INFORMED CONSENT IS A HUMAN RIGHT

(COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT)

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OH MY GOD... I've done it! Real university, supervised research. HOLDS UP DOCUMENTS Okay, well, this isn't my actual project. This is just some bills for my wife's phone... For tax purposes... THROWS BILLS

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My real research is really "holy shit" because I got THE gold standard: STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE! It's a science thing. We'll get into that. Buuuuut you know what's really fucking cool? I have legit, personal beef with something going on in this world, and instead of getting on my internet soapbox and spewing (perhaps) misguided ideas, which are still allowed... and I have tons of fun doing it, don't get it twisted...

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Instead, I did the work. I took months, I got real-world data from actual people, and now I have what's called "EVIDENCE" about my idea. Crazy, right? What a concept! So instead of my flimsy internet soapbox, I now have a deep trench with foundation and scaffolding. I have proof of my idea, which I am excited to share with you, beautiful people, on Waxing Prosaic. But first, a warning. A serious warning is going on here.

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What's to come is very controversial. Straight up, divisive stuff. Please, don't get emotionally wrapped up in it. Please, try to access your analytical brain to dig deeper and examine what's going on under the hood. That's the point of my research. Please, meet me on that level, and this experience will be much more fruitful. Please! Because I think that your analytical brain will quickly figure out that this is a UNITY PROJECT.

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I love every single one of you! I want to make the world better for all of us. That's the truth. Okay, so I shall now give some thematic context by way of a personal life situation proxy. I was lucky to become a father last year. All the things! All of the clichés! All of them! That's another podcast altogether. During the myriad of doctor checkups, my wife got tagged for consistently high blood pressure.

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This is a marker for potential pre-eclampsia, which potentially leads to eclampsia. Not just a clever name. This can be fatal not just for the baby but also for the mom. The most serious of stuff. To combat this, doctors prescribed Aspirin to my wife. She was told to take Aspirin daily. Aspirin opens up blood vessels and therefore creates more room for the blood to travel. Therefore less blood pressure.

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Therefore, no preeclampsia. Absolutely. Slam dunk! Great! Yes, of course. Now, I'm in university for psychology and in class we talked about how prolonged use of Aspirin nukes the gut microbiome. I don't know why we were talking about Aspirin in psychology class... but it happened; I have the slides to prove it. Prolonged use of Aspirin can interrupt the natural gut chemicals that protect us from things like ulcers and stomach bleeding.

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And on top of that, we are learning more and more about how our gut biome is our everything. When it comes to health, it feels like a panacea... because it kind of is! It is our pathway to wellness. It creates homeostasis and does so from the inside out. It's kind of beautiful. By the way, I ain't mad at Aspirin! Everything has a cost/benefit, right?

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Plus, I am a little "hippie-dippy" and a most absolute critical thinker; therefore, I dug in and realized that we could offset all the issues that Aspirin causes with prebiotics. So we did! We preserved my wife's gut biome and gave my child their gut biome. Success! But a lesson in: everything has a trade-off. Even without the prebiotics, when it came to cost/benefit with my wife's situation- preeclampsia- a potential harm to my family... which would result in potentially no family at all.

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I don't even want to go there... So it was THAT or having gut problems. It's a slam dunk: 1000 times out of 1000, I would encourage my wife (and she's autonomous, makes her own decision, but I would hope that she would) to take the Aspirin. 100%. So... where's the beef? Well, we have to remember that these medical professionals gave my wife sound medical advice that may have saved her life.

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HOWEVER, they strategically did so because I gave him the benefit of the doubt; they know all this gut biome stuff... they strategically framed their suggestion positively. This framing strategy lacked informed consent.

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Informed consent is giving somebody the entire story before suggesting an intervention. I personally think informed consent is very important, like human rights important... and my study suggests that a whole lot of y'all do too. Let's Wax Prosaic.

OPENING TITLES

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When we go to the doctor, we are hella vulnerable. I don't just mean because sometimes they got their finger up our butts...

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INTO CAMERA I'm glad my prostate is fine. I'm sorry I came, Doctor Shum. Yes, AND we're vulnerable because we have no idea what they're talking about. This is our body, and we don't understand the condition going on within us. We also don't understand the things that they're having us ingest or inject. These drugs... How do they make them? How do they work? These are VERY high stakes!

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Our potential life is at stake here! Wow. Stake, stake, stake. I keep saying "stake!" So, let's lower the stakes a little bit by using an analogy: A mechanic works better for us laypeople. A mechanic takes a car and does magic to it! Internal combustion is controlled explosions inside a machine flying down the road at 60 mph... Pretty magical. And I mean, yes, it's all logical parts, it's mechanical, it's left brain... But still, it's incredible what they do.

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We have a level of trust that these mechanics are fixing the car, diagnosing its issues correctly and not ripping wires out of it, so we have to come back in a couple of weeks so they can make more money. Now, the analogy definitely went off the rails because I do not think medical professionals are doing that. But what I'm getting at is one of the greatest cliches of being an adult:

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We all talk amongst ourselves about which mechanics we can trust. I've done it multiple times by now. I rarely ask, "Do you know a mechanic who's good at fixing things?" I kind of assume that. I want the mechanic I can trust, who's not just going to try to make money off me beyond what is fair. Not that medical professionals are doing that. We're in the analogy right now. Mechanics' livelihood isn't as much based on how good they are at fixing cars; it's mainly based on communal trust.

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That's where the analogy is important. All right, let's flip to the back of the book to the glossary. We're going to define our terms. Let's get our language set. When a medical professional communicates anything to you about a prescription or what's wrong with you, they have three different options, three different strategies to do so:

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Number one, "positive framing." This means that the doctor only tells you the good stuff. So, in the pre-eclampsia case, the doctor says, "Take an Aspirin every day. This medical intervention will absolutely help with blood pressure." Good to go! BUT, there's strategy number two, which is "full disclosure framing." This is where the informed consent thing comes in, all gorgeous like.

