Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Suggestible You
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.erikvance.com/
CITY: Mexico City
STATE:
COUNTRY: Mexico
NATIONALITY:
Lives in California and in Mexico City, Mexico. * http://pulitzercenter.org/people/erik-vance * http://pitchpublishprosper.com/living-abroad-erik-vance-on-life-as-foreign-science-correspondent/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2016033497
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016033497
HEADING:
Vance, Erik
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PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Principia College, B.A. (with honors), 1999.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and scientific journalist. Worked variously as a environmental educator, biologist, environmental consultant, and rock climbing instructor.
University of Wisconsin–Madison, science-writer-in-residence.
AWARDS:Science in Society Award, National Association of Science Writers, 2015, for “Why Nothing Works.”
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic, New York Times, Harper’s, Scientific American, Nature, Utne Reader, and Chronicle of Higher Education.
Also serves as Discover Magazine‘s contributing editor.
SIDELIGHTS
Erik Vance’s writing career is primarily scientifically-based. He pursued the subject during his college years, and earned two degrees. During his early years, he attempted work as a researcher. Over the course of his writing career, he has published articles within several magazines, such as National Geographic and the New York Times. His work has also garnered the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award.
Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain is Vance’s debut book, and informed partially by his childhood experiences with Christian Science. Suggestible You highlights one of the lesser-explored facets of the brain—its ability to be deceived by convincing, but ultimately false, piece of information. Vance draws from personal anecdotes for parts of the book. When he was young, he fell ill with Legionnaires disease, only to have his illness dissipate by the influence of Christian Science, a particular brand of religious-based science that relies on prayer over technology. His family attributed his restored health to their faith, but this incident filled Vance with longstanding questions. In the process, he seeks to explore just how powerful the mind can be in the face of injury and illness, proving his point through research and talks with professionals in the scientific and medical fields. Vance’s main theory draws upon the human desire for constant, accurate awareness and its efforts to maintain such an outcome. Drawing upon this principle, Vance covers the mind’s role in assisting with various forms of therapy, such as placebos, hypnosis, and similar other forms of mental manipulation. Placebos hold an especially important place in Vance’s findings, as well as the medical field as a whole. Countless placebo-related studies have been conducted within the medical field to understand their true effects on the body.
Over the course of the book, Vance peers into how the brain works and how medical professionals could potentially draw upon its power to sway people’s ailments in order to create more effective methods of treatment for their patients. He also examines cases relating to the mind and healing from a chronological standpoint and from country to country. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Suggestible You “an eye-opening exploration of the intersection between philosophy and science and a fascinating peek into our innermost selves.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly remarked that Vance “offers an understanding of the ways in which beliefs can lead to a better life.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain.
Publishers Weekly, August 22, 2016, review of Suggestible You, p. 99.
ONLINE
Erik Vance Website, http://www.erikvance.com (June 7, 2017), author homepage and profile.
Knight Science Journalism/MIT, https://ksj.mit.edu/ (February 13, 2017), Raleigh McElvery, “This Is Your Brain on Placebos.”
Last Word on Nothing, http://www.lastwordonnothing.com (June 7, 2017), author blog and profile.
National Association of Science Writers, https://www.nasw.org/ (November 9, 2016), “Erik Vance: Suggestible You.”
National Geographic Press Room, http://press.nationalgeographic.com/ (October 19, 2016), author profile and summary of Suggestible You.
Nieman Story Board, http://niemanstoryboard.org/ (December 8, 2015), Kristin Ohlson, “Erik Vance: ‘Scientists are quirky everywhere,'” author interview.
NPR, http://www.npr.org/ (November 8, 2016), Nancy Shute, “How The Brain Powers Placebos, False Memories And Healing,” author interview.
Pulitzer Center, http://pulitzercenter.org/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Science Writer’s Handbook, http://pitchpublishprosper.com/ (May 6, 2014), Robin Mejia, “The foreign science correspondent: Erik Vance on living and working in Mexico City,” author interview.
Suggestible You Website, https://www.suggestibleyou.com/ (June 7, 2017), homepage for Suggestible You.
University of Wisconsin–Madison, http://news.wisc.edu/ (March 30, 2017), Chris Barncard, “Author Erik Vance is UW–Madison science writer in residence.”*
Erik Vance
Screen Shot 2015-03-03 at 10.25.32 AM
Erik Vance is a science writer native to the Bay Area replanted in Mexico City as a non-native invasive. Like many in his field, he couldn’t really hack it as a scientist and now works as a professional groupie. That said, “science groupie” is just the best job he can imagine, especially in Mexico. A contributing editor at Discover Magazine, his work often focuses on interesting characters in ocean and brain sciences. Currently he is working on his first book, Suggestible You, with National Geographic Books.
He often claims the m-dash is superior to the comma but secretly he just wishes the semicolon would come back into fashion.
