Latest news with #pseudoscience
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Historian who Joe Rogan slammed as his 'worst ever guest' hits back about what REALLY happened behind scenes
The archaeologists Joe Rogan deemed his 'worst guest' has broken his silence on the backlash he faced, saying the podcaster was out to ruin his reputation. Archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass joined Rogan on May 13 to discuss the mysteries of ancient Egypt, but the former Minister of Antiquities gave dismissive responses, continually interrupted and answered nearly every question with 'it's in my book.' The combative discussion led Rogan to saying Dr Hawass was 'the worst podcast he has ever done,' calling him 'closed-minded' and a gatekeeper of all the knowledge about Egypt. Dr Hawass has now hit back at the claims, saying Rogan had an agenda to undermine his credibility. Speaking on an Egyptian talkshow this week, Dr Hawass said Rogan skewed towards topics 'like Atlantis and aliens', ideas he has long dismissed as pseudoscience. 'I spent 25 years holding debates against people like Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval and John Anthony West, who argued that the pyramids and the Sphinx were built 15,000 years ago by people from Atlantis,' Dr Hawass said. 'Thank God I stood up against their ideas, not just in Egyptian newspapers but internationally as well. I told Rogan I have nothing to do with these matters.' The original podcast between Joe and Dr Hawass exploded when Rogan called a discovery beneath the Giza pyramids 'fascinating,' while Dr Hawass quickly dismissed it as 'bulls***.' In March, a team of Italian researchers released satellite images that appeared to reveal massive vertical shafts stretching more than 2,000 feet under the Khafre pyramid, one of the three ancient structures at Giza. During the podcast with Dr Hawass, Rogan asked about evidence for pyramid construction tools and other findings. But instead of answering directly, Dr Hawass repeatedly redirected him to his book and interrupted follow-up questions, frustrating many listeners. 'Are there photos of this online?' Rogan asked. 'Yes, in my book,' the archaeologist replied. 'How can this man, Joe Rogan, not read my book before I arrived?' Dr Hawass asked on Tuesday, saying his book is the only book in the world written about Giza with the utmost skill. How can he not have read it?' Dr Hawass also cut off Rogan repeatedly on the podcast, something many users on X pointed out as a recurring pattern. 'He literally couldn't let Joe finish one sentence,' one user posted. 'Why are they attacking me? Because I held my own against Joe Rogan? Because I was confident?' Dr Hawass said as reported on by The National. 'Why would my confidence offend him? Did they even understand what our conversation was about? Did they even understand what this man was really saying?' The podcast episode went viral on X, with many users criticizing Dr Hawass as 'a failure.' One Joe Rogan fan account posted: 'Zahi Hawass is full of it. Joe Rogan did a great job exposing him.' The controversy centers on claims by Corrado Malanga with the University of Pisa, Filippo Biondi from the University of Strathclyde, and Egyptologist Armando Mei, who shared satellite images allegedly showing vertical shafts beneath the Khafre pyramid. Their work has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. Rogan, however, pointed to how the researchers used their technology to map the interior structures of the Tomb of Osiris. When Rogan mentioned the scans of the Tomb of Osiris, Dr Hawass interrupted, saying, 'I discovered it.' The Osiris Shaft, an ancient underground burial complex in Giza, is known for its three levels, including an entry chamber, a room with sarcophagi and a flooded subterranean chamber believed to be a symbolic tomb of Osiris. 'I know, I understand, you found it,' Rogan responded. 'But they also showed that it exists using the same technique.' Rogan tried once more to clarify that while Hawass discovered the tomb, the satellite imaging used by the scientists appeared to confirm and visualize known structures. Dr Hawass dismissed the team's findings as false, even as Rogan pointed out that their techniques appear to verify discoveries Hawass himself made. The archaeologist pushed back on the claims, arguing that the radar technology cannot penetrate beneath the pyramid to the extent the Italian researchers suggest. He stated that it only captured data about 50 feet below the Tomb of Osiris. 'Right, but it's showing that at least for 50 feet, the imaging is accurate,' Rogan responded. 'So what makes you believe those scientists over the team from Italy?' Dr Hawass replied that the scientists he consulted had told him the technology was unreliable. 'Well, these are scientists as well,' said Rogan. Dr Hawass added that he has not spoke with the Italian researchers, but Biondi told that he and his team sent an official inquiry to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture some time ago, but never received a response. Rogan pressed Dr Hawass on why he so firmly dismissed the satellite-based findings. 'So why are you dismissing it?' Rogan asked. 'I understand they published their findings, and you're saying scientists told you it's not true, but scientists are wrong all the time, especially biased ones.'