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The doctor tells you the good AND the bad. So, in my pre-eclampsia case, it's going to be: "Take this Aspirin. It's going to help you with blood circulation, and could save your life... HOWEVER, you also need to know that this intervention is going to impact your gut biome. Therefore, I encourage you to offset the negative impacts using probiotics." Next, the third strategy is "negative framing." We're going to brush past this one pretty quickly because what doctor is going to only negatively frame a pharmaceutical intervention? ... That being said, we are in the digital age, the information age, where we can look up anything!

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I'm sure there is way more frequency in people presenting doctors with, "Hey, I want to take this prescription," and then the doctor might come back with, "Well, that Super Viagra is going to make your dick hard for like six and a half weeks straight, and you don't have the pulmonary strength to be able to do that!" I need Super Viagra. So, moving forward, we're going to focus on positive framing and full disclosure framing.

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The doctors chose to tell my wife to take the Aspirin using positive framing, and I give them the benefit of the doubt: These people are medical professionals; they know what Aspirin does to the gut biome. And they could have suggested probiotics to take to curb the negative impacts... which we did anyway. Therefore, the question is: WHY? WHY did they choose this strategy?

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This is where we're digging deeper, folks: CRITICAL THINKING. Let's get curious! Before I begin slinging the inferred dirt, I want to make one thing uber clear: medical professionals- and we're going to get to government as well- are NOT cartoon villains. They're NOT sitting there rubbing their hands together, being all, "I'm going to ruin this woman's gut biome!"

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No. Absolutely not. The truth is, these people DO care. Also, they're trying to solve life-and-death problems at the population level. So we gotta give some grace, okay? Established. But we are still allowed to question the medical establishment's strategies. Both ideas can be true at the same time. Important. We need to keep the context going: Let's understand why medical professionals might choose positive framing only.

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We're going to start micro and then go hella macro. In my personal case, I guarantee these medical professionals looked at what my wife was going through, and they ran the probabilities. "Okay, so if we tell this woman to take the daily Aspirin, her gut biome might get a little ruined... And maybe the kid too, BUT they're not going to take the Aspirin forever.

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Their lives will be saved, and eventually their gut biome will bounce back. So it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle... but it sure is better than them being dead!" Absolutely, unequivocally. When you dig into it a little bit with the probability, you know, death or a muted biome for a while- you can see why it's important that they made sure that she took the daily Aspirin.

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A little hint of what's to come. Moving on. Let's go from my micro situation, an N of 1, to all the way out to an N of probably, at the time, 25 million or so in 1949. At that time, in Canada, there was a goitre endemic. A goitre is a horrific outcome as a result of a misfiring thyroid. The thyroid, in the neck, swells up, and it's like, you know, one of those neck pillow things for a comfy plane ride.

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Cognitohazard warning!!! Look it up if you want... But I'd leave it at taking my word for it. Scientists noticed that the majority of these cases were happening around the Great Lakes area. This part of Canada happens to have glaciated soil, which lacks iodine. "Eureka! We shall give the people iodine!" But how do you give people iodine at a population scale? What do you do?

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Mail out pills? That's dumb. "Eureka two! We'll put iodine in their... Water? No! Let's put it in their... salt! We'll put it in their salt." And that's just what they did. The Canadian government made sure that all table salt sold was infused with iodine, by law. In 1949, and still is. Here's the awesome part: This move cured the goitre crisis in a single generation. Not only that, but iodine is also a neural enhancer. It's brain food. And it has increased Canadian IQs by as much as 15 points.

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I've gotta get me some Canadian salt! PULLS OUT BOWL OF SALT Oh, I just happened to have this!

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HAS A THOUGHT! E equals MC cubed! Wait... that doesn't quite sound right. Must be American salt. So, slam dunk, right? Yes! 99.99% slam dunk. On a physiological level, and even a psychological level, given the IQ increase. Yes, yes. This was a gigantic success. However, the way in which they decided to handle the national goitre situation raises a liiiiiiiiittle bit of concern in terms of morals and ethics. They forced the cure on the country.

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We're getting into the meat and potatoes now, friends. Kind of interesting though, right? For my Canadian audience, now you understand why the salt boxes in the grocery store say "Iodized". This is because of a government manipulation from the 1940s, which is interesting... The government mandated this intervention, and they have to disclose that there's iodine in the salt. However, noticeably missing from the packaging is why. Why is there iodine in the salt?

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Yes, I just told you... But remember, this was an intervention carried out in the 1940s, because of a 1940s problem, when the intervention was to the cultural milieu of goitre mania. Right. So, they have to disclose that there's iodine in the salt, but they don't have to disclose why; they don't have to disclose the positive impacts of iodine, and, most importantly, they don't have to disclose the negative side of it.

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This is where we need another important piece of context: Everything has a trade-off. Everything that we ingest, everything that we inject, even the things that we topically put on ourselves: It's called transdermal absorption. All of these choices alter our body chemistry... all of them. We need to be educated and cognizant of this. There's no such thing as a free lunch... unless you have a rich friend.

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Did you just put down that neon Dorito? Everything in moderation. I love Doritos... When you get the chip with all of the extra seasoning on it. But you are what you eat. Back to the iodine: Ingesting too much iodine can go all back-ass-wards. Too much iodine can create the symptoms that the iodine is treating!!! Swear to God! You can become hypothyroid or hyperthyroid from too much iodine.

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Hyper means too many hormones out of whack, coursing through the body. Hypo means not enough hormones in the body. Also, too much iodine can cause iodine poisoning, which has a whole whack of symptoms that are yucky. I think there's a metallic taste, and throwing up. Crazy, right? But don't throw out your salt just yet.

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You would need to ingest about three tablespoons of table salt a day, over a prolonged period of time, to even hit the ceiling of the safe amount of iodine intake. And if you're eating that much salt, the real problem you're going to run into is the hump on your back. You're gonna look like a damn camel with the amount of water you'll be retaining!

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There is more nuance to be had here. People who suffer from Hashimoto's or hyper- or hypothyroid to begin with have a lower threshold of iodine allowance than the rest of us... and yet the packaging says nothing about it. Things just got a little dangerous, and thus, an interesting little discussion just got going. To add a little bit more intrigue, from 1967 to 2003, Taiwan did the same thing as Canada.