Website: erikvance.com
====
Erik's first book, called Suggestible You,just came out. Apparently when you're raised Christian Scientist, you develop an abiding interest in what affects peoples' beliefs. Classic Erik: "Your brain doesn't want to be wrong -- and in order for expectation to match reality, it's willing to bend a few rules or even cheat outright."
Author Erik Vance is UW–Madison science writer in residence
March 30, 2017 By Chris Barncard
Erik Vance, a decorated freelance science journalist and author, will be the spring 2017 Science Writer in Residence at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Photo: Erik Vance
Erik Vance
Vance has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic and many other local and national outlets.
In 2015, he received the Science in Society Award for Science Reporting from the National Association of Science Writers for his Discover magazine piece, “Why Nothing Works,” about research supporting and exploring the neurochemical basis of the placebo effect. Last year, Vance published his book “Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal,” expanding on the subject.
A California native now based in Mexico City, Vance studied biology at Principia College and is a graduate of the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Research he conducted at Six Flags Marine World on the way dolphins play with bubbles was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, and his eclectic background includes turns as a rock climbing guide and environmental consultant and educator.
Vance will spend a week on the UW–Madison campus, starting April 3, working with students, faculty and staff interested in science communication and science journalism. He will deliver a free public lecture, “Telling stories about science through the people it touches,” on Tuesday, April 4, at 4 p.m. in the Red Gym, 716 Langdon St. (Check Today in the Union for room number.)
The Science Writer in Residence Program, now in its 30th year, was established with the support of the Brittingham Trust. It continues with support from the University of Wisconsin Foundation, and has brought to campus many of the nation’s leading science writers — including three whose work subsequently earned them the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most coveted award.
The program is sponsored by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Office of University Communications.
- See more at: http://news.wisc.edu/author-erik-vance-is-uw-madison-science-writer-in-residence/#sthash.CGuUisPF.dpuf
Erik Vance: “Scientists are quirky everywhere”
Biologist-turned-journalist Erik Vance on incorporating science into narrative stories
ARTICLE BY
KRISTIN OHLSON
@kristinohlson
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Christian Science Discover Erik Vance Pam Weintraub Science in Society award
The National Association of Science Writers gave Erik Vance a 2015 Science in Society award for science reporting for his story “Why Nothing Works,” published in Discover magazine, saying his “masterful command of metaphor and vivid anecdote knit an excellent tapestry of the science behind the placebo effect, the ethical issues it raises, and its implications for improved medical care.” Vance is a biologist-turned-journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, and National Geographic. He’s currently working on his first book, for National Geographic Press, about how the mind and body continually twist and shape reality. A native of the San Francisco Bay area, he now lives in Mexico.
“Why Nothing Works” is a great blend of narrative with new research and thinking on placebos. What led you to the story?
I was raised in Christian Science, and I’m very interested in the healings I saw there. How much those healings rely on placebo is up for debate, but that’s certainly some of it. Anyway, I went to a conference of brain scientists as a journalist and saw someone I knew from the Christian Science community delivering a lecture on placebos. Really, it was like seeing a recovering Catholic deliver a lecture on guilt. It was the perfect connection for me, finding that there is this science connected to this big part of my childhood. I got hooked on the topic and wound up going to a placebo conference in Europe. For a long time placebo studies were a little fringe-y, but there is now a younger generation bringing in some very hard science. It’s a really young field chock full of characters, and there’s not yet a placebo “establishment.” You’d think there would be some research establishment focused on placebo, because it’s the foundation of Western medicine and is the difference between what’s considered a drug and what is not, but there is still very little official interest. In 20 years it might not be as much fun.
How much difference was there between your query and your finished article?
My editor at Discover was Pam Weintraub, and I could not have done this story without her. I was following this very new stuff about placebos, and she was able to bring in the discovery and history of endorphins. She had covered that herself once and was able to put this new stuff into perspective. She said, “This material is more important than you even know,” and I didn’t have the bandwidth to know that. It was a lesson in how we need to bring young writers and older editors together.
Can you talk about how you turn fairly dense science into narrative?
I always try to focus on what readers really want to hear. I track this at parties with people who have had a lot of drinks: How can I get that person interested for 10-20 minutes in this great stuff? I practice a lot with people verbally and see what captures their interest, then give up on the rest. You can’t say everything. And I look for characters. The placebo story is a human story because any time you’re talking about brains, you’re talking about real people, both the people who are studying it and the people experiencing it. If you can’t find good characters, you’re not trying hard enough. My favorite thing about being a scientist was hanging out with scientists and other smart people and finding out what they’re doing. They’re such great characters and, so often, their personality parallels their work. I know one person who studies pain, and she’s really into heavy metal—her music sounds like airplane engines—and other negative experiences. I told her, “You study pain and this is your music and you don’t see the connection? That’s the kind of detail I love.
