
where our organization sits um there will be cost effectiveness estimates for

(00:23:49):
different types of campaigns and interventions that you can uh do um

(00:23:54):
And generally,

(00:23:56):
it's thought that and argued that and I think that institutional campaigns are

(00:24:07):
going to be the best bang for the buck,

(00:24:08):
most animals saved per dollar or whatever.

(00:24:12):
And so a lot of EAA, effective animal advocacy, that is, research,

(00:24:18):
is not necessarily super interested in this kind of like individual level

(00:24:23):
persuasion,

(00:24:23):
like getting people to go vegan sort of research,

(00:24:25):
basically.

(00:24:27):
But that said,

(00:24:28):
I think it's an important part of the process as well,

(00:24:33):
because on the institutional side,

(00:24:37):
you can really only get institutions to make changes if

(00:24:41):
consumers are willing to accept them if individual consumers and shareholders and

(00:24:45):
voters are willing to go along with things.

(00:24:47):
So,

(00:24:47):
yeah,

(00:24:49):
I think that it's good that we're doing lots of institutional change and we need to

(00:24:53):
keep doing it.

(00:24:55):
And we do need to start to,

(00:24:58):
I think,

(00:24:58):
operationalize some of what we've learned in terms of communicating with

(00:25:02):
individuals and so on as well.

(00:25:05):
So when you're saying go on and do it,

(00:25:07):
are you talking it from an advocacy standpoint or from a policy standpoint or like

(00:25:14):
once you have this research,

(00:25:15):
who is your sort of target audience for affecting this change?

(00:25:19):
Yeah, that's a good question as well.

(00:25:21):
I think there's a few.

(00:25:23):
One is policymakers, definitely.

(00:25:26):
And a lot of our research is geared towards policy relevant questions.

(00:25:34):
So it's

(00:25:36):
that's a cool thing about doing kind of applied research as opposed to more academic stuff.

(00:25:40):
When I was doing my PhD and in the university,

(00:25:43):
it was very much theory first,

(00:25:48):
basically,

(00:25:50):
which I guess is the job of academia,

(00:25:53):
I suppose.

(00:25:54):
But it wasn't like super applied.

(00:25:55):
Whereas now,

(00:25:57):
yeah,

(00:25:57):
I think that doing things by starting of saying what will the relevant outcome of

(00:26:04):
this be

(00:26:08):
I often think of our research as either informative within the movement or the

(00:26:15):
organization or in terms of strategic questions.

(00:26:18):
They didn't know what they were going to do before.

(00:26:19):
Now they know what they're going to do or are more informed at least.

(00:26:24):
So that's kind of one type of research.

(00:26:26):
And I kind of thought that would be the more common thing when we started.

(00:26:30):
But actually, the more common thing seems to be the other kind, which is

(00:26:35):
We pretty much do already know the answer to this, but we need to demonstrate it in...

(00:26:42):
scientifically robust way.

(00:26:44):
For example,

(00:26:45):
we do lots of things that are like showing that some institution could cut their

(00:26:50):
carbon footprint if they change to plant-based defaults on their menu,

(00:26:53):
for example.

(00:26:54):
Now,

(00:26:54):
we already know that they can cut their carbon footprint by doing that,

(00:26:57):
but it's still useful to have a PDF that demonstrates how and has the calculations

(00:27:03):
and everything else.

(00:27:04):
So that is more like for

(00:27:07):
what I would consider external stakeholders to communicate with, right?

(00:27:11):
Who is the decision maker of that organization or the policy maker that you need to

(00:27:15):
go and show this to.

(00:27:17):
So those are,

(00:27:19):
yeah,

(00:27:20):
those are kind of two broadly,

(00:27:21):
either we don't know the answer,

(00:27:22):
we won't know the answer,

(00:27:23):
or we basically do know the answer,

(00:27:24):
but we want it written down nicely.

(00:27:29):
On this topic of stakeholders, it actually...

(00:27:34):
brought me back to something you said at the start of this conversation regarding

(00:27:42):
how industrial poultry and cattle farming was popularized about 60 odd years ago if

(00:27:50):
I'm is what you said I'm not mistaken so

(00:27:56):
It just took me back to the start from what I remember from what I want to say year

(00:28:01):
six history is that we went from hunter gatherers to agricultural farming.

(00:28:09):
So what was the progress that took us back to,

(00:28:17):
you know,

(00:28:18):
balancing these two things,

(00:28:19):
going back to both these things rather than progressing forward with just

(00:28:24):
agricultural farming?

(00:28:28):
Yeah,

(00:28:28):
well,

(00:28:28):
I mean,

(00:28:29):
agriculture is massively helpful and,

(00:28:31):
yeah,

(00:28:32):
like you say,

(00:28:32):
is what has basically enabled human civilization to develop from being

(00:28:36):
hunter-gatherers,

(00:28:37):
right?

(00:28:37):
So it's not agriculture itself that's the problem,

(00:28:39):
but intensive industrialized animal agriculture where,

(00:28:44):
you know,

(00:28:45):
only in the last 50,

(00:28:46):
60 years have we had these huge warehouses of hundreds of thousands of chickens,

(00:28:50):
for example,

(00:28:52):
and we have all these kind of

(00:28:54):
you know, big prison rows of cages to keep them all in and stuff like this.

(00:28:58):
So that form of,

(00:29:00):
you know,

(00:29:01):
mega animal farming,

(00:29:02):
basically,

(00:29:03):
where there's thousands and thousands of animals,

(00:29:04):
there's,

(00:29:05):
you know,

(00:29:05):
they have to use antibiotics in order to keep them from getting sick,

(00:29:07):
and then they still get sick,

(00:29:10):
right?