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Their people were suffering from iodine deficiency, so they infused their table salt with the stuff. However, on their packaging, they DID add a little disclaimer that said: "Iodine is a necessary nutrient, but if you have thyroid problems, consult a doctor before consuming." Interesting. And then the next layer is just FYI: Taiwan stopped putting iodine in their table salt starting in 2003 because they wanted to sell their salt globally.

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Scientists did a study ten years later, and the people of Taiwan are iodine-deficient again. An interesting socialism/capitalism, big-government/little-government discussion to be had! Taiwan dropped iodine for the money, and their people have suffered with their health because of it. Not relevant, just interesting food for thought. I implore you to look into it. I'm going to as well. It's neat. Okay... I went deep into the history.

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I mean, it was interesting. So now we're going to speed run the rest of the reasons why medical professionals might only positively frame interventions: Decision fatigue, this is a real thing. We only have so many decisions in us. And I know you felt this before, when you were asked something, and you're like, "I can't even think about it right now..." And then you get some rest, and you're like, boom, easy decision!

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Tech cool dudes love keeping this phenomenon in mind. For instance, Steve Jobs purposely built his day around having to make as few decisions as possible. One of his strategies was wearing a uniform. Remember, toward the end of Steve Jobs's life, he only wore a black turtleneck with those awful jeans... that were cool for the time. That was so that in the morning he could just grab his uniform, put it on and start making important decisions.

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Gawd, I hope he had multiple versions of that turtleneck. Forget mock turtleneck, more like dirty sock turtleneck... That was LAME, but I'm a dad. So it's okay. Let's get crazy. In times of crisis, efficiency leading to compliance might save lives. COVID-19 is still a very recent memory. I chose not to get vaccinated. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm allowed to say that right now without being tarred and feathered!

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We'll get to that later. But I still have faith in humanity, and I genuinely believe, for the most part, that is what was behind the way things were handled. They wanted people to be safe and healthy, and I'll have more to say, but we'll move on for now. Anyone who's ever watched an episode of the show knows that I love the evolutionary lens, so let's apply it:

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Medical professionals, even the government- their messages from on high equate to tribal signalling. They are at the top in a chain of a hierarchy. They're above us. They're specialists in their field, so it ups our odds of survival to listen to them. They know that they tap into that old wiring in us, and thus they frame it positively, and we go ahead with them. We trust their lead. We follow.

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Okay, we get it. That's enough with the context. We all agree, right? We all agree that the intention is good. Efficiency and care are real motivators. And we all agree that very bright people are running probabilities. Okay... Enter my study. I'm currently working through my undergrad in psychology at 40 years old. Why am I doing this myself? Math. Really? Anyways, the big bottleneck class is our research assignment.

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It's the biggest thing we'll do in undergrad, unless you're doing honours, which I can't do because I have a one-year-old at home and I would never see her. So the perfectionist in me is killing me. The assignments 25% of our 2nd-year mark. We have got to do real-world research, an APA paper, and the whole thing is supervised by a professor.

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How does one pick what to do??? Well, I took all that stuff I just laid out for you, and I designed an experiment. Wait. I'm going to put on my science hat. Here it is. PUTS ON "SCIENCE HAT" When I'm wearing this hat, I'm only talking facts, empirical evidence-backed facts. When I'm not wearing it, conjecture. We get to have fun!

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This podcast is about to get really dry, but I promise to try to make the scientific method and fact-based evidence fun for you. ABOUT TO PUT THE HAT ON... STOPS Wait wait wait wait wait. Before we begin, let me just get out some important points: I believe Santa Claus is real, I believe that the dream world is our actual existence, and this is some weird projection, and I believe Santorum tastes better than Tang. And they should actually switch names.

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All right, I'm ready to drop in science. PUTS ON "SCIENCE HAT" The purpose of my study was to pit positive framing against full disclosure framing. To do this, I designed an escalating, six government-imposed health measures, going from least invasive to most invasive. The first three were real-world in some jurisdictions (Canada), the last three were totally made up because I wanted things to go over the edge.

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Because this was real research, there was a research ethics board (REB) that approved every aspect of my research. Everything was full disclosure... A little bit of meta going on here, huh? My study was full disclosure: three real-world health mandates, three made-up ones. The first intervention was vitamin D-fortified milk. The second intervention was iodine-infused salt. We know this one well. The third intervention was fluoride in public water supplies.

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REMOVES "SCIENCE HAT" A little hot button. Stick with me. PUTS "SCIENCE HAT BACK ON The fourth intervention, remember, these are made up, is sunscreen in apples. The fifth intervention was Nicotine in toothpaste. And the piece de resistance, the last intervention, was microchips in vaccines. A little crazy, right? This was approved by the REB. As I said, this was an experiment, which means there was a manipulation. So there were two different versions of the survey.

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Version A was positive framing only. Also, all of these claims were backed by peer-reviewed scientific studies. For the first intervention, vitamin D helps with calcium absorption, immune support and muscle health. For the second intervention, iodine is good for neurodevelopment and also regulates thyroid health.

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Intervention number three, fluoride. Fluoride helps prevent tooth decay, so it's sometimes put in public water supplies. Intervention number four, remember, we're into the made-up interventions, is apples with sunscreen. The practical side of this is injecting apples, or maybe there's a GMO way of doing it?

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I didn't have to get into actually doing it. Anyway, the idea is that putting antioxidants into apples is useful because, on a cellular level, antioxidants make cells more robust to UV light. It's like sunscreen in an apple.

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The fifth intervention is nicotine in toothpaste. If we have nicotine in toothpaste, we're going to take way better care of our teeth! We'll be brushing all the time!!! So, technically, this will make for better oral health. AND, nicotine is also a cognitive enhancer.

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Intervention number six is the crazy one... Microchips in vaccines! This is clearly fake. This is NOT real. My thinking was that by putting microchips in vaccines, we could do live health tracking. Again, full disclosure, this is not real. So, that's version A of the survey.

