Open Letter to the Open Letter
Andy Feltovich, CISSN
Concerned Member
Dallas, Texas
February 26, 2025
The International Society of Sports Nutrition
Stuart, Florida
Open Letter to the Open Letter: On Creatine Detractors and Flat-Earth Theorists
My Beloved ISSN:
I commend my brothers and sisters of the International Society of Sport Nutrition (ISSN) for their letter on the safety and efficacy of creatine [1], and I caution them against doing it again. This horse has been beaten to death and sent to the glue factory (see, inter alia, the ISSN’s position stand on creatine [2]). The only explanation for creatine’s remaining detractors is wanton and willful disregard for facts. Healthy debate is good—engaging sophistry and superstition with the tools of logic and science is not for three reasons:
- Engagement reinforces rather than remedies the malady
- Engagement cedes epistemic authority
- Engagement is inferior to other strategies
As for the unintended consequence of reinforcing the malady that one is trying to correct, there is a vast literature on how engaging the empirically challenged and other assorted cognitive duffers can merely reinforce their beliefs [3-6]. Unmeritorious engagement can reinforce fallacious beliefs because of the mistaken notion that the time and attention paid to addressing the mistaken belief is proportional to its validity. Engagement can also strengthen the us-versus-them polarity and its underlying group identities that are the often the real source of unfounded beliefs. Perhaps most perversely, engagement can be interpreted as prima facie evidence that one is engaging in a coverup. As Andrew Sullivan once told me, “You can’t unlearn something that wasn’t learned in the first place.” With its Letter, the ISSN is fishing in an unstocked pond.
As for ceding epistemic authority, the Letter is but a signpost in the rise of “student-centered learning” [7] and the decline of intellect in The Revolt of the Masses [8]. In addition to bad art and tenure for otherwise unemployable professors, postmodernism has wrought havoc on the fruits of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution [9]. Creatine detractors were hatched in an incubator that rejects objective reality and grants equal credibility to every interpretation of facts. America’s pedagogical chickens have come home to roost. The proper defense against barbarism is to gird the fortress walls—not to ordain the barbarians with cushy government sinecures. Given that we have already squandered our ounce of prevention for a pound of cure, the proper solution at this point is the professor’s riposte to gratuitous challenges from churlish students: “Did you do the assigned reading?”
Last, whatever season constructive engagement might have enjoyed has passed. The ISSN has been fighting by Marquis of Queensbury rules while its opponents have been fighting freestyle. Unrelenting legal action is the only viable recourse now, including challenging the very notion of an administrative state, the body of law and regulations made by unelected officials. On the state level, the Natural Products Association (NPA) and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) posed legal challenges to New York state’s creatine ban on constitutional grounds [10], efforts we should all support.
On the national level, the administrative state is ripe for challenge. Once as bizarre and controversial as it is now familiar and accepted, the administrative state was nearly strangled in the crib by the Supreme Court. The Court was ultimately cowed into submission by FDR’s threat to pack the Court; however, the modern Court has not couched its disdain for the administrative state and its overreach. Justice Antonin Scalia fired the warning shot across the bow in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc. (2001) with his rebuke to administrative agencies reading broad authorities into narrow legislative mandates: “[Congress] does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes” [11]. Concurring in the same case, Justice Thomas expressed openness to undoing the modern administrative state entirely by overturning Hampton v. United States (1928) [12], the case that birthed the modern administrative state.
I write not to bury the ISSN but to praise it. It is a great organization that should match its behavior to its greatness by heeding my admonitions.
Sincerely,
Andy Feltovich, CISSN
[1] ISSN, “Creatine supplementation is safe, beneficial throughout the lifespan, and should not be restricted “, ed. Stuart, Florida, 2025.
[2] R. B. Kreider et al., “International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine,” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, vol. 14, no. 1, p. 18, 2017/06/13 2017, doi: 10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z.
[3] A. Bardon, The Truth about Denial: Bias and Self-deception in Science, Politics, and Religion. Oxford University Press, 2020.
[4] S. Lewandowsky, The Debunking Handbook 2020. George Mason University, Center for Climate Change Communication, 2020.
[5] B. Nyhan and J. Reifler, “When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions,” Political Behavior, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 303-330, 2010, doi: 10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2.
[6] J. E. Uscinski, Conspiracy Theories and the People who Believe Them. Oxford University Press, 2019.
[7] P. Freire and M. B. Ramos, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.
[8] J. O. Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses. G. Allen & Unwin, Limited, 1932.
[9] S. R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Scholargy Pub., 2004.
[10] Polsinelli. “What to Know About New York’s New Supplement Law Going into Effect this Month.” https://www.polsinelli.com/publications/what-to-know-about-new-yorks-new-supplement-law-going-into-effect-this-month (accessed February 25, 2025, 2025).
[11] “Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc.,” in 531 U.S. 457, 2001, ed.
[12] “J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States,” in 276 U.S. 394, 1928, ed.