(00:29:10):
So that kind of sort of hyper farming, factory farming.

(00:29:17):
uh has only has only been around for yeah 60 60 odd years um and if you look at the

(00:29:24):
animals as well they've changed a lot in that time you've seen the photos of like

(00:29:27):
the chicken in the 1950s who looks like he's ready to run the olympics versus the

(00:29:31):
chickens now who are like look like they're ready to do the sumo wrestling right i

(00:29:36):
mean it's yeah part of the olympics either way that's right yes yeah

(00:29:42):
But yeah, I mean, so much has changed in that time about how all of it's produced, really.

(00:29:51):
But yeah, factory farming of animals is not a game that we've been playing for very long.

(00:29:57):
And we're only just kind of starting to clock on to all of the problems that it brings.

(00:30:02):
Yeah.

(00:30:04):
Yeah,

(00:30:05):
I kind of see a pattern here with humanity finding problems and things after going

(00:30:12):
all in chips on the table with it.

(00:30:15):
From this to fossil fuel usage to the internet, now AI is heading in that direction.

(00:30:23):
It's kind of a never-ending cycle, isn't it?

(00:30:28):
It's that meme, ah, the consequences of my actions.

(00:30:31):
Whoa, whoa, whoa, if it's not the consequences.

(00:30:37):
But talking to your point, you also mentioned...

(00:30:41):
uh and because you work with people sort of in culture meets and plant-based meets

(00:30:45):
sort of with companies just to do this um what is the sort of drive like because

(00:30:51):
you did mention that there's not that much funding or there's not that much money

(00:30:56):
investment in it as it stands but it is slowly growing what what

(00:31:01):
Do companies who are working in it at the moment sort of think of it being able to

(00:31:08):
transition from what is currently like from the current status to sort of like a

(00:31:15):
more plant or alternative meat based world or majority alternative meat based

(00:31:20):
world?

(00:31:22):
Yeah,

(00:31:22):
I think there's been a weird few years in this area because it seemed about five

(00:31:30):
years ago that all of this suddenly got very popular.

(00:31:33):
And then you had plant-based Burger King and everything else, which is great.

(00:31:38):
And I had a plant-based McDonald's earlier today.

(00:31:43):
But there definitely was a period where there was a ton of brands bringing out new products.

(00:31:47):
There was companies bringing up there.

(00:31:50):
were then all of the big Unilever and all of the big food companies started to make

(00:31:54):
their own alternative protein products.

(00:31:57):
And I think that a lot of companies,

(00:32:03):
especially in the big companies where they're kind of like,

(00:32:05):
oh,

(00:32:05):
this plant-based thing's happening,

(00:32:07):
right?

(00:32:07):
Sling out some plant-based product.

(00:32:09):
Kind of just thought that this was going to be the trend now and didn't.

(00:32:13):
pay that much attention to developing good products or making good stuff.

(00:32:17):
Basically, they were like, let's make something that's going to be in this growing category.

(00:32:21):
And there was a period of at least a couple of years where if you went to the

(00:32:24):
plant-based section in the supermarket,

(00:32:25):
it's like different stuff each week.

(00:32:27):
You'd get different brands coming and going.

(00:32:29):
There was like very segmented, like tiny sections of each.

(00:32:33):
And that was never going to stay like that.

(00:32:37):
I remember saying at the time, most of these companies are going to go bust.

(00:32:42):
It has to happen because there were way more companies than was appropriate for the

(00:32:48):
size of the category.

(00:32:49):
But I also think that's not necessarily a bad thing because...

(00:32:53):
those, it's like creative destruction, right?

(00:32:55):
Those companies which are good enough stay and out-compete the others and those

(00:32:59):
ones which are not good enough or are too expensive or people don't like,

(00:33:03):
they leave and they don't get brought back the next week,

(00:33:05):
right?

(00:33:06):
So it makes the category better overall when that happens.

(00:33:11):
But certainly,

(00:33:12):
yeah,

(00:33:12):
it has been,

(00:33:16):
there have been companies come and go in the area and it's been,

(00:33:25):
You know, a lot of that hype from 2020 era...

(00:33:29):
sort of crescendoed in about 2022,

(00:33:31):
and there has been a couple of years of tougher sales for some companies since

(00:33:37):
then.

(00:33:38):
There's also opportunities in different areas.

(00:33:41):
There are more companies coming out with products which are not necessarily meant

(00:33:48):
to be conventional meat imitations,

(00:33:49):
they're just something else entirely.

(00:33:53):
There has been, I believe that

(00:33:56):
Companies like tofu and tempeh have done quite well in the last couple of years

(00:34:00):
when it's been difficult,

(00:34:01):
because a lot of that has been as a result of all of the narrative around ultra

(00:34:05):
processed foods,

(00:34:07):
which,

(00:34:07):
you know,

(00:34:07):
we can talk about that.

(00:34:08):
That's a bit of a hobby horse of mine,

(00:34:10):
I think is a complete distraction,

(00:34:13):
really,

(00:34:14):
and like not good form of analysis for food healthiness.

(00:34:19):
But yeah, there's there seems to be, you know, companies reacting to that sort of thing.

(00:34:22):
But I think basically what it comes down to and.

(00:34:25):
You know, organizations like GFI have said this from the start.

(00:34:29):
It will be about getting products which are more enjoyable and cheaper.

(00:34:36):
And that's it.

(00:34:36):
Like, that is it.

(00:34:39):
I mean, once you get to that point, why would anyone want to pay more for worse food?

(00:34:46):
You just wouldn't, right?