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That brings me to version B of the survey, which went into full disclosure and requested informed consent. This version of the survey still gave those same positive aspects that I just gave you, and it also gave the negative aspects afterwards. There was still a primacy/recency thing, which is fine. I mean, that's part of the research. It's okay to put the roses before the thorns.

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And again, all the negative aspects of these interventions were taken from peer-reviewed scientific papers. There was full disclosure, and I went through an REB. So, intervention number one, vitamin D, long-term high-dose use of vitamin D can result in hypocalcemia.

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This can cause an excess of calcium in the blood. We love calcium for bones, but when it gets heavy in the blood, not good! Intervention number two, iodine. We already went through it. Hyper/hypo thyroid, iodine poisoning. Moving on. Intervention number three, fluoride. Hot button. Hot button hot button. But these are peer-reviewed papers. This is real. In China, there is a study, a meta-analysis stating that prolonged high-dose exposure to fluoride can result in neurological deterioration.

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Fact, unless disproven, of course. Intervention number four: sunscreen in apples. Remember, we're into the made-up stuff now. Again, full disclosure, too many antioxidants over too long a period of time can result in certain cancers, gastrointestinal issues, and heart disease. Intervention number five: nicotine in toothpaste. Big spoiler, I'm sure: Nicotine is addictive. That is actually the positive part of it because I said that it encourages oral hygiene.

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But it also increases heart rate and raises blood pressure. And here we go, coming up the rear. THIS IS FAKE. Intervention number six: Microchips in vaccines. Remember, we said it was good for health tracking. The funny thing is, the only negative thing I said was "May cause skin irritation at the site of injection." Who says that science can be fun?

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I come up with this bombastic, crazy thing to put at the end of my survey... And the craziest one of them all has the smallest negative ramifications. This was a little troll... Science can be fun, right?

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All right, we're on our way. We're doing science. We got two surveys. This is technically a quasi-experiment. It's also a between-subjects experimental design, which means that we have different people filling out the different versions of the surveys. The same person will not fill out both versions of the surveys. This is because we don't want any kind of bias. Such as order bias. That's a thing.

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"But, what are we measuring here?" Well, I'm glad you asked! I called the metric the CONSENT THRESHOLD. As people move through the survey on every single question, they are asked to select either "I consent" or "I do NOT consent" to the mandate. So, question one: milk fortified with vitamin D, they are asked, "Do you consent? / Do you not consent?"

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If they choose to consent, they will move on to the next level of mandates, which I personally designed to be an escalating scale of interventions. If they continue to consent, they continue on; however, as soon as the participant says that they do not consent, the survey terminates. Therefore, this could be the shortest survey you've ever done.

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Do you want vitamin D-fortified milk? "I do not consent." Boom! Survey over. The percentage that the participants complete the survey creates the consent threshold. Remember, we had two different groups: Positive framing, full disclosure framing. So, what was I really after? What percentage of the survey did the average person complete? Science! In science, we got to make our guesses right. We can't just run a survey and see what happens... I guess you can, but it's way more fun to create a hypothesis!

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I actually had multiple, therefore, hypotheses! Fun! My hypotheses were, and this is lifted directly from my paper: "It was hypothesized that participants who received positively framed mandates would complete a higher proportion of consent items than those who received full disclosure framing.

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It was also predicted that females would show higher consent rates than males, and that digital natives would show higher consent rates than digital immigrants."

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Now, further context: "Digital native" is somebody who's born into the internet. For my specific study, it was people born in 1991 and younger. Digital immigrants... Me. Also known as "old people" who were born pre-internet. We knew life pre-internet. I was interested in studying how consent thresholds differ between the generations.

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Shit's getting cool. This is a sound quasi-experiment, so the only thing left to do is get it out there! I needed people to fill out the surveys, and I went so hard on getting this did. I'm so proud of myself. The power, meaning how many people I needed- I actually ran stats to find the power that I needed...

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It was only around 100 people. I got an N of 276. That means 276 people did my survey from beginning to end. I got a ton of data to work with! Lucky guy. So without further adieu, what is adieu? I say that every time. Here are my results.

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I got statistical significance on all of my variables. Statistical significance means that there's only about a 5% chance that I got a false positive. False positive means that I got results that are totally by chance and not actually representative of the population. All of my variables (5% is the line of acceptable), there's an under 1% chance that it was completely at random.

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This is called hard evidence. I'm sure you notice in my hypotheses, I kind of got off the beaten path a little bit. Right? I just wanted to study positive versus full disclosure framing. But since I was in the weeds collecting data, I might as well get other variables to try to find more specifics, right?

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I mentioned sex. I was studying males and females. I mentioned non-binary people as well, but there just wasn't enough power to use their responses. So they were noted there in my paper, but not used. You can read it if you want. And I was also studying the generations thing. Older people versus younger people regarding consent thresholds. And then there were other things that I was really excited about...

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Namely, I have a hunch that Americans would consent less than Canadians.

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But, again, I didn't have enough people, didn't have enough power, so I couldn't run accurate statistics. With science, you gotta slough the data. That's how it works. So, I'm going to keep this very brief because it's superfluous. But it is interesting. Younger people (digital natives) had a 12% higher consent threshold than older people (digital immigrants). Older people are a little more... suspicious!

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Older folks are not so used to filling out constant terms and conditions, etc.. Anyways, you can read the paper as to why I think these things, but know that younger people consented more readily. Okay, on the gender side of things, men had a 9% higher consent threshold than women. With science, you gotta a priori make these hypotheses.

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That means you've got to wear egg on your face when you're wrong with statistical significance. I was wrong, with significance! I thought that women were going to have a higher consent threshold. So I dug a little bit deeper post-hoc, and I saw a bunch of peer-reviewed studies about how women were less vaccinated during COVID-19 than men. This is mind-blowing for me.

00;35;15;03 - 00;35;45;21

I leaned into how there is a ton of literature on how men are way more risk-taking, and women are a lot more agreeable. I inferred, meaning I took existing evidence and reason, and I put those together thinking that women would consent more to medical interventions from the government. I was wrong. The more I think about it, women obviously deal with consent front of mind a whole lot more in their sex lives... so there's that! There are also some studies that I cite in my paper in the discussion section, if you want to read further into this, but we're gonna leave it at that because it has nothing to do with this podcast.