Are there things you always do when reporting and writing a story?
The most challenging part of all this is understanding the topic as well as I can before I go and talk to “real” people. Because when I talk to them, I need to be able to spot the bits that are important to the story. That means I often have to work my way through scientific papers, even though that’s not my strength. Sometimes, I need to call the scientists and say, ‘Hey, what are we talking about here?” But then, when I go out to talk to fishermen and they say something like, “It’s not that we’re running out of fish, but they’re getting smaller and smaller,” I’ll realize that is actually an important part of the science. That’s really important for understanding what’s going on in the oceans, but I wouldn’t have spotted it when it came up unless I understood the literature.
You say on your website that being a science groupie is the best job you can imagine, especially in Mexico. Why Mexico?
I moved to Mexico because my wife got a job here, so I didn’t really have much choice. But Mexico is an amazing place to work. They’re our neighbor and our third biggest trading partner, but we know almost nothing about the country. It’s an overlooked place, and there is a tremendous amount of laboratory and field science going on here. I did a story on blue-footed boobies, and the science was phenomenal and would have been reported all over the place if the scientist had been in the U.S. But no one heard about it, because he was from Mexico. That happens a lot. The same passions are here, the same bizarre behaviors exist among Mexican scientists that interest me in all scientists. I met one Mexican scientist who did anti-venom research, and he loved venomous creatures. He had pet Gila monsters at home. Scientists are quirky everywhere! I feel I have an open canvas here and am bringing attention to a place that gets a lot of negative press, some of it deserved and some not deserved. It’s pretty nice to be here instead of being crammed into New York with a thousand other science writers.
Erik Vance: Suggestible You
Submitted by Lynne Lamberg on Wed, 11/09/2016 - 08:14
Cover: Suggestible You
Cover: Suggestible You
SUGGESTIBLE YOU:
THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF YOUR BRAIN'S ABILITY
TO DECEIVE, TRANSFORM, AND HEAL
Erik Vance
National Geographic, November 8, 2016, $26.00
ISBN-10: 1426217897; ISBN-13: 978-1426217890
Vance reports:
I have always been fascinated with the idea of a miraculous healing. The notion that a moment’s inspiration or transcendence could erase pain or disease captivated my imagination. Partly this was due to my upbringing in Christian Science, which relies almost totally on prayer to heal.
Erik Vance
Erik Vance; photo by Sarah Rice
In 2009, I realized I was not alone. Reading a list of speakers at a brain imaging conference, I recognized a fellow Christian Scientist from my days at a religious college in southern Illinois. His topic was the power of placebo. In that moment an idea grabbed my mind like a tick and wouldn’t let go until I had seen it through. I became obsessed with all things mind/body — not just placebos, but mysticism, hypnosis, traditional medicine, curses, superstition, witch doctors, and auras.
Naturally, a lot of what I found was bunk — marketing scams dressed up as pseudoscience. But all of it carried a grain of familiar truth. And in their adherents, I saw glimpses of my own past as a faith healer. But proper evidence was hard to find. Being a science writer, I wasn’t satisfied with cosmic mysteries or vague promises of hidden psychological powers. People often say, “The mind is a powerful thing.” No kidding, but can you be a little more specific?
I soon realized that the key to understanding mind/body healing was in the burgeoning field of placebo science. I wrote a profile for The New York Times about a placebo scientist and a feature for Discover about the state of modern placebo research.
During this time, I received a message from an agent, Susan Lee Cohen, who knew one of the scientists I had interviewed. Susan runs a boutique operation, loves to work closely with a select clientele, and fell in love with the idea for my book. Which was good because it was a hard sell. Placebo books had underperformed, and few publishers seemed to understand what I was trying to do. But Hilary Black at National Geographic got it immediately, and soon so did the features editor, Jamie Shreeve, which led not only to a book but now a cover story in the magazine.
Contact info:
Erik Vance, 510-868-1763, erik@erikvance.com, http://www.erikvance.com/
Publicist: Lena Khidritskaya Little, 202-857-7174, Lena.Little@natgeo.com
Agent: Susan Lee Cohen, 413-772-0067, rivlit@sover.net
Book website: http://www.suggestibleyou.com/
Buy this book now in the ScienceWriters bookstore. Your purchase helps support NASW programs and services.
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Send book info and questions about book publishing to Lynne Lamberg, NASW book editor, llamberg@nasw.org.
about me:
About Me
Erik Vance is a native Bay Area writer replanted in Mexico as a non-native species. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator.
His work focuses on the human element of science – the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets.
His first book, Suggestible You, about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities was inspired by his feature in Discover and is available for pre-order on Amazon.