(00:34:47):
So I think that getting...

(00:34:51):
Product development is going to be the key that drives it forward.

(00:34:54):
There was and there continues to be a loyal customer base who are like,

(00:34:59):
we're doing this out of our ethical beliefs or environmental preferences or health

(00:35:03):
preferences,

(00:35:03):
whatever it may be.

(00:35:06):
But I think that really product development is going to be the thing that gets it over the line.

(00:35:10):
And price parity, especially in this economy, right?

(00:35:14):
Everything's suddenly very expensive.

(00:35:16):
And so there are now some plant-based products that are cheaper than the meat products.

(00:35:21):
And when everyone's trying to get their food shop as cheap as possible,

(00:35:26):
I just don't think that people are going to pay more for animal products just

(00:35:29):
because they're animal products.

(00:35:32):
We'll see, though.

(00:35:33):
We'll see.

(00:35:35):
Just building on that just a little bit and also,

(00:35:40):
I guess,

(00:35:40):
bringing it back to the sort of conservative versus more liberal sort of towns and

(00:35:48):
cities.

(00:35:49):
A lot of these conservative places also are generally more rural places as well,

(00:35:53):
I might write in sort of thinking.

(00:35:57):
And most farming communities would be sort of more...

(00:36:02):
right wing in that regard.

(00:36:05):
Would that also come as a clash in the sense that so many people are potentially

(00:36:09):
employed in the current industrial farming sector,

(00:36:14):
that developing a completely new sector,

(00:36:17):
which potentially is less

(00:36:20):
intensive in terms of employment can actually be some of the pushback is actually

(00:36:25):
due to the fear of losing livelihoods and yeah whether sort of governments or

(00:36:33):
anyone has sort of the i don't know like the safety net or like a fallback to help

(00:36:38):
people in that regard because at the moment i know i know farming industries all

(00:36:43):
over the world generally are subsidized right by whatever governments are

(00:36:46):
subsidized some sort of

(00:36:48):
some aspect of the industry to help it.

(00:36:51):
So yeah, if alternative proteins come up, then yeah.

(00:36:58):
Is there that sort of fear?

(00:36:59):
Do you see that when you do your surveys and interviews and things like that?

(00:37:05):
yeah definitely it's definitely um something that most people uh so a lot of people

(00:37:15):
will mention like oh you know the economic impacts and what will happen to the

(00:37:18):
farmers and so on i think that from the consumer perspective ultimately again i

(00:37:24):
don't think anyone's going to be like i'm going to keep buying this because i want

(00:37:26):
to support the farmers right they'll just we'll just want to have cheap affordable

(00:37:29):
like nice food basically right so

(00:37:32):
I think sometimes people say that won't necessarily affect their purchasing,

(00:37:34):
but from the perspective of those communities and the political resistance that can

(00:37:38):
come from that,

(00:37:39):
I think there's definitely something that needs to be addressed.

(00:37:44):
At the moment,

(00:37:44):
we have a very bizarre situation where the factory farm lobbies are very good at

(00:37:51):
using the small farmers as the face of the industry and having them

(00:37:58):
represent concern and making them concerned about alternative proteins.

(00:38:04):
And if you look at Italy,

(00:38:08):
which has banned cultivated meat before it's even available for sale,

(00:38:12):
that is done on the basis of convincing farmers that this is the cause of their

(00:38:17):
problems.

(00:38:18):
And it's such an interesting situation because

(00:38:23):
Yeah, farming livelihoods, yes, but also their culture and heritage and everything.

(00:38:29):
A lot of farmers are like, my father farmed this field and his father, right?

(00:38:33):
This has been our family for 300 years or whatever.

(00:38:37):
And it's their identity and it's their place in the community.

(00:38:39):
Oh, that's the Smith farm or whatever it is, right?

(00:38:41):
So it's very... There is absolutely anxiety around that, right?

(00:38:47):
And that's absolutely an issue.

(00:38:49):
And if you look at...

(00:38:51):
The number of farming jobs in the UK,

(00:38:55):
to take an example,

(00:38:56):
but it's a pretty similar story anywhere else,

(00:39:00):
again,

(00:39:00):
since the 1960s,

(00:39:00):
when we started to industrialise farming more,

(00:39:04):
the number of farming jobs has gone down.

(00:39:06):
I think we've lost two-thirds of the farming jobs since 1960.

(00:39:10):
So there really is fewer farming jobs than there used to be.

(00:39:14):
But it's not because people are eating less meat, because, of course...

(00:39:19):
also since 1960 meat production has gone up and up and up.

(00:39:23):
So I think.

(00:39:25):
You're absolutely right.

(00:39:26):
There is a political dynamic where there's kind of a feeling that these alternative

(00:39:32):
proteins are a threat to us farmers,

(00:39:34):
and that has been exploited very effectively in somewhere like Italy,

(00:39:38):
where,

(00:39:38):
again,

(00:39:39):
cultivated meat has not sold one ounce in Italy,

(00:39:42):
right?

(00:39:42):
And somehow these farmers were convinced this is the cause of their problems.

(00:39:45):
And you had the lobbies going around giving them these signs that they could hold

(00:39:49):
of the protest and everything.

(00:39:50):
It's crazy.

(00:39:51):
Yeah.

(00:39:51):
There definitely are powerful interests who are opposed to alternative proteins and

(00:39:58):
actively lobbying against them,

(00:39:59):
trying to have what looks like farmers being organised against alternative

(00:40:04):
proteins.

(00:40:07):
The forces doing that,

(00:40:08):
organising,

(00:40:09):
unfortunately,

(00:40:09):
are the same forces that are actually decimating farming jobs by making more and

(00:40:13):
more industrial farms.

