Current Events > Oof. Someone absolutely demolished Dr Mike Israetel's PhD thesis

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elLI9PRn1gQ

This is a pretty niche subgenre of internet drama so I'm going to have to give you some context

• Online fitness content has two basic camps: "bro lifters" and "science-based" lifting. These camps argue about whether you should be making academically informed decisions based on research or if it's better to follow conventional gym-culture wisdom
• On the "science-based" side one of the loudest and most famous proponents is Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization
• For the past like, 20 years he's been publishing lots of science-based content, which for a very long time was so different to most fitness content. Think long form lecture content on how protein synthesis works and how to measure training volume etc.
• He has the relatively rare combination of being a successful bodybuilder, academic researcher and professor, brazilian ju-jitsu wrester, professional training coach and steroid junkie in a world where authority figures are generally only one of these things
• In recent years this style of content has blown up with the likes of Jeff Nippard etc.
• In very recent years Dr Mike's channel has blown up bigtime and he's gone from being everyone's favourite science nerd to celebrity influencer.
• This transition seems to have gone to his head or maybe the pressure to pump out content all the timehas been a factor, but the channel has started to go downhill
• Mike's attitude has become increasingly odd and egotistical. He started a second channel to discuss his libertarian views and has been going off on rants about all kinds of weird stuff
• People started to doubt his position as an authority, especially drawing attention to the fact that he has been using his status as an authority as evidence that he's right.
• The above video arrives and completely demolishes his PhD. Riddled with statistical anomalies, grammatical and spelling errors, obvious cutting/pasting, overall presents no new knowledge or cohesive argument (athletic people are athletic, fin), excessively verbose. How the hell did this pass?
• The video above is actually far more rigorous and cohesive than anything in the paper
• the paper was so bad that now everyone wants to know what the hell is going on in the entire field of exercise science institutions
• Omg TL:DR - the most respected authority/communicator in the field of exercise science got his PhD from a thesis so bad it should have been a failed bsc paper and it's a huge L for the culture of science-based fitness content

I thought that said Dr. Mikes Israel thesis, and was like oh no hes such a nice guy D:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/360cc71a.jpg

I'm intrigued
Was this a 20 year long con to get people to doubt science even more? I know I shouldn't boil it down to such a simplistic view but I can only assume at least a few people on YouTube are going to just double down on their hatred for "science". Maybe even Joe Rogan brings it up on his next podcast.

lmao ok I jumped a little bit, I love the table with the fucked up data.

Average age? 19.5 years
Standard deviation? 20.9 years

w h a t

YugiNoob posted...

I thought that said Dr. Mikes Israel thesis, and was like oh no hes such a nice guy D:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/360cc71a.jpg

As it happens meathead dr mike went on handsome dr mike's podcast, it got kind of unhinged because meathead dr mike started talking about childhood trauma and his love for AI and pharmaceauticals

I don't know anything about any of this, but an institution that gives out PhDs for shite theses needs a serious auditing.

Where was it?

properties as proper-tights
biomechanics as bio mecannons
exercise as exer ker size

ai123 posted...

I don't know anything about any of this, but an institution that gives out PhDs for shite theses needs a serious auditing.

Where was it?

Texas i think

In the few videos I've seen of Issraetel, he seemed the most humble of these guys. But then, those videos could be old. Really hope this is overblown, but it probably isn't.

I saw people posting about this on /fit/ and the only evidence I've seen posted so far was him misspelling some words in citations. Does this guy actually analyze the data?

Evening_Dragon posted...

In the few videos I've seen of Issraetel, he seemed the most humble of these guys. But then, those videos could be old. Really hope this is overblown, but it probably isn't.

Either he's changed and its all gone to his head or we are just seeing more of him :/

Doe posted...

I saw people posting about this on /fit/ and the only evidence I've seen posted so far was him misspelling some words in citations. Does this guy actually analyze the data?

Yeah. Unfortunately its a very thorough and damming critique. Like this is how a PhD advisor might pick apart a paper irl.

I thought this was about "handsome" Dr Mike for a second.
I've never heard of this guy myself:
https://www.instagram.com/drmikeisraetel/?hl=en

pinky0926 posted...

Either he's changed and its all gone to his head or we are just seeing more of him :/

Like he always prefaces his critiques with "we're not here to make fun of them, we all make mistakes, these guys deserve props just for giving it their all, we're here to learn"

I thought he was safe, man. I took good advice on shoulders from this guy.

People in real life: hi how are you

A few weeks ago I was reading that protein powder has traces of lead in it.

Apparently it was a rough draft?

Fitness influencers are just drama's at this point though.

At least he's relatively normal about Leanbeefpatty. So many dudes are like "SHE'S NOT NATTY" like you can't look like that as a former gymnast and farm hand girl going to the gym 6 days a week for 4 years eating 80 grams of protein a day and being 5'' foot 2' tall.

YugiNoob posted...

I thought that said Dr. Mikes Israel thesis, and was like oh no hes such a nice guy D:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/360cc71a.jpg

I thought this too, lmao.

Is "exercise science" applied anatomy, etc. or is there an implication from the name that as a layman I wouldn't know?

pinky0926 posted...

As it happens meathead dr mike went on handsome dr mike's podcast, it got kind of unhinged because meathead dr mike started talking about childhood trauma and his love for AI and pharmaceauticals

Amd Eugenics. The guy has some really, really fucked up views