9 Comments

How the Tony Robbins program uses or mis-uses the Stanford University research for his profit.

Expand full comment

Here's a lengthy investigative article from the SF Chronicle, from September, that explains how the Stanford-Robbins relationship developed. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-tony-robbins-science-19742532.php

If, like me, you can't access that article without paying for it, you can read a web archive of it here: https://archive.ph/AnB8u

I don't think it specifically addresses your question about how Robbins deploys the Stanford research for his profit. On one hand, if you look at the links to his two sites in this post, Stanford's name and prestige is front and center in marketing his products. So there's that. Is that a misuse? It depends, perhaps, on what your opinion is of the research, and why it was done in the first place, and whether the substandard professionalism with which it was done makes you suspicious about why a Stanford genetics lab would be conducting research described by multiple other researchers as dubious, and doing it in a field (psychology) outside of its expertise. All of it doesn't add up easily, as the link to the ipscell.com blog post by a Berkeley scientist indicates (here's that link again: https://ipscell.com/2024/09/stanfords-mike-snyder-and-wellness-coach-tony-robbins-together-yield-some-puzzling-research/).

I'll do some more digging.

Expand full comment

I'm interested in more details about the Tony Robbins connection.

Expand full comment

Maybe I'll follow up this post with one about the TR connection. Anything specific you'd like to know more about, Robert?

Expand full comment

I'm just thirding this interest! I'd like to know what Tony Robbins is doing mucking around in biochemistry without constraint or oversight.

Expand full comment

What a wild interview. As a fellow researcher, I can understand writing a thing believing that others will read it as you intend. I'm sure they never expected the research to go viral - much less to have the public question it and pick it apart. Regardless, I appreciate that you pushed him a bit and were able to report on this lead geneticist's clarification. Being pre-60, I'm sighing with relief that I don't have a cliff to fall off of down the road. Thank you, Paul!

Expand full comment

Heather, thanks for your thoughts. One thing Snyder made clear, which may have gotten edited out of the published interview, was that there is plenty of research showing that big molecular changes around age 60 are associated with age related issues. So, as he put it, "heads up," it's coming....

Expand full comment

And so, denial and deflection don't work in this scenario?

Expand full comment

Oh, those strategies totally work! Until they totally do not.

Expand full comment