(00:40:14):
So essentially it's factory farms...

(00:40:18):
small farmers and alternative proteins,

(00:40:20):
the factory farms kind of in the middle,

(00:40:22):
producing almost all the food and pointing to both sides and saying,

(00:40:24):
why don't you two argue with each other?

(00:40:26):
So, you know, for people on my side as well, we can get drawn into that.

(00:40:29):
Oh yes, it's vegans versus farmers, right?

(00:40:31):
We hate the animal farmers, but no, it's most small scale farmers.

(00:40:36):
are not the problem and are not who we want to be displacing.

(00:40:40):
We are mainly concerned about factory farms products.

(00:40:44):
Really, we are.

(00:40:45):
And so I think that there can be and needs to be a bit more some sort of unholy

(00:40:53):
political alliance between those.

(00:40:56):
There was a report that called us the techno-vegans and the agroecologists and that

(00:41:04):
that might be a good...

(00:41:06):
you know,

(00:41:07):
marriage of convenience,

(00:41:08):
as they said in the report,

(00:41:10):
to,

(00:41:12):
you know,

(00:41:12):
basically our common enemy is factory farming.

(00:41:14):
And if you speak to people who are small scale farmers, they totally agree with that.

(00:41:19):
But we've been allowed to be sort of put into opposing camps.

(00:41:23):
And I think that plays very well for the factory farms who are there to just clean

(00:41:26):
up everything.

(00:41:28):
It's from someone outside of the UK.

(00:41:34):
I've heard about the show and I've seen a little bit of the show Klaxons Farm,

(00:41:39):
which highlights the plight of farmers and people working in agriculture of how the

(00:41:49):
bureaucracy and the system just prevents them from

(00:41:57):
from doing their job and being able to thrive at their job.

(00:42:01):
And with this additional perspective,

(00:42:04):
it just seems like it'll provide industrial farmers the ability to use crocodile

(00:42:12):
tears or just use genuine farmers in need as pawns to

(00:42:19):
loosen and then abuse any sort of loosened restrictions on farming,

(00:42:23):
which are meant for small business farmers.

(00:42:30):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:42:31):
In the UK, there was just this big thing about inheritance tax on farms.

(00:42:38):
I don't know if you guys saw any of this.

(00:42:40):
Basically, for a long time, if you live on a farm, it is exempt from inheritance tax.

(00:42:46):
And so you'll be able to pass it on without paying any tax.

(00:42:51):
The idea is that if you have these family farms for generations,

(00:42:54):
you don't actually want the government to come along and take a slice of it every

(00:42:58):
time it gets passed on.

(00:43:00):
Now,

(00:43:01):
you know,

(00:43:02):
some people say that was a little bit abused,

(00:43:03):
a bit of a loophole,

(00:43:04):
because basically what you would have is then sort of rich families get a couple of

(00:43:08):
pigs in the garden and say,

(00:43:09):
oh,

(00:43:09):
look,

(00:43:09):
we're a farm now,

(00:43:10):
no inheritance tax.

(00:43:12):
So that was part of the reason for getting rid of it.

(00:43:14):
But to the extent that it is used by,

(00:43:17):
you know,

(00:43:17):
good faith,

(00:43:18):
small scale farmers who this is their operation,

(00:43:20):
everything.

(00:43:21):
Well, getting rid of that tax exemption is basically an additional tax on the small farmers.

(00:43:28):
And again, this only applies if it's your home.

(00:43:30):
So that is a tax that would apply to small farms and that doesn't apply to factory farms.

(00:43:35):
Or,

(00:43:36):
I guess,

(00:43:36):
an exemption that no longer applies to small farms and already wasn't applied to

(00:43:40):
factory farms.

(00:43:40):
Yeah.

(00:43:42):
Yeah.

(00:43:44):
Because that's wrong, right?

(00:43:46):
Like, in theory, the way it should have worked is you're taxing factory farms, right?

(00:43:50):
You're supposed to be...

(00:43:50):
I mean,

(00:43:52):
this is not part of our actual conversation,

(00:43:54):
but now that we've gone down this route...

(00:43:59):
Because I remember something else as well.

(00:44:01):
In the UK, recently they put up taxes on people selling products through eBay or Amazon.

(00:44:09):
There's now a limit of how much you can sell before you're taxed on it or something like that.

(00:44:14):
And I'm like,

(00:44:15):
you're taxing them,

(00:44:16):
but Amazon doesn't need to pay tax because they're a company in Ireland.

(00:44:20):
Yeah, that's right.

(00:44:22):
Amazon themselves don't pay any tax.

(00:44:25):
What logic is this?

(00:44:29):
yeah so so yeah I mean the whole political I feel the field which you work in

(00:44:37):
inherently becomes very political because it's on one of these sort of issues which

(00:44:41):
have which are at least sold as a clear right-left divide in a lot of circumstances

(00:44:48):
so I feel yeah this is another yeah you'd be involved with a lot of sort of

(00:44:55):
lobbying or advocacy groups

(00:45:00):
Yeah, it's definitely a tricky one.

(00:45:04):
And I think that people on our side can be a bit too put off by the backlash, quote-unquote.

(00:45:17):
Now,

(00:45:17):
it depends what you're working on and how much consensus you need to build about

(00:45:22):
certain things,

(00:45:23):
but it seems to me like there are a bunch of

(00:45:28):
things worth saying that are true that might not be popular that oftentimes with research

(00:45:35):
I'm not a politician.

(00:45:36):
It's not my job to be popular.

(00:45:38):
It doesn't really matter if no one likes me, frankly.

