Ep 347 - New Retraction (and What It Means For "Evidence-Based" Fitness)

Iron Culture presented by MASS

The MASS Crew

Sports & Recreation, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 827 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Helms has neglected to show up yet again, so Ep 347 is a solo show in which Dr Trex details a recent saga in which a paper about apple cider vinegar was retracted. The episode covers what the paper reported, how Trex & co pursued clarification, how the paper was eventually retracted, and (most importantly) what this means for "evidence-based" fitness. Even if you don't care about apple cider vinegar, there are important lessons to draw from an evidence-based view of fitness that acknowledges the fallibility of published evidence.

By the way, if you're going to stock up on some lifting gear or apparel, please be sure to support our friends over at elitefts.com and remember to use our code "MRR10" for a 10% discount.

Time stamps:
0:00 Intro
5:34 The original paper and findings
13:27 Our letter to the editor
17:54 The authors' response
23:59 The retraction
29:06 The statistical investigation
32:13 Why the retraction process doesn't actually work
38:30 How to be "evidence based" when unreliable evidence is routinely published

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Iron Culture. It is me, Eric Trexler, alone, afraid and alone.
0:14.0	It's just going to be me this episode. Helms is off doing whatever it is. Helms does, who can say?
0:24.8	So I'm holding down the fort here. I already have extremely negative chatter in the live chat. We've got Expanda asking, where is my jazz music?
0:32.9	That was one of the best things about the podcast being the live jazz music.
0:37.9	I tell you what, X Panda, since you were the first person in the live chat here over on the Iron Culture YouTube channel, I'm going to commit to you.
0:47.1	I will bring back the intro music.
0:50.5	I've made many mistakes in my life.
0:52.5	One of them was veering away from that music intro. I am on it. I will make it happen. Okay. So folks, as you are settling into the live chat, once again, welcome to the show. This is going to be a little bit different of an episode. What I'm going to do today is take you through a recent
1:12.9	happening in the world of evidence-based fitness slash nutrition stuff. It was a really interesting
1:21.1	back and forth, really interesting saga, I guess you would say, that took almost two years to kind of happen. So I want to walk
1:31.4	through what went down, and more importantly after that, what it kind of tells us about the
1:36.9	state of science in the world of exercise and nutrition and kind of what it means in terms of
1:43.6	how we might move forward in attempt to be
1:48.6	someone who is evidence-based.
1:51.6	You know, there's all these content creators who make kind of quote-unquote evidence-based
1:57.6	fitness content.
1:58.6	A lot of people claim to be science-based lifters or, you know,
2:02.5	take a science-based approach to their nutrition. And I think in order for any of those to really
2:08.0	carry any weight or mean anything, it means very seriously and rigorously engaging with
2:14.5	the evidence and the research that exists and also being critical of that
2:19.9	where it's warranted, not only the research itself, but also the processes that are intended
2:25.6	to maintain the integrity of that research.
	...

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