Column | The scientific church is powerful, but fortunately people are still allowed to measure something themselves and draw conclusions from it on their own

I had been looking forward to it. In the latest NPO programme The Biohack Project Celebrities receive nutritional and lifestyle advice to combat symptom number 1 of our society – stress. Biohacking is based on the idea that people can learn something about their physiology by taking measurements and make meaningful adjustments based on this. It stands in a long tradition of citizen science, which dates from a time when knowledge was not yet exclusively the domain of science, when the most important discoveries were made by ordinary citizens who observed, experimented and thought for themselves.

But the first episode of the program was also a big disappointment for me. Govert Viergever, the chief biohacker who guides the participants, always knows exactly what everyone needs based on heart rate measurements, lab results and genetic information. One person an ice bath, another a breadless diet, the next a magnesium supplement. There was a lot of certainty and little curiosity. And the latter is an essential ingredient for anyone who wants to learn something.

There was one thing that annoyed me more than the program itself. These were the comments of the public inquisitors, acting on behalf of medicine and science. People like Adriaan ter Braack, ‘shamadrian’, who, as a brave knight of scientific truth, repeatedly goes to war against herbalists and influencers who, for example, label sunscreen as dangerous. I recognize it because it was once my hobby, as an overenthusiastic new scientist, to measure others. Until I discovered that ‘green girls’ have little power and any advice they give posed negligible problems compared to things like smoking, alcohol and obesity.

In his criticism, Sjamadriaan uses rules and boundaries that he invents himself. He doesn’t just have problems with the nonsense advice given in the program. But also notes that Viergever is not “trained or qualified to draw conclusions from heart rate data.” Behold the spiraling orthodoxy of the gatekeepers of science. Adriaan needs to be fact-checked here himself. The scientific church is powerful, but fortunately people are still allowed to measure something themselves and, yes, draw conclusions from it on their own. You can determine your blood sugar, measure your heart rate and blood pressure, measure cholesterol, you can test whether you have corona, you can even perform a pregnancy test. Home, unauthorized. And then, without any diploma or training, draw a conclusion from it. There are even patient associations, citizen science collectives, ethnic minorities, or people with rare conditions who have nothing other than those measurements due to lack of interest in their group or condition from science.

It is something that Bernard Leenstra, general practitioner, always ignores in his criticism. In response to the program, he goes one step further in this newspaper and simply labels all biohacking ‘nonsense’, but does not have the courage to take a critical look at his own profession. What does the GP have to offer for tension complaints? Shall we? in the guidelines to look? Running therapy, mindfulness and the urgent advice to worry less or differently. So nothing that has really been proven, or really works, according to Leenstra’s standards. Shall we take a look at other common conditions? Fatigue? Long Covid? A tennis elbow? Or a dozen other symptoms? There are armies of people who visit Leenstra’s office every day, whom he can only treat with poor or unproven therapy, short-acting therapy or who he simply has nothing to offer. Because we have simply never understood the mechanism of the disease, or because there is no pharmacological revenue model. Because the ethnic minority was never included in the research group, or the demographic group is not large enough to develop something profitable for it (children). That is often the context of biohacking. Better than nothing. People who do not wait out of desperation, but do their own research. That is completely understandable. What Sjamadriaan and Leenstra should be committed to is teaching citizens how to do proper research themselves. By closely monitoring symptoms, formulating hypotheses, conducting experiments and relevant measurements. Uplift and help people, not put them down.

Rosanne Hertzberger is a microbiologist.