00;35;45;21 - 00;36;09;02

Drumroll... this is what we're here for, people: The positively framed version of my survey had a 41.7% consent rate. The full disclosure version of my survey had a 31.7% consent rate.

00;36;09;04 - 00;36;27;03

I have evidence (and goosebumps) that that is a 10% downtick in consent when the general population has all of the information possible.

00;36;27;05 - 00;36;38;10

Therefore, my study suggests that withholding medical information changes behaviour.

00;36;38;13 - 00;37;08;17

The statistically significant threshold is a 5% chance of a false positive... for this specific variable, my data has only a 0.2% chance that these results are random. Let that sink in. This is evidence! However, and this is the biggest HOWEVER because shit is about to get meta... However, my study had limitations.

00;37;08;19 - 00;37;31;29

Of course it did. I mean, I'm human... no thing has ever been made straight of the warped timbers of humanity. I'm not saying I was being nefarious; I'm just saying there are flaws. Yes, my study was overpowered. I got so many responses. Statistical significance. However, think about it: I'm trying to run a research study with no money, which even has its own incentives.

00;37;32;01 - 00;37;53;28

Therefore, a lot of my participants were people from my social circle who are going to exist in similar socioeconomics. A lot of my subjects were from my world. A lot of them have a personal connection to me, wondering what I'm trying to do; although I disclosed nothing to them prior to it, I asked them to do it with no explanation. Also, on top of that, I put it out to my social media audience, which is of pretty decent size.

00;37;54;05 - 00;38;20;24

I love my people, but again, they kind of know me. They absolutely know what I'm up to. They filled out my survey. The cohort of psychology students at my university. We're all about reciprocity, right? We're all helping each other by doing each other's surveys. This is a flaw in my survey. Furthermore, I went on Reddit, and I went on one of them... I don't even know... I barely know what Reddit is... one of those threads, and I found other undergrad students who were running surveys.

00;38;20;24 - 00;38;42;12

And again, reciprocity, I did their surveys too. That's also a younger-skewed audience. Although you can check all my numbers; they're all in my paper. But still, I'm just saying I even got some data from the Middle East. And in my paper, I'm making comments about Canada and the United States. I have to admit these attributes of my survey.

00;38;42;19 - 00;39;14;11

I'm human. This is flawed. Everything is kinda flawed and biased. I'm sitting here with cold, hard evidence, but it's got issues; it deserves further looking into... All things do! Do you see the meta part of my "however"? And that's just where my study came from; furthermore, my survey was unsupervised. I wasn't watching people do the survey. I was trusting them because this was self-reporting. That is worth mentioning.

00;39;14;13 - 00;39;46;00

Also, I LOVE that my survey had hypothetical government interventions. However, that needs to be called out because these hypotheticals were a little bombastic. People may not have taken my survey seriously at all. Piggybacking on top of that, can you imagine if I ran this survey in a lab and I had real people being offered a cup of milk with vitamin D, some salt with iodine in it, water with fluoride.

00;39;46;02 - 00;40;24;05

This alteration to the experiment would mean that we're getting real-world, actual emotions. People would actually be ingesting these interventions. I'm willing to bet that that would alter the results... And I couldn't make microchip vaccines for the live experiment. Also, also, you will notice that I keep calling my survey a "quasiexperiment," like a "kind of experiment," because a real, full-on experiment uses real, full-on randomization.

00;40;24;08 - 00;40;50;04

Yes, my survey was randomized, but I used a little hack: I separated the people between those with even birthdays and those with odd birthdays. Evens got survey Version A; odds got survey Version B. This is a littttttttle bit of tinkering. There could be biases. Therefore, I cannot call it a full-on experiment. And you know why I went this route? I didn't want to! I did this because the software I was using was such a pain in my Goddamn ass! Seriously.

00;40;50;05 - 00;41;11;02

I worked so hard, so hard, so much research and so much coding, trying to get it to just fucking totally randomize, and it wouldn't. It would NOT. I gave up. So it's quasi, and I have to admit that. I have to disclose: this is full disclosure. Are you trusting me a little bit more? Okay, that's the end of my survey results. Pretty proud of it.

00;41;11;02 - 00;41;33;01

Okay, here we go... I want to talk to you like a civilian. Real world. REMOVES "SCIENCE HAT" I have to make sure it's off. Okay? Hold on. Sneezes are mini orgasms. Just so God can watch us and laugh as we make our "OH FACE" in public.

00;41;33;03 - 00;42;02;06

CHECKS FOR "SCIENCE HAT" It's definitely off. We're good. But in all seriousness, can you see the meta way I was telling you about my survey? I was totally vulnerable, totally human, totally honest. Right after I told you that I had evidence that would prove my point!!! Yet I delivered it to you, quite consciously, in a fair way. I gave you the roses and the thorns, and I'm going to leave it with you to decide! I trust you to make the best decision for YOU!

00;42;02;08 - 00;42;24;08

The beautiful part about what I just did is that I built some trust. Yes, I may have lost some of you. Some of you might have been like, "Oh, never mind." You heard my whole spiel, all these great numbers, all of this effort to make a podcast. "Wow, he really did a great survey and put in some serious effort... But then he told me all this negative stuff about it, and now I don't care."

00;42;24;10 - 00;42;54;25

But you know what? I, as the researcher, am willing to let you go because downstream, when I do another research study, you're going to be like, "This guy's going to be honest with me. He's going to show me all sides and let me decide for myself. I'm going to listen to what he has to say. I trust him." And you should, because I trust you to make excellent, informed decisions. See how I'm bringing it together?

00;42;54;27 - 00;43;24;20

You've been primed, including all this consent stuff, so now I'm going to use the internet for what it's really for: completely unhinged, subjective opinions!!! We don't need this thing... THROWS "SCIENCE HAT" ACROSS THE ROOM Let's go. This is going to be controversial: COVID-19. All of you just tensed up, didn't you? Buttholes puckered, right? I know, let's push through.

