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Not having a scientific study backing something by default makes it bullshit? Was mindfulness meditation bullshit until scientists stamped it with their approval?

It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.

The default is 'disbelief', yes. At least with grand claims and when no clear plausible mechanism of action, etc. etc. is proposed.

As to whether 'bullshit' is justified, I dunno. I just see that as being a bit blunt phrasing-wise.

That bluntness was the reason I clearly marked it as my personal opinion and not that of the scientific community.

I like bluntness, as it often helps to cut to the core of things.

But I try as best I can not to be blunt against people, but ideas/hypotheses.

... but wasn't the OP saying the *claims* (specifically) were bullshit? That's what I'm reading in the OP comment now, but perhaps it was edited.

I don't see them calling the practice bullshit, just the claims.

What's the difference?

It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.

That's true but it doesn't mean what you're implying it means. You're suggesting that saying "We don't know" means there's an equal probability that the thing will turn out to be true as there is it'll turn out to be false. That's not what skepticism in science means. It's entirely valid to say "The chance of this being real is 0.01." and then use science to prove it it's false. You might turn out to be wrong, and that tiny chance shows that the science was worthwhile, but most of the time you'll just end up showing that your intuition was correct.

You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial. Also, there is an art to deciding what to "aim" your science at, and as much as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.

In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis. I'd personally be surprised if there was zero benefit, but I respect your right to a different intuition from mine.

I'm less confident about any similar benefits to something like MS although perhaps circulation to the brain could be similarly helpful. I'd recommend withholding judgment until we have more science, but again, that's my intuition. If you don't want to improve your breathing, you certainly don't have to.

> In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis.

By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.

Not the person you're responding to, but my experience as a runner and someone who practices breathing is that it does engage some specific mechanisms that promote certain kinds of blood flow. I think your intuition here is off, and you're treating the body as a pretty simple machine rather than something that has some pretty sophisticated feedback mechanisms between the mind and the body.

As I said, I am open to explanations that this is a mind/body effect.

I am not open to explanations that breathing fast/deep in itself, through the extra blood flow that it can obviously generate, are directly therapeutic for arthritis. This was, by my understanding, GP's preferred explanation.

No. Pulse rate is not necessarily correlated to volume of blood flow. You can have a high pulse rate, and often do, _because_ your heart is weak and failing to pump sufficient blood.

Deep breathing actually tends to slow your heart rate down. I don't know what it does to overall blood flow rate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it directed more blood flow to your capillaries and other areas that don't typically get great blood flow, similar to how your body pumps more blood to your extremities when you are warm.

General advice, keep an open mind. When people say things that give you an emotional reaction, ask yourself if it's possible you are getting that reaction because you are afraid they might be right.

(Apologies about reordering your statements slightly.)

> There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial.

Well, yes. That's to avoid experimental bias by the experimenters themselves.

> You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all.

There's a threshold before you even engage with speculation. Speculation is good, but as a scientist one must decide to what to spend time on.

> [...] as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.[...]

What to do experimentation, trials, etc. on is mostly based on pure conjecture. But that's not contrary to anything that's been said ITT. Conjectures generate experiments, but these conjectures usually have *some* grounding in known physics, biology, whatever. (This a very poor explication of David Deutsch's brilliant exposition on this point of epistomology in The Beginning of Infinity.)

Are you arguing with me? I don't see anything you said that is inconsistent with the points I made.

Mindfulness meditation still does nothing. Read "Altered Traits" - the author practiced for 10 years and then ended up taking medication to control blood pressure.

Did you really trot out a lone anecdote about someone needing blood pressure medication to claim that mindfulness medication does nothing?

> Was mindfulness meditation bullshit

"mindfulness" is a corporate re-packaged and whitewashed variant of buddhist meditation tradition. It misses the point spectacularly and actively seeks to cultivate a harmful mindset. This is not something to refer to positively, or to use as a benchmark.

> It misses the point spectacularly and actively seeks to cultivate a harmful mindset.

This is some impressive hand waving. You said literally nothing meaningful here.

> This is not something to refer to positively, or to use as a benchmark.

Lots of people find it benefits them. I would absolutely refer to a treatment that people find useful as positive.

If you quote in such a way as to take away all the points, you are left with nothing. That doesn't reflect on me :)

I literally quoted two thirds of your comment. Here’s the last piece:

> ”mindfulness" is a corporate re-packaged and whitewashed variant of buddhist meditation tradition.

This still says nothing meaningful.

“Whitewashed” is nonsense when discussing a meditation practice that’s not based on race. (Maybe you mean “westernized”, but that doesn’t create the same visceral response that bypasses critical thinking.) “Corporate” is not an actual criticism, either. It’s again an emotional appeal. The fact that some companies make money from a thing does not make a thing bad. You can check out a book from the library for free if you want to avoid giving a corporation your money.

Given that you took the time to respond and still couldn’t be bothered to say anything substantive, I am left to assume you actually don’t have a real criticism, but an axe to grind.

> It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.

That's how it's supposed to be done, but generally I don't see that happening... cough COVID19 cough.

