Everything is Pseudoscience

Happy Wednesday!

Recently, I have been exploring a variety of paradoxes and have received great feedback from several of you about how it helped shift your thinking for the better.

Continuing with the theme of paradoxes, today I want to talk about the paradox that lives at the heart of every major breakthrough.

It’s called the paradox of pseudoscience.

Every great discovery begins its life as heresy.

Every innovation worth remembering is mocked before it is measured.

The paradox lies in the fact that progress requires ideas that look “unscientific” inside the current system.

If the idea were already accepted, it wouldn’t be new.

History shows that science only moves forward because a few people are willing to stand in the uncomfortable gap between ridicule and revelation.

Let’s examine how this relates to our little corner of the optimization world.

A Brief History of “Quackery”

Look back at medicine’s timeline and you’ll find a trail of pioneers labeled as fools.

Ignaz Semmelweis asked doctors in the 1840s to wash their hands before delivering babies. He was fired and later died in an asylum.

Today, handwashing is non-negotiable.

Galileo and Copernicus were condemned for suggesting the Earth revolved around the Sun. The church called it heresy.

Now the entire field of astronomy is based on their work.

Alfred Wegener proposed that continents drift slowly over time. Geologists laughed for fifty years until plate tectonics proved him right.

It’s the same pattern over and over and over again.

When the truth knocks, institutions call it pseudoscience.

When proof piles up, they rename it a discovery.

To paraphrase Max Planck, “science progresses one funeral at a time.”

Modern “Pseudoscience”

While researching this email, I consulted the overlords at Wikipedia to find out what is still considered pseudoscience.

According to Wikipedia, the following fields are not considered real science:

• Acupuncture – labeled “controversial,” yet meta-analyses in JAMA (2017) and Pain (2018) confirm measurable reductions in chronic pain.

• Mindfulness meditation – once dismissed as mysticism, now validated by MRI studies showing structural brain changes.

• Cold exposure, sauna, and red-light therapy – long considered fringe, now supported by research on heat-shock proteins and mitochondrial biogenesis.

• Intermittent fasting – still listed as “unproven” in some circles, yet hundreds of trials document improved insulin sensitivity and autophagy.

Even testosterone optimization and bioidentical hormone therapy remain categorized by mainstream outlets as “unsubstantiated,” despite thousands of peer-reviewed studies showing improvements in mood, cognition, and cardiovascular health.

The paradox persists because institutions lag behind innovation.

What works in practice always precedes what’s written in policy.

Hormones and Peptides

Right now, peptide therapy and advanced hormone optimization live in that same gray territory.

Search the term “peptide therapy” online and you’ll see phrases like “limited evidence,” “unregulated,” and “unproven” and (GASP!) “dangerous.”

Yet every week, new papers appear demonstrating the remarkable healing benefits of peptides.

But because peptides do not fit neatly into the pharmaceutical model, the system calls them pseudoscience.

Hormone optimization lives in the same paradox.

Replacing testosterone, estradiol, thyroid, and progesterone to physiological levels is labeled “experimental,” even though low levels of each are directly linked to disease and early death.

Communities of Innovators

Every frontier needs explorers.

When official institutions are slow to act, communities take the wheel.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, it takes an average of 17 years for new research to be adopted into clinical practice.

By the time a breakthrough becomes “standard care,” two decades of lives have passed inside the gap.

Communities like ours compress that timeline.

We share results, run small-scale experiments, and refine protocols long before mainstream medicine arrives at the party.

This is how pseudoscience becomes science.

Grass-roots data precedes institutional dogma.

Observation precedes acceptance.

Change begins at the fringe.

The Futility of Persuasion

Alas, a hard truth haunts us all in the biohacking world.

You cannot convince someone trapped inside an old paradigm.

If you try to proselytize, you only strengthen their resistance.

So the task is simple.

Be the change.

Live the results.

When you exude health, recover faster, and age in reverse, people notice.

No debate is necessary.

Transformation speaks louder than theory.

Every movement that shifted culture was carried out by those who embodied the truth before it was fashionable.

Final Thoughts

The paradox of pseudoscience reminds us that science is a moving frontier.

Today’s heresy becomes tomorrow’s curriculum.

Every peptide, every optimization protocol, every experiment you run on yourself is part of that unfolding story.

Most of us, myself included, desperately want mainstream validation and acceptance.

But if we don’t achieve that validation during this lifetime, it’s OK!

When the world calls it pseudoscience, smile.

That is the sign you are early.

Ridicule serves as a harbinger for what is to come.

Do not waste energy convincing anyone.

Spend it refining your own health.

Measure. Record. Share.

Truth expands through demonstration.

And remember that everything was pseudoscience until someone had the courage to live it first.

Best,

Hunter Williams