00;43;24;21 - 00;43;55;13

We got to look under the controversy, look past the controversy. Remember all of the stuff I primed you with. Here we go: Yes, I can now outwardly state that I had hesitations about the COVID-19 vaccine. GASP!!! I cannot believe I can disclose that, but IT'S TRUE. However, know that I was not just like, "The vaccine is coming, gross, I'm not getting it!" And I have proof by way of how I treated the other community guidelines: I social-distanced like whoa.

00;43;55;15 - 00;44;16;19

I was in my bubble and stayed in it. I quarantined for eight weeks out of my life because I moved, and people whoa came to visit. I followed all protocols, all! I wore a mask everywhere I went. But when the vaccine was coming out, and I was asked to inject something that came out a little too quickly... I was uncomfortable. We are NOT about to get into the weeds with the medical stuff. We'll stick to the point of the podcast.

00;44;16;21 - 00;44;37;18

I thought, "I need to do due diligence on this." So I did, and I have receipts; you can look through my history. I listened to both sides. I read as much as I could, I listened to as much as I could, and I did, in fairness, just for my life situation; I lived in the middle of nowhere in the country.

00;44;37;18 - 00;45;05;17

I was living in rural Nova Scotia, so I had the time and resources, while not endangering anyone, while I made my decision... Nuance that no one was willing to hear at the time! Just a little preface: So, I'm doing my research, reading actual medical literature, and listening to podcasts from both sides. It's so heated. I'm so confused. Unsure where to land... But you know what made the decision 100% locked in for me? A commercial, actually, technically two commercials! I swear to God.

00;45;05;20 - 00;45;32;01

I was listening to a hot button podcast and a commercial came on. It was one of those hilarious pharmaceutical drug commercials. We all make fun of them. They're so funny... The ones where everybody's happy as hell. Everybody's having a great time, playfully pushing each other and running around in a picturesque field. And then at the end of the commercial, an announcer says, "May cause dizziness, may cause headache, may cause leaky anus, may cause death!"

00;45;32;04 - 00;45;57;11

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that these warnings exist. Right? I don't want to take something and die. And from a human morals and ethics perspective, I think if somebody is manufacturing something that could kill you, I think they should have to disclose that, am I right? That's not crazy. I know pretty much everybody is going to be on board with me on that one!

00;45;57;11 - 00;46;38;25

Come on. Unless you're like a hardcore capitalist. Going back to the Taiwan thing... maybe you are? Moving on! We all know the commercials. Here's the really interesting thing that's relevant to all of this: The number of cases, the threshold that these drugs have to hit by law, by the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, to disclose that this drug might kill you... ONE. If there is one reported case.

00;46;38;27 - 00;47;05;26

Obviously, death is a VERY serious symptom, but still, if they have one reported case, they HAVE TO disclose that this drug might kill you. Sucks for the pharmaceutical company; their sales; they probably drop if something can KILL you. But I think it's still fair. Okay, so back to my COVID-19 vaccine situation. I hear this hilarious commercial for the typical stereotypical pharmaceutical drug ad.

00;47;05;26 - 00;47;37;18

Hilarious. I have a laugh. Then, the very next commercial... This was like the universe being cheeky... The next commercial was the Canadian government, the government of my country, coming on the air and saying, "Please," paraphrasing, "Go get vaccinated, go get the COVID-19 vaccination." Cool. Public health officials have every right to put their message out there, and they're trying to help people and save lives... I'm down. I approve.

00;47;37;20 - 00;48;13;28

Then the commercial ended. Dead air. Nothing. The commercial. Just ended. "Go get the COVID-19 vaccine," then nothing. Where's the warning? The company prior, the pharmaceutical company... if one person died, ONE, they have to disclose this. Death is extreme, but this is true for any serious outcome. HOWEVER, the Canadian government, the body that enforces the pharmaceutical company behaving themselves... does NOT have to disclose a single symptom.

00;48;14;00 - 00;48;42;21

That's interesting. I was floored; I was genuinely floored by this. All of a sudden, all the information I was reading, actual medical literature... all of it went out the window. All the podcasts I was listening to... didn't matter. The fact that the government had this transparent double standard... I went, "This is fishy as fuck," and I absolutely swore off the COVID-19 vaccine and my God, the social ramifications of that at the time...

00;48;42;21 - 00;49;01;21

Now no one cares, but at the time? I was a social pariah. I was poisonous. 81.1% of Canadians took the vaccine. It was pretty hard to be marginalized at that time. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

00;49;01;24 - 00;49;25;24

But I had NEW principles, and I couldn't let this go. Despite all that pain, all these years later, I am so grateful that I stuck to these new principles that I didn't even realize I had. I want to keep painting the picture, though, because it all comes together now on the Canadian government website: They are full disclosure!

00;49;25;24 - 00;50;18;12

47,010 total non-serious adverse effects from COVID-19 vaccines, 11,702 total serious adverse effects from the COVID-19 vaccines. A little reminder: Big Pharma has to disclose serious outcomes from their pharmaceuticals. If one person suffers, the Canadian government's website on COVID-19 now states 24 different possible adverse effects from the COVID-19 vaccine.

00;50;18;14 - 00;50;53;22

Their commercial, in the heart of the pandemic, mentioned zero of 24. ZERO. One of the pillars of this show is "credit where credit's due, even when it's inconvenient." I got to give a big up to the Government of Canada for being full disclosure. It's super cool that they're just putting it all out there for everyone to see. I also have to disclose that I acknowledge that they couldn't know how many people were going to be harmed by their COVID-19 vaccine because... that's not how time works! It needed to play out!

00;50;53;24 - 00;51;16;26

I just want to be full disclosure here. Okay. However, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the Canadian government and these pharmaceutical companies: these are intelligent people; just because they didn't have the data that they have now, I'm going to assume that they built a drug to inject into human beings with an understanding of its impacts. Impacts that we now 100% know to be true.

00;51;16;26 - 00;51;44;02

Again, I'm going to give them I'm going to be super benevolent here: Even just one, they must have known one. Even just the most benign outcome. Remember I said there are 24 confirmed undesirable outomces of the COVID-19 vaccine on the Canadian government website? They must have known one negative outcome, and yet they chose to disclose zero. They let us down at a population level.