The National
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass hits back at criticism over Joe Rogan interview
Renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has hit back at criticism from Egyptians on social media over his controversial interview with Joe Rogan and accused the US media personality of focusing his questions on topics he had long dismissed as pseudoscience. The nearly two-hour interview, which was released on podcast platforms and on YouTube on May 14, touched on Mr Hawass's extensive career and his work at the pyramids and other pharaonic sites at the Giza Plateau on the outskirts of Cairo. However, the conversation quickly became contentious, leading many viewers to criticise Mr Hawass for his combative demeanour and refusal to engage in meaningful discussions about his research. A week after its release, Rogan described the episode as 'the worst podcast I have ever done" but also "maybe a good one, too', during an interview with NFL superstar Aaron Rodgers. Rogan's remarks, including his characterisation of Mr Hawass as 'a closed-minded fellow' who was 'gatekeeping all the knowledge', have caused a stir on Egyptian social media. Many online comments criticised Mr Hawass interrupting Rogan's questions and his dismissal of attempts to explore alternative theories about the pyramids and the Sphinx. According to one viewer who spoke to The National, Mr Hawass exhibited a 'severe and sometimes aggressive' unwillingness to entertain doubts or alternative perspectives about his work. "Throughout the interview, Mr Hawass repeatedly interrupted Rogan, deflected detailed questions about his work, and emphasised his authority and legacy rather than addressing the topics at hand," said one viewer, who asked to remain anonymous. Critics on YouTube and social media also accused Mr Hawass of arrogance. One commenter noted that rather than engaging with Rogan's questions, Mr Hawass repeatedly insisted his word as the 'foremost expert on ancient Egypt' should suffice. Mr Hawass, who is on a lecture tour in the US, was not immediately available for comment but his media liaison Ali Abou Dsheish told The National he was "very upset" by the criticism. The former Minister of Antiquities appeared on an Egyptian talk show on Tuesday night to defend himself. 'How can this man, Joe Rogan, not read my book before I arrived?' Mr Hawass asked angrily, referring to Giza and the Pyramids, a 1,000-page study co-written with American archaeologist Mark Lehner. 'The only book in the world written about Giza with the utmost skill. How can he not have read it?' Mr Hawass went on to question criticism of his interview. 'Why are they attacking me? Because I held my own against Joe Rogan? Because I was confident? Why would my confidence offend him? Did they even understand what our conversation was about? Did they even understand what this man was really saying?' He reiterated that his decades of research had definitively proven how the pyramids were built, a subject that continues to baffle many archaeologists. During the Rogan interview, he repeatedly referred to his book as the definitive source on the topic. However, viewers noted he failed to provide detailed answers to some of Rogan's more technical questions, particularly about construction techniques. On the talk show, Mr Hawass suggested Rogan's line of questioning was influenced by an agenda to undermine his credibility. He claimed the interview, arranged a year ago by alternative historian Graham Hancock, with whom Mr Hawass recently resolved a 25-year dispute, was unfairly skewed towards topics "like Atlantis and aliens", subjects he has long dismissed as pseudoscience. 'I spent 25 years holding debates against people like Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval and John Anthony West, who argued that the pyramids and the Sphinx were built 15,000 years ago by people from Atlantis,' Mr Hawass said. 'Thank God I stood up against their ideas, not just in Egyptian newspapers but internationally as well. I told Rogan I have nothing to do with these matters.' One of the most heated moments during the Rogan interview occurred when he brought up a recent study by Italian researchers Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga. The study, which used tomography technology, suggested the existence of hidden shafts, tunnels and passages beneath the Giza Plateau. Mr Hawass told Rogan the study was 'completely false' and that, not being a radar expert himself, he had consulted with the best imaging experts he knew and they had categorically discredited it. While the Italian researchers have gained credibility in recent months, their work remains controversial and has yet to be widely accepted by the archaeological community.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Get rid of the pseudoscience': top doctor's plan to improve America's health