(00:45:42):
So I do feel that's nice to be able to say, I'm going to say this thing that I think is true.

(00:45:50):
I don't really care if nobody likes it.

(00:45:53):
I think I can argue for it.

(00:45:54):
And also, one of the things I've been doing recently is

(00:45:58):
calling out a lot of pro-meat science, which is just complete crap.

(00:46:03):
There was one study that came out,

(00:46:06):
which was called an umbrella review,

(00:46:09):
and they were looking at red meat and heart disease,

(00:46:13):
and they...

(00:46:15):
adapted a ranking of strength of evidence to say,

(00:46:20):
this is what would count as convincing evidence,

(00:46:22):
this would count as probable evidence,

(00:46:23):
this counts as possible,

(00:46:24):
this is not convincing,

(00:46:26):
like that.

(00:46:27):
And they had these criteria for convincing and for probable evidence

(00:46:33):
that were impossible to meet.

(00:46:37):
Like if you're taking a set of studies,

(00:46:38):
there was no heterogeneity,

(00:46:40):
which is this boring statistical point,

(00:46:43):
but basically you would never get zero heterogeneity.

(00:46:45):
It would be like a, you know, nought point something number.

(00:46:49):
And what was the other one?

(00:46:50):
No potential confounding variables,

(00:46:52):
which again,

(00:46:54):
as we've discussed in this conversation,

(00:46:56):
just doesn't really happen.

(00:46:57):
If you're trying to do a study on red meat and heart disease, did some of the people smoke?

(00:47:00):
Yes, they did.

(00:47:02):
Now, if you've got hundreds of thousands of people, that's going to cancel out.

(00:47:05):
But you would never have a criteria that says no potential confounding variables.

(00:47:08):
So they've got this table, right?

(00:47:09):
They've got these impossible to meet criteria in the convincing evidence row and in

(00:47:14):
the probable evidence row.

(00:47:17):
The evidence hasn't met those impossible to meet criteria.

(00:47:19):
Surprise, surprise.

(00:47:20):
And then so they've said,

(00:47:21):
therefore,

(00:47:22):
it's only in the third row,

(00:47:23):
red meat possibly connected to heart disease.

(00:47:25):
Not very strong evidence.

(00:47:27):
And they just completely made up this rating system in order to get to that conclusion.

(00:47:30):
It's quite shocking.

(00:47:31):
But there's all sorts of examples like this now where there's kind of warped

(00:47:36):
science around different things to do with meat.

(00:47:38):
And there are, you know, this is a conscious strategy on their part to...

(00:47:44):
try to muddy the waters and to try to...

(00:47:46):
There's a lot of the regenerative agroecology stuff is around this as well.

(00:47:50):
Oh, maybe there's carbon sequestration in the soil from some types of agriculture.

(00:47:53):
It's like there's a tiny...

(00:47:55):
proportion of all agriculture.

(00:47:57):
And it's not carbon negative.

(00:48:01):
It's not sequestering as much carbon as the animals are producing.

(00:48:06):
But it's annoying because science isn't meant to be that you can kind of just

(00:48:10):
create a vibe and then that's what sticks.

(00:48:13):
But it kind of is when it comes to interfacing with policymakers and stuff like that.

(00:48:17):
If you just have like weeks on end of hearing about anemia,

(00:48:20):
you're going to start thinking,

(00:48:21):
wow,

(00:48:22):
anemia is a real problem.

(00:48:23):
We need to get everyone eating more red meat.

(00:48:25):
But actually, anemia is not a big problem and heart disease is a big problem.

(00:48:30):
So it's very,

(00:48:33):
you know,

(00:48:33):
there can be true facts that are just not presented in a context that they're like

(00:48:43):
presented out of context and in a way that's kind of irrelevant,

(00:48:46):
like about anemia,

(00:48:46):
about agroecology.

(00:48:47):
It's like, OK, these things are not incorrect.

(00:48:50):
But they're just such a small problem compared to all the massive problems on the

(00:48:54):
other side that having endless reports and news coverage on these things is kind of

(00:49:01):
misleading.

(00:49:03):
Yeah, I was going to ask about shouldn't there be better review for such things?

(00:49:12):
That sounds like a conflict of interest if a paper is coming out.

(00:49:16):
Either it's not very good science and you've been allowed to publish it because

(00:49:21):
there's an oversight on the reviewers' part,

(00:49:24):
on peer review part,

(00:49:25):
or there's a conflict of interest there which has not been addressed,

(00:49:28):
right?

(00:49:28):
Because otherwise,

(00:49:31):
most researchers worth their soul should know that these criteria,

(00:49:36):
if they are how you've mentioned it,

(00:49:38):
are incorrect.

(00:49:39):
Like, you cannot be safe.

(00:49:41):
You would think so, yeah.

(00:49:42):
Yeah.

(00:49:43):
You think so, yeah.

(00:49:44):
And I mean,

(00:49:44):
so one interesting thing here is peer review really is not like as robust as most

(00:49:53):
people think it is.

(00:49:55):
I've published a bunch of peer reviewed papers.

(00:49:56):
I've peer reviewed a bunch of papers.

(00:49:59):
It is just a bloke like me getting an email that says,

(00:50:01):
can you read this paper and tell us if you think it's all right?

(00:50:03):
Like it's not, I'm not God.

(00:50:04):
I don't know everything, right?

(00:50:06):
I have a hundred other things on my to-do list.

(00:50:08):
And also you don't get paid to do reviews either.

(00:50:11):
So you get an email from some random bloke saying,

(00:50:13):
can you give me three hours of your day to read this?

(00:50:16):
All right, maybe.