00;51;44;04 - 00;52;12;00

Okay, let's synthesize this entire cast of pods: We are wrestling with something very complicated and nuanced. We're talking about a population's personal liberties versus big government control against the backdrop of a global public health crisis!!! LOOKS FOR "SCIENCE HAT"... CAN'T FIND IT It's so gone.

00;52;12;00 - 00;52;47;23

So, I'm going to go full internet conjecture here; I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Canadian government chose to positively frame the COVID-19 vaccine to maximize the number of people who would get it. GASP! Shocker, right? The cool thing is I can actually apply my research, my model, to this: I can say, with confidence, I have evidence, so my study suggests that by the Canadian government only positively framing the Covid 19 vaccine, they got a 10% uptick in compliance of people taking the COVID-19 vaccine... people who otherwise wouldn't.

00;52;47;26 - 00;53;27;08

As I said, 81.1% of Canadians took the COVID-19 vaccine; that's 28,716,557 Canadians. Now, as my research suggests, if the Canadian government had used full disclosure strategies to disclose what was going on with these vaccines, we would have had only 71.1% of Canadians taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

00;53;27;10 - 00;54;03;08

To put that into hard numbers: that is 3,540,842 people who would have avoided this vaccine. I'm doing this research for you because you got manipulated! That's just that's a fact. That's just that's a hard fact. Oh, and because I'm on my internet soapbox here and I'm pissed, especially reliving this stuff... Where were my social justice warriors protecting me??????

00;54;03;08 - 00;54;25;00

I was in only less than 20% of Canadians who avoided the COVID-19 vaccine, AND I was being threatened and manipulated to do so. I was in a marginalized community being bullied!!! Where were the social justice warriors protecting people like me? There were none. In fact, I was a plague rat. A threat to society for "getting a second opinion," something that was absolutely common practice the day before the COVID-19 vaccines came out. RAGES! Bring it down. Let's get back to brass tacks.

00;54;25;00 - 00;54;49;17

Sorry, the conjecture is the fun part. Sorry, sorry. Venting, venting, hypocrisy really fucks me up. If you want to piss me off, be a blatant hypocrite who is hurting people with their sneaky ways!!! But anyways, back to this: The pre-eclampsia thing. Remember I said, these are medical professionals running probabilities, so they just give us the positive aspects. So, on an intellectual level, I understand what the Canadian government was doing. This was a virus. This is a pathogen that they were trying to contain.

00;54;49;24 - 00;55;14;03

I'm assuming very bright people ran probabilities, herd immunity, and they thought it's better that we get this extra 10% that my study suggests instead of losing those people because this could be potentially dangerous. I give the benefit of the doubt. It was a scary time! BUT it's more the social stuff that pisses me off!!! I also just want to state that true existential crises for human beings.

00;55;14;06 - 00;55;36;12

I think positive framing can be advantageous. I just think COVID-19 went a litttttttttle bit off the rails. And yeah, hindsight's 20/20. And ya, I do think there were extra shenanigans, but there's a whole other podcast and I don't want to detract from the work we're doing here! Governments, COVID-19 was a missed opportunity. We're going to bring it back to the mechanic analogy:

00;55;36;12 - 00;56;11;13

Remember what we all really want from mechanics? Communal trust! Canadian government, you were myopic. You chose short-term compliance over long-term communal trust. If you were full disclosure with these COVID-19 vaccines, yeah, you may have lost 10% of compliance, BUT in the long run, you're going to be that loved mechanic. That mechanic, people know that they can bring their car to, and you're not going to overcharge them or the governmental version of that. And the happy customers are going to tell their friends!

00;56;11;15 - 00;56;37;11

You missed a chance to bond with your people, essentially. And here's the back-ass-wards part with COVID-19: the 71.1%, those people who happily complied, they're always going to comply! The 10% in the middle, you know you're going to win them/you're going to lose them. The haters, they're always going to hate; they're impossible to "get", right? Not so fast! I argue the way to get those haters is unapologetic honesty.

00;56;37;14 - 00;57;20;28

Full disclosure in the face of a serious crisis has long-term ramifications for uniting nations. The world needs governmental honest and integrity. Remember I said this is actually a unity project? Yeah, the higher-ups being full disclosure unites us. Crazy, right? And this goes beyond medical intervention. A unified country that trusts its government is going to be more prosperous. People who are empowered and feel safe with the people over top of them are going to produce more, be more generative, be happier.

00;57;21;00 - 00;57;57;08

This is a big deal! Honestly, all this coming from my little survey... Gawd, and you wanna talk systematic problems... This is one of them! And seriously, if I were sitting down for a beer with somebody who is in the government with the COVId-1919 thing, or who's a current medical practitioner giving positive-only advice, I would say that "We're big people. We're big people, and we deserve all the information; have faith in the general population, have faith in us."

00;57;57;08 - 00;58;19;04

Yeah, I'm not an MP, and I don't have an MD at the end of my name; I'm not Doctor Grey. But I, and every other citizen, deserve information. I'm a parent now, and one of my favourite pieces of advice that I've received for rearing this kiddo is that kids aren't afraid of information... they're way more afraid of the unknown.

00;58;19;08 - 00;58;51;09

Governments and medical practitioners, I urge you to keep that in mind when dealing with your people. We want to know what's up, and we're big enough and brave enough and smart enough to make educated decisions. Informed consent!!! Okay, anecdotally, Canadian government, I'm speaking directly to you: I was such a good compliance soldier.

00;58;51;10 - 00;59;43;18

As I said, with COVID-19 specifically, I did all the protocols, and honestly, before COVID-19, I just had so much faith in the government... and you've eroded that. My critical thinking has now gone through the roof. And I'm incredibly hesitant about anything you have to present to me, and that all comes from your decision to withhold information. I was thinking about getting that COVID-19 vaccine, and you single-handedly botched that, and you've now created somebody who's making this podcast and doing this research to make my point... even though I'm probably just screaming into the void... to spread the word of what informed consent is and that people deserve to demand it; we deserve full disclosure.

