#585: Why We Think Poorly: Reason, Emotion, and Evidence-Based Reasoning
Sigma Nutrition Radio
Danny Lennon
4.8 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We take a look at critical thinking in science and healthcare, examining how we often fall prey to cognitive biases, emotional reasoning, and flawed thinking. Drawing from six different experts in their respective fields, the episode explores why we sometimes believe we are being rational when in fact our conclusions aren't truly evidence-based. The discussion spans what genuine evidence-based practice means, how domain expertise matters, and how factors like identity, beliefs, and emotions can derail objective reasoning.
Timestamps
- [02:56] Dr. David Nunan on evidence-based medicine
- [15:30] Dr. John Kiely on translating research into practice
- [26:10] Dr. Gil Carvallo on emotion and decision making
- [30:10] Dr. David Robert Grimes on webs of belief
- [37:18] Dr. Matthew Facciani identity and belief formation
- [42:31] Dr. Alan Flanagan on domain-specific expertise in nutrition science
Related Resources
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- Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium
- Enroll in the next cohort of our Applied Nutrition Literacy course
- Alan Flanagan's Alinea Nutrition Education Hub
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 585 of the podcast. My name is Danny Lennon and you are very welcome to the show. |
| 0:24.3 | We've got a special episode of sorts today that I wanted to try and bring you a roundup of a few |
| 0:29.3 | ideas relating to some related topics that I've been thinking about recently that will |
| 0:35.6 | loosely relate to how we think. And more precisely, when we're trying |
| 0:39.9 | to think rationally and critically and in an evidence-based manner, some of the things that |
| 0:46.1 | can prevent that because as human beings, we often think badly. We fall into various mental |
| 0:52.8 | traps. We fall for various cognitive biases or fallacies. |
| 0:57.0 | And we can often think that we're coming to a conclusion that is rational, but it may not be an |
| 1:04.0 | evidence-based one. And there's a whole set of ideas that relate to this of going all the way |
| 1:09.0 | from knowing what being evidence-based actually |
| 1:11.8 | is to thinking about domain expertise. And then the other side of the things that we need to be |
| 1:18.0 | aware of in our decision-making and the thinking capacity. So thinking through the lens of our |
| 1:25.1 | identities and biases we may have, how beliefs can be interconnected, |
| 1:30.4 | and how we often make decisions emotionally. |
| 1:33.1 | And so to try and go through these and to get a common thread from some of the experts |
| 1:38.5 | that we've been lucky enough to have on the podcast, I'm going to go through the views of six of those experts |
| 1:46.4 | in particular, spanning across a range of different fields, so not only directly in nutrition, |
| 1:51.4 | but some that have been in the fields of medicine and sports science, neuroscience, sociology, |
| 1:57.2 | physics, each of them kind of shedding light on how we cannot only sharpen our critical minds, |
| 2:04.1 | but also the things to be aware of that lead us to come to certain conclusions and that we need |
| 2:10.4 | to have that intellectual humility to realize that we might not actually be coming to an evidence-based |
| 2:16.6 | conclusion unless we take a step back |
... |
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