(00:50:17):
But I don't do many of them anymore because it's just, it's literally a thankless task.

(00:50:21):
It's anonymous as well, right?

(00:50:22):
So it's literally a thankless task.

(00:50:23):
But yeah,

(00:50:24):
I mean,

(00:50:24):
having had papers reviewed and having reviewed papers,

(00:50:29):
you can get some bad stuff published in a peer reviewed journal.

(00:50:33):
You really can.

(00:50:34):
It just means that

(00:50:37):
two busy people signed off on it basically um and that's it and you get stuff

(00:50:42):
published in papers which is like clearly mistakes and you know chat tpt generated

(00:50:47):
or whatever and it still says the hi yes i can do that for you know you've seen

(00:50:51):
those kind of memes right but i mean it really is a game of um

(00:50:57):
All of academic publishing is a bit of a...

(00:50:58):
I don't want to say a scam,

(00:51:00):
but so much of it is a game and,

(00:51:02):
like,

(00:51:05):
shitified.

(00:51:06):
Have you ever heard this phrase?

(00:51:07):
Like, things that used to be good, like somehow the market kind of corrupts them.

(00:51:11):
Basically,

(00:51:12):
once you have this situation where you've got a bunch of academics,

(00:51:15):
a bunch of well-paid people who...

(00:51:18):
their time is going towards these projects of publishing papers,

(00:51:22):
they don't expect to get paid to write papers,

(00:51:25):
they don't expect to get paid to review papers,

(00:51:27):
and they don't expect to get paid to serve as an editor for the journal.

(00:51:31):
So that sounds like great money to be made to me, right?

(00:51:35):
I'm going to set up a journal,

(00:51:36):
get a bunch of academics to work for me for free,

(00:51:38):
and I am charging access fees and publication fees and everything else.

(00:51:43):
So basically,

(00:51:45):
academic publishing and anyone who does academic publishing will tell you the same

(00:51:48):
thing.

(00:51:50):
It really is a bit of a game now.

(00:51:51):
There is a lot of pay-to-play.

(00:51:53):
You can pay a couple thousand dollars to get your article published over there,

(00:51:57):
and we're not going to look at it too closely if you pay on time,

(00:51:59):
basically.

(00:52:00):
So, yeah, things being published in journals, it doesn't make them right.

(00:52:08):
Which is a shame, right?

(00:52:09):
Because the whole endeavor is meant to be that we're going to have quite a high

(00:52:14):
standard for saying anything gets published.

(00:52:16):
But then we're going to be very sure when we go to write the next thing.

(00:52:19):
I can rely on that because it was published in a peer review.

(00:52:21):
But yeah, it's not quite that simple, unfortunately.

(00:52:25):
No, I remember talking.

(00:52:29):
Oh, we had a podcast with Mehmet Oran, who's in

(00:52:34):
Paris,

(00:52:35):
one of the universities in Paris,

(00:52:36):
I'm forgetting which one,

(00:52:37):
or maybe it was the University of Normandy.

(00:52:39):
Anyway,

(00:52:42):
last year,

(00:52:43):
and he was talking about him doing sort of an analysis of the,

(00:52:47):
for fun,

(00:52:48):
just doing an analysis of the bias in publications,

(00:52:51):
and that some of the highest journals just have friends,

(00:52:55):
like that same network of people just publishing in it nonstop,

(00:52:59):
and you can never get into high

(00:53:01):
high level journals because it's so biased and then the low level ones people don't

(00:53:05):
have time and you're paying and most people like you said for doing the reviews are

(00:53:11):
not paid for their time to do it so most of them are trying to do their own work so

(00:53:17):
they're going to not look at it very well and it just leads to a lot of like false

(00:53:22):
science not false science but like bad science being put out there or or and then

(00:53:29):
if any of those get picked up by news organizations then they become big stories

(00:53:34):
and big stories are coming out of information which is not necessarily correct yeah

(00:53:41):
it's a real problem and i mean

(00:53:45):
It's tough to know what to do about it because we do need to have a reliable way of

(00:53:50):
saying,

(00:53:51):
okay,

(00:53:52):
we agree this is sort of our standard for truth and that we can count on things

(00:53:57):
past a certain threshold.

(00:53:58):
But yeah, I mean, it is a real problem.

(00:54:01):
There's journals that have sprung up that seem to be entirely...

(00:54:07):
Scam journals, basically, like predatory journals, they're called.

(00:54:10):
There's also conferences, which seem to be pretty much a similar model.

(00:54:15):
And again,

(00:54:16):
it's a bit weird in academia,

(00:54:17):
really,

(00:54:18):
because normally you've got some grant or some university department that's paying

(00:54:21):
for all of this.

(00:54:22):
But if you go to speak at a conference...

(00:54:25):
You don't get paid, you pay.

(00:54:27):
So again,

(00:54:28):
it's like,

(00:54:29):
well,

(00:54:29):
here's an industry where people expect to go and pay to go and speak at a

(00:54:32):
conference.

(00:54:33):
Hell, I'll start a conference company, right?

(00:54:34):
I've got the speakers paying, I've got the attendees paying.

(00:54:37):
Maybe I get the bar staff paying as well, right?

(00:54:41):
But that's the expectation, that's the norm.

(00:54:43):
And so, yeah, it does get to... It does attract...

(00:54:52):
vultures i guess you could say was it a very good way of putting it like yeah i

(00:54:56):
look forward to everybody attending the first smooth brain society conference in a

(00:55:00):
year's time yes setting it up uh now i i think yeah i think it's uh it's like

(00:55:09):
shockingly bad sometimes as someone who is who also works in academia um

(00:55:14):
And yeah,

(00:55:15):
because then it dilutes,

(00:55:16):
because it causes harm to when good science comes out there,

(00:55:19):
right?