Dr Eric Topol's new book examines the best evidence-based approaches to longevity, and seeks to challenge the 'malarkey' of the bio-hacking, age-reversal and anti-science movements – all of which have found new purchase in American society amid scientific distrust stoked during the Covid pandemic. 'This book is trying to set the record straight, get rid of the pseudoscience, and paint an incredibly optimistic picture of how we are so well-positioned to prevent the three age-related diseases that compromise our health span,' says Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a practicing cardiologist, in an interview with the Guardian. Topol's new book, released on Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, is called Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity. 'Right now, it's such dark times in the medical research,' says Topol. 'This is a book I think burning with optimism, and we will get there. I'm confident of that.' Topol argues that we are at a moment to prevent the big three diseases: cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disease. This amid the convergence of knowledge about healthy behaviors, newly available and forthcoming biometric data and the computing power of artificial intelligence. If one stumbled at Topol's mention of the 'health span', that's when he says we should seek not only longevity but health in those extra years, or a 'health span'. The book features Topol's insights into the 'wellderly', a group of people he identified in a related study who are older than 80 but do not have chronic conditions like the majority of even much younger Americans. To illustrate the kind of wellbeing Topol envisions, he describes one of his patients: Mrs LR, a 98-year-'young' patient who drove herself to Topol's practice. Mrs LR has not suffered from chronic disease, save the edema, or swelling of the legs, for which she is currently seeing Topol. Topol says the force of newly available and forthcoming interventions can help us live into our twilight years more like Mrs LR – not for ever, but with fewer ailments. To do that, people need medicine to help prevent years-in-the-making conditions by creating personalized plans for patients. This philosophy, known as 'precision medicine', has its own detractors. Topol's vision of long-term health diverges from other attention-grabbing regimes, such those of the billionaire Bryan Johnson, who seeks to defy age, and of anti-vaccine activists, who may avoid modern science. Instead, Topol's view is one where vaccines and blockbuster drugs like GLP-1s (such as brands Wegovy and Ozempic) aid us into this future of primary prevention as uses potentially expand to prevent cancer or Alzheimer's. He pairs these medical interventions with an emphasis on what we know about maintaining health: eat lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish (sometimes called the Mediterranean diet), moderate caffeine and alcohol intake, exercise regularly, stay socially active and get deep and regular sleep. 'Everyone should do all these things now,' says Topol. 'Here is the problem: when you have a prescription to do all these things, almost no one does them.' Personalized and accurate medicine, he argues, could conquer the arguably biggest hurdle: human behavior. Diet and exercise habits are notoriously difficult to change, even if evidence is compelling. 'But when you say specifically, 'You have this risk, it's bona fide. We can confirm it on many different clocks and layers of data. We have nailed it. This is your thing. This is what you want to avoid in your life, and you can prevent it,'' he says. Factors we cannot change as individuals but which certainly affect health are environmental exposures to pollution, the stressors of poverty and racism, and whether we live in healthy neighborhoods, often called social determinants of health. This is the '+' in Topol's 'lifestyle+' argument, and those least discussed by the 'only for wealthy people' wellness and bio-hacking movements. Topol makes the caveat that this optimistic future has changed dramatically in recent months, at least in America. In the time since he finished writing, the Trump administration successfully confirmed Robert F Kennedy Jr, arguably the nation's leading science denialist, to head the health department. Kennedy rejects many of the basic principles of modern medicine – from the foundational century-old principle of germ theory, the idea that individual pathogens cause disease (even in otherwise healthy people), to the more modern tenet that health is a human right – see Kennedy's confirmation hearing, in which he questions whether smokers deserve healthcare. The health department is the nation's largest public health agency and largest health insurer, with a $1.8tn budget regularly accounting for a fifth of all federal spending. That powers the world's largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's gold-standard drug approval agency at the Food and Drug Administration, and the public health insurance programs Medicaid (covering 78.5 million people) and Medicare (covering 68 million) – to name only a few. Since taking office, Kennedy has cut 20,000 people from the health department, or about a quarter of the workforce. He has canceled hundreds of grants at the NIH, frozen funds to researchers for diseases such as Alzheimer's, and slowed new grant-making dramatically with $2bn less injected into science in the first quarter of 2025. He slashed programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); closed critical sexually transmitted disease labs; installed anti-vaccine advocates in positions of power; and clawed back $11bn in public health funds from localities. Scientific experts with decades of experience have been forced out. The list goes on. However, Topol's view is broader than the current upheaval in the US. He mentions to the Guardian how European countries banned many unhealthy substances long before the US took action – only for America to later get on board. That includes things like food additives such as trans fats (and based on American research) and ancient poisons such as lead. 'This really is to me, a unique moment, and I hope that we'll get on it right now,' says Topol. 'Of course, the prospects are not great in this country, but many other parts of the world will get on it. I'm sure of that.'