The GP did say that the "bullshit" note was their personal opinion though.

> It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.

Bertrand Russell might disagree. You don’t need to weight all conjectures equally or even entertain them without sufficient explanation or evidence.

Here’s his Russell’s Teapot thought experiment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Thanks. Spares me to post the teapot. Also in a lot of cases - this being one of it, we already know that many of the effects are not possible under the proscribed methods. Science already knows a lot from other inquiries and studies having shown that claimed effects are not realistically probable.

It is like if I create a study showing that black cars with a combustion engine need gasoline to run.

Someone later stating that red cars with a combination engine can run on pure water from the tap doesn't warrant a new study.

> we already know that many of the effects are not possible under the proscribed methods

Do we? This is news to me. Do you have any studies or explanations as to how this is the case?

Except these claims are not empirically unfalsifiable.

Sure, but I think there's some leeway there.

If I claim that if you burn $1M it'll rain for a year, it's falsifiable, but we don't really need to test it. The burden would be on me to demonstrate scientifically how this hypothesis has any merit before it's reasonable to test it.

Regarding the teapot, what’s unfalsifiable about the claims of the Wim Hof method? It seems to me that they should be easily able to be disproven if they are in fact false.

I've met Wim Hof [1], his mind is not precise when it comes to scientific things. In that sense I'd recommend a huge caution to what he claims about the health benefits of his method. But hey, at least he's utilizing the placebo effect, and trust me, when you use his actual method for things it actually works for, you still want that placebo effect added to it as well ;-)

Luckily though, he does recognize that to some extent. Because of that, he sometimes does research with actual scientists, and I have talked to a few of them. IMO those claims you can trust, or at least trust as much as any scientific claim.

[1] Fun fact: one of the first comments I made on HN was about the WHM :)

People died doing the one thing what Wim constantly says NOT to do: practicing near a water that you can drown in.

This isn't fault of Wim Hof method. He warns about the risk of fainting (which isn't a problem on its own) near a body of water (where fainting becomes a problem) all the time.

I agree, it's not a freedive method and shouldn't be used as such. If you do, you can die.

As far as I am aware he started issuing this warning (against practicing near/in water after people drowned).

Your claim that he is just a hack is false, I suggest you (re)read Win Hof's wiki article and review references. He is not a first nor the last human being who is able to endure extreme conditions that are/where perceive impossible in some cases.

Wim Hof may be an n=1 case study, but he has subjected himself to an extraordinary amount of medical study.

What is your expertise on this topic?

He also took completely untrained people, taught them his methods, than took them to top of Everest almost naked.

This makes the study definitely n > 1.

To the Everest? When? He took them to the Kilimanjaro, that one I know, I almost was part of it but chickened out (since altitude sickness might be a thing and some people did actually drop out from what I remember, in the first run no one dropped out though). He attempted the Everest himself and he had to go back. He said that mt. Everest was a different beast, the cold is way harsher there and he didn't even reach the death zone (8.5km). He almost got there though, in his shorts.

Oh sorry he climbed some part of Everest himself, and took people to Kilimanjaro. My bad, confused two distinct events.

Kilimanjaro, I think. Even Wim Hof hasn't summited Everest.

You're right confused it. My bad. Yet rest of the argument applies.

Nobody questioned the part about breathing oneself warm. There was even a plausible hypothesis towards the mechanism.

But there is neither a plausible mechanism nor any data that gives credit to the health effects his teachings shall provide.

>People have died attempting the Wim Hof Method (one example [1]).

Does WH recommend using his method for breath-holding underwater? (I don't know)

Hyperventilation causing deaths underwater is well-known and not specific to WHM

> Does WH recommend using his method for breath-holding underwater? (I don't know)

No, he explicitly says don't do that. Just one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzCaZQqAs9I&t=56s

I don't think this is remotely fair. Or true. It sounds like you have an axe to grind.

Your own link speaks of multiple health benefits to hyperventilation and cold exposure, and of studies with multiple Non-Wim participants, even while coming across biased itself.

As well, Wim constantly advises people clearly and consistently not to practice in water more than an inch deep by themselves. Constantly.

His website does have this claim:

> The Wim Hof Method is also linked to reducing symptoms of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, sarcoidosis, vasculitis, and several autoimmune diseases.

https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises

No references cited, curious to know what it's based on. "Linked to" is quite a vague phrase.

Just a guess as a fan of Wim, he could be relying on testimonial by workshop participants. Needs peer review, could be placebo, etc but that’s where science starts, noticing that some variable has an effect. Wim is not a scientist but he is excited to make claims that should be tested.

To me it makes sense, my (non-expert) understanding is those diseases are cases where the body is attacking itself. The immune system is a balancing act, it is blind to what is really happening, it has to rely on a threshold of when to respond to what it senses as danger. When I breath hold and/or expose myself to cold, I feel like I am giving my body a small taste of death, recalibrating my body to what danger feels like.

Instead of relying on peer reviewed paper in Nature, why don’t you try it for yourself?