00;59;43;20 - 01;00;06;28

I wasn't that person before this. You did this to me. Truth. I think you can do better. We can do better. How does this sound? "Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here are the good sides. Here are the bad sides. Hey, your body, your choice. We're here to help. If you need us, you can trust us!"

01;00;07;01 - 01;00;27;20

That doesn't sound so crazy to me. And I have a feeling deep down, again, conjecture, I think you agree. And for those who just blindly comply with absolutely everything, you are welcome to do so! I'm a libertarian in this regard. You do. Even if you don't want to hear what a doctor has to say...

01;00;27;20 - 01;00;52;24

They hand you something, and you just take it. Go for it. That's beautiful. I have all the faith in the world in your decision-making for you! Honestly, the cool thing is, my doing this, even just this little bit I'm contributing... I'm doing it for you, too, because just maybe, just maybe something's going to come up in your life where you go, "I was kind of duped. My civil liberties are being trampled; maybe I should care about them more."

01;00;52;27 - 01;01;18;15

And you can look at me and be like, "Oh, I see what you're saying now..." And I'll just say, it wouldn't be, "I told you so." It would be, "I hear you; it should be a human right. Let's move forward together, protect more people."

01;01;18;17 - 01;01;46;29

The last thing to leave you with is how to handle this: Just be curious. If your doctor prescribes you something, ask what the good sides are. Ask what the bad sides are. Ask downstream what could happen. Ask if there are alternatives. Just be curious and find your peace. It doesn't have to go too far; you're not in med school. You know you can find a place that's comfortable for you.

01;01;47;01 - 01;02;16;10

And the cool thing is, I'm willing to bet that your doctor will respect you for doing that. And really, at the end of the day, we're just trying to find the mechanics that we feel comfortable sending our friends to... communal trust. All right, let's bring this one in for a landing, shall we? The sign-off: Virtue is a mean. Comfort with ambiguity is a sign of intelligence...

01;02;16;10 - 01;02;49;10

Oh my God, that reminds me: I completely forgot about the twist that I promised earlier! So here it goes... Remember, there was a third strategy for communicating these medical interventions: Negative Framing. Remember, I just sloughed it off. But I'm going to make an inference. I don't have cold, hard data on this, but existing evidence and reasoning coming at you!

01;02;49;10 - 01;03;21;08

My study suggested that there is a 10% increase in compliance when the survey was positively framed. Therefore, we can infer the opposite effect. Let's just say we did a survey that was full disclosure and only negative framing.

01;03;21;14 - 01;03;42;22

Wow. As I think about this, I'm willing to bet it would be a lot more than 10% rejection of the negatively framed intervention. We can infer that compliance will be a whole hell of a lot lower if it's negative framing only. Now, the twist.

01;03;42;24 - 01;04;13;17

In Canada, cigarette packs have big, gnarly, gross images of what cigarettes can do. Cigarettes in general, they are cast out of society. They're awful. And they can kill other people. However, I was sitting here being an absolutist with my informed consent. Informed consent for all, always!

01;04;13;20 - 01;04;51;01

Live by the sword, die by the sword. True honour. I have to admit, the way that tobacco is consumed through cigarettes, there's also nicotine in there. Yes, as we said earlier in my study, nicotine is highly addictive. However, as I also said in my study, it's a nootropic. It stimulates our brains. It's a cognitive enhancer. That's inarguably a positive outcome from a cigarette.

01;04;51;03 - 01;05;24;03

So if I'm an absolutist with informed consent, this would mean that I believe that cigarette packs in Canada should have the gnarly pictures of diseased bodies, but they should also have the positive aspects. The packs should say nicotine is a cognitive enhancer. "You should smoke!" Disclaimer!!!! I'm not actually saying to smoke!!!! It's a joke!!!

01;05;24;05 - 01;05;51;06

When I cost/benefit smoking, I'm 99.9% sure it's going to kill me. It's awful. You get nothing out of it. 0.1%... you get a nice little cognitive uptick. But there are less dangerous ways to get nicotine. What I'm saying is there's nuance to MY stance because I don't think we should be talking about the positive health aspects of cigarettes.

01;05;51;08 - 01;06;27;28

So, does there goes my entire study and this entire podcast? Nuance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Truthfully, I haven't thought this through. Honestly, this is something I tacked on at the end. I really haven't thought this out totally, but it does suggest that there has to be nuance to the way that things are framed, not only by us in the public, not only by medical professionals, but also by government, and also when the two have to work together.

01;06;28;01 - 01;06;54;10

I have to own all of everything I've said, including my study and the nuance I've just discovered. Maybe what the government did during COVID-19 and during my wife's pre-eclampsia scare was, maybe, just maybe, I'm just upset at how I was treated.

01;06;54;13 - 01;06;57;26

I have goosebumps.

01;06;57;29 - 01;07;28;09

And now, to bring it all back again, one last time, the meta-ness of what I just did: I just totally ruined my whole podcast. My whole research study. But I was honest with you. I need to do more thinking on this. Aesop's Fables... one, two, three. There's a little esoterica for you, but it's irrelevant. There's an old saying: when somebody is admitting that they're wrong, they're "eating their hat".

01;07;28;09 - 01;08;00;03

I have to eat my hat. FAKES EATING THE "SCIENCE HAT" Well, yeah, it's kind of fitting, right? The fact that it's an empirical science hat that is getting eaten because the human experience is an incredibly complex and sometimes abstract endeavour. That doesn't mean we should eat it to destroy it, though! Maybe we should just be respectful of that. But we need to also acknowledge the social, human art side of it as well.

01;08;00;06 - 01;08;23;25

With all that, I think we should get back to the old sign-off. Let's bring it back down for a landing. Virtue is a mean. Comfort with ambiguity as a sign of intelligence. Credit where credit's due, even when it's inconvenient. And don't take yourself so fucking seriously.

01;08;23;27 - 01;08;38;19

Ya'll come back now, ya hear? OH! For those people who comply no matter what, send me $1,000! Positive framing... It will bring you very good luck!

01;08;38;21 - 01;08;41;09

Understand the system so you can work the system.