What do you think of when I mention Stanford professor Mike Snyder and self-help guru Tony Robbins together? I would not necessarily have imagined them forming a connection but science is full of surprises.
I’ve admired Snyder’s work in genetics for a long time. I’m most familiar these days with Robbins for his interest in unproven stem cell procedures rather than his inspirational seminars. He discusses stem cells in his recent book and in videos.
What brought these guys together?
Some controversial new psychology research linked them related to Robbins’ inspirational seminars.
Tony Robbins hearts Stanford
Here’s the news: Tony Robbins was reeling from backlash. Then came an unlikely ally: Stanford, SF Chronicle. This is an unexpected story about links between several Stanford researchers, including Snyder, and Robbins. Two research papers resulted with claims that Robbins’ seminars had health benefits. The Stanford team published an initial paper on this and:
“Then, in 2022, SHIL-affiliated researchers — some of whom were fans and acolytes of Robbins’ work — published a more provocative paper. This one claimed that Robbins’ six-day, $4,500 “Date with Destiny” program eliminated symptoms of depression in 100% of initially depressed event-goers who were studied. In contrast, across clinical trials of antidepressants, just half of people report feeling better in six to eight weeks. “
Could that be a real, reproducible outcome? I’m highly skeptical and to me that 100% outcome is a possible red flag, but I’m not a psychology professor. Neither is Snyder though.
Here’s one of the research papers if you are curious: Effects of an immersive psychosocial training program on depression and well-being: A randomized clinical trial.
Mike Snyder and Tony Robbins
Snyder is senior author. His role here more generally is a real head-scratcher to me. It seems I’m not the only one puzzled by this development:
“Has he lost his mind?” asked Phyllis Gardner, Snyder’s colleague at Stanford’s School of Medicine, who was among the first to question the work of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.”
These are strong words there from a direct colleague.
Invoking Holmes here in the article seems unnecessarily provocative.
Stanford hearts Tony Robbins too?
The Chronicle story discusses many interconnections between Robbins and the Stanford researchers, some of whom seem to greatly admire the lifestyle coach. There may be some financial ties too:
“In January, Robbins posted a promotion for Iollo, one of Snyder’s blood-testing companies, on social media platform X.“Just got my biological age report and it says I’m half a decade younger than my chronological age,” he posted, including a link to Iollo’s website and a “Tony Robbins” referral code. Iollo’s biomarker testing kits cost between $299 and $499. “Check it out,” Robbins wrote. “This is the power of taking control of your health and longevity.”
That tweet is not a good look.
The Chronicle piece goes through other potential ties and even has an infographic of the links.
The supposed reduction in biological age brings both Bryan Johnson and Harvard Professor David Sinclair to mind too. I have major doubts about the current state of tools to measure biological age.
Looking ahead
The Chronicle reporter, Susie Neilson, reached out to me for comment on this story. A few things came to mind. First, I was very surprised at this turn of events, especially since Snyder is a geneticist. Second, that he has a fantastic reputation as a scientist.
I also noted Robbins’ stem cell efforts to Neilson as context. To be clear, I don’t see a stem cell connection here with the Snyder and Robbins stuff.
However, readers of The Niche may recall I’ve posted before about Tony Robbins and unproven stem cells. Robbins is also involved with Fountain Life wellness centers along with Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri of Celularity.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Robbins ended up as a bridge between Snyder and Diamandis/Hariri, who have had success in biotech.
Maybe we’ll see future collaborative efforts. If so, I hope they do rigorous, controlled clinical trials for whatever they are measuring.
It takes the back-scratching plot straight from Silicon Valley and politics and the hubris of academia and lays out pretty clearly how a too big to fail personality like Robbins’ which was hit hard by the Me Too movement, could end up finding new credibility by wrapping himself up with narcissistic academics and their endorsements. It doesn’t play out like Elizabeth Holmes scandal for many reasons, except the part where people are duped by ethically questionable research findings, but one of Robbins’ main supporters runs a blood-testing start-up…some saying nothingg to see here except Robbins looking to substantiate his claims with “science”, but I am not buying it if you follow the money
From the Paper:
Stanford did a study and published the results. The researchers talked about the results. Not much of a story here other than Tony Robbins charges $4500 for his events and people seem to love them and in some cases people experience feeling less or no depression after attending. Maybe that is why millions of people love Tony Robbins.
“In conclusion, this single-blind randomized clinical trial of a brief immersive psychosocial intervention demonstrated rapid and substantial improvements in depression as compared to an active gratitude journaling control.
Seventy-nine percent of initially depressed participants in the intervention group were in remission by study week one and all depressed participants in the intervention group were in remission by study week six.
Future studies are needed to compare immersive psychosocial training programs with current standards of psychiatric care to determine whether they are a viable treatment for depression in lieu of, or as an adjuvant to, traditional psychological or psychopharmacological interventions.”
There’s much more to this. If you can access the Chronicle article, there are a lot of potential red flags with the studies, connections between the seminar folks and those analyzing the data, potentially the controls used were not great, etc.