Alan Levinovitz

shocked, I tell you, just shocked — it's always the gurus you least expect

Picked up an amazing back issue of The Atlantic!

I'm going to try to divide my time a bit more between Twitter and Bluesky...many of my OG social media friends are only active on Twitter, and I value the large community I have there, but I also know that many people have left completely. We'll see if it is too much!

“To us, this is a version of the placebo effect that has gone, essentially, unnoticed,” Professor Levinovitz said. “Here is this thing that is cross-cultural and trans-historical — the power of an official name to gain control over pathology of some kind — and it is almost entirely unstudied.”

Autism, A.D.H.D., Anxiety: Can a Diagnosis Make You Better?

Autism, A.D.H.D., Anxiety: Can a Diagnosis Make You Better?

“As our diagnostic categories expand to include ever milder versions of disease, researchers propose that the act of naming a malady can itself bring relief.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/h...

“Alan Levinovitz shows us how the worship of an abstract idea of nature can lead us astray in everything from our health to the laws we pass and even how we structure our governments and our way of life. This book is required” - Tom Nichols

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621092...

"From vaccines to climate change, misinformation poses an existential threat when it inhibits our collective decision-making ability."
They Swore by the Diet I Created — but I Completely Made It Up by Alan Levinovitz in @elemental...

I'm gonna give it try...my community over on X is just too big and valuable to abandon, and I'm not sure if I can do two sites, but hey!

We're already seeing a public-private divide. Private schools are forcing tech *out* of classrooms as the default, and allowing it only for specific tasks, under close supervision.

Opposing the ongoing technification of our classrooms should be an easy, bipartisan issue. Every teacher I know has struggled with tech in the classroom, and I'm certain the downsides will massively exacerbate educational disparities.

Excellent piece by @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social @awaisaftab.bsky.social on the therapeutic effect of diagnosis +
the need for qual research. Reading Parson’s “sick role” theory in undergrad sociology was the moment I realized how much is missed by psych models. www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Autism, A.D.H.D., Anxiety: Can a Diagnosis Make You Better?

Grateful to see this layered and multifaceted discussion in the @nytimes.com by @ellenbarry.bsky.social about recent work by @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social and me on the Rumpelstiltskin effect (the therapeutic relief experienced on receiving a diagnosis)

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/s...

Really fun and interesting chat with @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social about teaching religion in a university setting.

Japan has:
< economic inequality
> education system
> walkable cities
> public transportation
< guns & gun violence
< obesity
> healthcare

And, yes, many of its own probs...

👇 MAHA as sophisticted as a grade school science project.

via @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social

A snippet of text from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. It reads: "It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar."

A photo of cut up shrimp in a silver tray, perhaps part of a buffet table or a stockpile of ingredients at a restaurant. They have an eerie, faint blue glow due to bioluminescent bacteria. Image sourced from: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/ct8rzq/some_these_shrimp_are_glowing_because_they_ate/

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens describes Marley's face having a dismal light "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar."

Huh?

He was likely referring to the glow of bioluminescent bacteria that can grow in/on crustaceans, presumably a more common observation at the time.

📷 tinyurl.com/6cj6knjw

Feeling despair? So did this guy in 1875, who couldn't believe there were STILL anti-vaxxers:

"One might suppose that the popular prejudice against vaccination had died out by this time, considering that it has been practiced for nearly a century"

The preprint also also mentions by favourite spoof paper:

"What's the Deal with Birds" by @evornithology.bsky.social. The abstract is fantastic ....

My kingdom for a community where we can — somehow, incredibly! — condemn the egregious abuse of our most vulnerable, call out the horrific insurance industrial complex, abs also…heartily condemn murder!

Can we not fucking rationalize/equivocate about murder? Is it too fucking much to ask for a space where, when someone is murdered, it isn’t seen as an opportunity to score political points?

Bluesky, paragon of civilized discourse.

My God it’s all broken.

FBI Director nominee. Sigh.

HT @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social

Just saw this.

“For every Galileo there are 1000 idiots.” The recent Fifth Column podcast with
@alanlevinovitz.bsky.social was an invigorating listen. Reclaiming and reframing science via honest, practical no bullshit discussions like this are vital.

Thanks Alan.

I don’t normally cross post, but this thread from @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social is so insightful and novel (as in I haven’t heard a lot of these ideas articulated so clearly before) that I can’t help myself. x.com/AlanLevinovi...

Image of a post by Alan Levinovitz. It says: "Why don't people turn against the charlatans that fleece them? After all, when a physician harms or kills a patient, typically people get upset. They sue. "But when a charlatan harms you, it doesn't work like that. That's because when you buy into a charlatan's bullshit, you've made a choice, as an individual, to trust them. "The medical establishment demands your trust, so when they betray it, you can be angry. But you GIVE your trust to the charlatan. "If you admit the charlatan betrayed you? Well, that means you are admitting you betrayed yourself."

Especially this part, for me.

I really hope this thread helps people understand the perspective I take on food and health.

I think it's important, and I believe that if we were able to recognize the truths that emerge from an honest look at this history, we could work together more effectively towards a healthier future.

You don't need Huberman or Wim Hof or ice baths or carnivore diets or veganism or Bulletproof Coffee or avocado oil...or whatever they will be trying to sell you in 10, 20, 100, 1000 years.

All you need is the knowledge of the history I've laid out here.

The truth is that there is no easy answer. As Michael Pollan put it, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants," is a pretty good start — but honestly, even that is too specific. I think you could probably be fine eating a fair amount of meat!

So when the next monk or Horace Fletcher comes along, mailing envelopes & drinking Bulletproof coffee and flexing his/her muscles and telling you they've got the secret, just remember my motto, which swaps a synonym for thinking in for mastication:

Nature Will Castigate Those Who Don't Cogitate.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

There is no "one easy trick" that the establishment doesn't want you to know.

Everyone's shit stinks, even Horace Fletcher's, and some of those ancient Chinese monks went bald, despite their super-secret dietary principles.

It can't be that they're all right. Instead, it is because they are all tapping into a deep need that humans feel, and providing novel resolutions of that need.