(00:55:21):
And then it muddies the water more and it ruins trust in the entire process.

(00:55:26):
And then it allows other people making weird things up about stones working for

(00:55:34):
your health and God knows.

(00:55:36):
And that's given the same level of belief as...

(00:55:42):
rigorous scientific work which is actually conducted well and yeah it's a very

(00:55:46):
annoying process yeah even just like from a career and like time perspective i mean

(00:55:54):
if you've spent you know 18 months getting the data together and writing this paper

(00:55:58):
and submit it to a journal and it gets rejected

(00:56:02):
you're going to send it to another journal and you're probably going to keep doing

(00:56:04):
that until it gets published.

(00:56:05):
So like a lot of the papers that I've published have been rejected from a journal

(00:56:08):
first,

(00:56:08):
been rejected for more than one journal sometimes.

(00:56:12):
So stuff which is ultimately published, like sometimes was rejected from a journal first.

(00:56:16):
And that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad or wrong either,

(00:56:18):
but it's just another note on sort of the dynamics at play because you're going to

(00:56:24):
get...

(00:56:26):
I've been asked to review the same study for more than one different journal.

(00:56:29):
I'm like, oh, they're just sending this.

(00:56:31):
There's only so many reviewers are going to give their time to it.

(00:56:35):
And I think from the author's perspective,

(00:56:39):
once you've written it,

(00:56:40):
now you're just in the last bit of getting it published.

(00:56:42):
You're going to keep going until you get it published.

(00:56:44):
From the editor's perspective,

(00:56:46):
once you've had the journal,

(00:56:47):
once you've had the paper in,

(00:56:49):
you've done the trouble of finding reviewers,

(00:56:50):
sent it out to reviewers,

(00:56:51):
had their reviews in,

(00:56:52):
sent it back to the author,

(00:56:53):
sent it back to the reviewers again.

(00:56:55):
once you've done all that,

(00:56:57):
to reject the paper after all of that does feel like,

(00:57:00):
oh,

(00:57:00):
that was a waste of time,

(00:57:01):
right?

(00:57:01):
So I think,

(00:57:02):
to be honest,

(00:57:03):
at that point,

(00:57:03):
I think there is quite a big bias towards like,

(00:57:05):
we are going to publish this thing.

(00:57:06):
We've gone to all the trouble, basically.

(00:57:09):
Which again, like, you don't really want that to be a feature of the process.

(00:57:12):
You do want it to be

(00:57:14):
No, if it's not good enough, it doesn't get published.

(00:57:16):
But I don't know how to ensure that because all of the metrics that these people

(00:57:20):
would want to show to their bosses,

(00:57:22):
I guess,

(00:57:23):
are to do with how many papers did you publish?

(00:57:25):
How many,

(00:57:25):
you know,

(00:57:27):
citation count is sort of a crude way to try to get at the quality of those

(00:57:31):
publications.

(00:57:32):
But then it's, you know.

(00:57:34):
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the topic as well, right?

(00:57:36):
If it's a less researched topic, there's going to be fewer citations.

(00:57:40):
That's true, yes.

(00:57:41):
And that, again, causes a big problem.

(00:57:44):
Well, what was it?

(00:57:45):
Einstein's paper didn't have any citations in it, the one which he published.

(00:57:48):
It was just his work.

(00:57:50):
Oh, really?

(00:57:50):
So I'm like, if you use citations as a thing,

(00:57:55):
um but uh but we we went on this tangent for a little bit let's and we're coming to

(00:58:02):
an rsi should ask you are there any parts of the conversation are there anything

(00:58:06):
that you wanted to say which we didn't get to touch upon um sort of final three

(00:58:12):
thoughts yeah there were well there are a bunch of things i mean yeah we could

(00:58:17):
probably we could probably sit for hours really couldn't we um

(00:58:20):
I think it's an interesting thing to your listeners more broadly,

(00:58:24):
this point about how science is done and the structure of journals and the kind of

(00:58:38):
suboptimal human ways in which we kind of mess up the process.

(00:58:42):
Yeah.

(00:58:45):
All of that's a bit doomerish, really, isn't it?

(00:58:47):
Because if you have a sense of how important it actually is to get the scientific

(00:58:51):
process right,

(00:58:53):
it's very horrifying when you think,

(00:58:54):
God,

(00:58:54):
we're getting it quite wrong.

(00:58:56):
So I don't know really what to make of that.

(00:58:59):
I think that...

(00:59:01):
you know,

(00:59:01):
bless beer reviewers,

(00:59:03):
because people do need to do it,

(00:59:05):
and it really is a thankless task.

(00:59:06):
And actually,

(00:59:07):
you know,

(00:59:07):
maybe this conversation will inspire me to do one or two more reviews than I might

(00:59:10):
have done.

(00:59:11):
I do review for Chris Hopford's journal still, actually.

(00:59:13):
That's one that I do still review for.

(00:59:17):
But yeah,

(00:59:17):
I think that,

(00:59:19):
you know,

(00:59:19):
for people out there who are scientists,

(00:59:21):
I think it is really important to speak up in informal channels when you think

(00:59:25):
something is wrong as well.

(00:59:27):
I've been maybe a bit too boisterous on LinkedIn and on YouTube making sort of call

(00:59:33):
outs of bad science.

(00:59:35):
And I think...

(00:59:38):
it's easy to think, oh, that's just social media.

(00:59:41):
It's not really proper.

(00:59:42):
It doesn't really matter.

(00:59:43):
But that is where most people are going to see it and interact with it and get a sense.

(00:59:47):
Most people are not going to read the whole thing and understand why it was wrong,

(00:59:50):
but they can kind of follow an interaction where people are arguing about it and

(00:59:53):
see who seems to be right,

(00:59:55):
which,

(00:59:55):
again,

(00:59:55):
is kind of suboptimal.

(00:59:56):
But to the extent that you think there's like cynically misrepresented or

(01:00:02):
deliberately bad science going on,

(01:00:05):
do feel that you can call it out because ultimately whether something is true is

(01:00:11):
going to become apparent.

(01:00:12):
And if you were the one screaming it was right when everyone else was saying the

(01:00:16):
wrong thing,

(01:00:17):
you'll be shown to be right in the end.

(01:00:20):
Opinion pieces presented as factual evidences is a bit of a thing these days, unfortunately.

(01:00:30):
It's really, really muddy some waters.

(01:00:33):
It occasionally prompts,

(01:00:35):
if you go to the right places,

(01:00:37):
it prompts some interesting questions in whichever direction you like.

(01:00:41):
But there has to be some...

(01:00:46):
some standard preserved for some ethical standards and quality standards preserved

(01:00:53):
in the areas where people can look to and accurately say that a fact is a fact.

(01:01:02):
It's not an opinion.

(01:01:05):
Right?

(01:01:07):
And we hope that peer-reviewed journals can

(01:01:11):
maintain that sort of integrity and be that bastion where scientists can rely on to

(01:01:20):
present those facts and evidence.

(01:01:24):
yeah i hope so i hope so and they're not so many times facts are um a lot of times

(01:01:32):
it's down to interpretation or context or a methodological point but sometimes it's

(01:01:40):
not sometimes it is just no this was just incorrect so those are good not good but

(01:01:45):
uh you know satisfying ones where you can discover oh now we'll see that it's

(01:01:49):
incorrect we all agree that it was incorrect

(01:01:51):
But more often than that,

(01:01:53):
it seems to be,

(01:01:54):
you know,

(01:01:54):
usually the game is not usually the game is not actually lying and saying incorrect

(01:02:01):
facts,

(01:02:02):
but rather is just saying a bunch of things that are technically true around some

(01:02:10):
sort of conclusion that you want to get to without ever actually saying the

(01:02:13):
conclusion.

(01:02:13):
So best example of this in the main,

(01:02:15):
like,

(01:02:16):
I'll say junk science that I go after is this thing called the Dublin Declaration.

(01:02:21):
which is a document written to give the vibe that we don't need to reduce global

(01:02:26):
meat consumption and has signed on from over a thousand scientists.

(01:02:31):
But it doesn't ever actually claim that.

(01:02:34):
It just has all of these things about my favorite phrase in there.

(01:02:37):
It has this phrase, animal foods are a source of essential nutrients.

(01:02:45):
Now that sentence is true, right?

(01:02:47):
But it doesn't say animal foods are an essential source of nutrients.

(01:02:53):
They are a source of essential nutrients because they do have protein in them.

(01:02:58):
But you don't have to eat it.

(01:03:00):
That's such a silly point if you think about it.

(01:03:01):
I mean, the gravel on my driveway is a source of essential nutrients.

(01:03:04):
It has calcium in it, right?

(01:03:06):
It's such a nothing point.

(01:03:08):
So the whole document is like a series of 100 sentences like that,

(01:03:12):
back to back,

(01:03:13):
that is designed to give the vibe that meat consumption is all fine.

(01:03:17):
We don't need to do anything about meat consumption without ever actually claiming that.

(01:03:21):
And so you can kind of read a sentence and say, none of this is incorrect.

(01:03:27):
but it's super misleading when taken as a whole.

(01:03:29):
So it's very, yeah, it's very tricky.

(01:03:32):
The misinformation is very sophisticated now, you know?

(01:03:35):
Yeah.

(01:03:36):
And as we know, people in STEM tend to not have the best English.

(01:03:44):
Not the best people skills.

(01:03:46):
Yeah.

(01:03:49):
But now on that, we'll leave it over there.

(01:03:51):
So thank you so much, Chris.

(01:03:53):
We need to come, you need to have you back on to converse more.

(01:03:55):
Hopefully once,

(01:03:57):
You have more information about your study,

(01:04:00):
your big study,

(01:04:01):
and we can see what other porks have been sold or not sold.

(01:04:05):
What other meat-based products you've been advertising or not advertising.

(01:04:11):
And also the comments on the adverts.

(01:04:12):
That's what I'd be interested in hearing.

(01:04:14):
Oh yeah, there'll be some interesting ones.

(01:04:18):
Knowing my brother,

(01:04:19):
he's probably keen to know if you had any humor-focused ads and if they had more or

(01:04:25):
less of an effect on the final.

(01:04:28):
Okay, we'll have to check that out.

(01:04:30):
We'll have to check that out.

(01:04:31):
I'll have to go through the best troll comments for you as well for next time I come on.

(01:04:36):
100%.

(01:04:36):
We're going to do that.

(01:04:37):
We should have a Twitch livestream with your YouTube.

(01:04:40):
channel as well and just go through all the comments and be heaps of fun.

(01:04:43):
That sounds awesome.

(01:04:44):
All right.

(01:04:45):
Until then, though, take care, Chris.

(01:04:48):
Take care, Ahmed.

(01:04:49):
Thank you, everybody, for listening.

(01:04:51):
And yeah, until next time.

(01:04:53):
Bye.

(01:04:54):
Thanks a lot, guys.

(01:04:54):
Awesome.