===
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erik Vance is an award-winning science writer based
in California and Mexico City. Raised as a Christian Scientist, he graduated with honors from the Christian Science school, Principia College in 1999 with a degree in biology. After working as a scientist on research projects dealing with dolphin intelligence and coastal ecology, he became an educator and then an environmental consultant. In 2005, he attended UC Santa Cruz’s famed science communication program and discovered a passion for journalism.
There he learned that only through compelling characters can stories touch and inspire us. Since then, he has built his career around science-based profiles of inspiring, dedicated, or controversial figures in society. His work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, Scientific American, and National Geographic. He is also a contributing editor at Discover magazine.
===
THE BOOK
SUGGESTIBLE YOU
The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal
By Erik Vance
This riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds. Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events. Drawing on centuries of research and interviews with leading experts in the field, Vance takes us on a fascinating adventure from Harvard’s research labs to a witch doctor’s office in Catemaco, Mexico, to an alternative medicine school near Beijing to your own local pharmacy. Vance’s firsthand dispatches will change the way you think—and feel.
Erik Vance
Erik Vance's picture
Erik Vance is a science writer based in California and Mexico City. He graduated with honors from Principia College in Illinois in 1999 with a degree in biology. After working on a number of research projects dealing with dolphin intelligence and coastal ecology, he became – in turn – an environmental educator and then an environmental consultant. But it wasn’t until enrolling in UC Santa Cruz’s science communication program that he discovered his true passion for journalism. There he learned that only through compelling characters can stories touch and inspire us. As such, he has molded his career around science-based profiles of inspiring, dedicated, or controversial figures in society. His work has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nature, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, Discover Magazine, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is currently under contract with Harper's Magazine and National Geographic.
The foreign science correspondent: Erik Vance on living and working in Mexico City
By Robin Mejia on May 6, 2014 | 2 Responses
IMG_6044In 2010, Berkeley-based science journalist Erik Vance and his wife were discussing the possibility of moving abroad for her work. “We could move anywhere in the world with my job,” he said, imagining that maybe they’d go to Europe together. Then, she was offered a position in Mexico City. At the time Erik spoke no Spanish, but he agreed to see if he could make the move work.
And make it work he did. Erik’s career has flourished in Mexico, and he and his wife are now in year three of what was going to be a two-year adventure. Here, he shares his experience reporting science stories from abroad.
What was your reaction when your wife said “Mexico City”?
I was not thrilled. I thought it was a dangerous place. I knew it for pollution, sprawl, and violence. And she said, “Let’s go down there for ten days, and we’ll try it out. If you don’t want to do it, we won’t do it.” On day six I said, “Let’s move here. This is amazing.” It’s gotten such a bad reputation in the press. But, the culture, the food, the people – it’s amazing.
Did you have a sense of what the move would mean for your career?
I was worried. I didn’t know anyone who had ever done this before. I didn’t know if it would work. I was worried that I would end up sitting around.
How did you get started?
Well, the thing about Mexico—and a lot of countries—is their science is heavily under-covered. There are people here that have been doing amazing work for thirty years, who, if they lived in the US would have had multiple features written about them. But they’ve never been written about. The second day I was here, I went to a dinner party and found a story that was later accepted by National Geographic.
Did you plan to cover mostly Mexican science, or were you planning to cover US stories, too?
I decided to split my time 50/50, and I don’t know if it’s 50/50 or not. Right now, it feels a little 80/20, but I try to keep my feet in both worlds. I can only do so much in Mexico, and I do like to do American stories as well.
DSC_1157Tell us about a story you found because you were based in Mexico City.
The story that most exemplifies that is a story I did in Oaxaca on wind turbines. There’s a conflict between wind turbine companies and indigenous communities in Oaxaca, and it’s sort of a twist on the normal green story, with wind companies sort of taking advantage of indigenous people. And that story went on the cover of the Christian Science Monitor‘s weekly edition.
I did a couple of stories for Scientific American that could fit in that category. One of them was coral restoration, repairing parts of reefs with coral. There’s a group in Mexico that’s doing this on a shoestring. Really impressive people doing cutting edge work with almost no support. Any journalist living in the place would find that story, but you wouldn’t find it from overseas. Another story was on scorpion venom. That’s a story I could have found in the US because it was a product that was going through the FDA trials, and it was passing. But I wouldn’t have been able to get the Mexican side of it. And that’s often what happens with these stories. They’re Mexican stories, but you talk to a bunch of Americans. Here, I get to get the Mexican researchers and the Mexican perspective on it.
Is language an issue for you?
Absolutely. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse in that it’s hard. My Spanish is barely good enough when people enunciate. If I work in a rural community, where people have strong accents, I can’t understand a word of it. I’ve been working hard, but I will never the kind of fluent that can understand some of the accents down here. The blessing is that it’s possible. I wouldn’t expect anyone to hire me on staff. For every story I pitch, it’s my own job to get a translator or to be able to report it myself with my own limited Spanish skills, and I like it that way. Scientists mostly speak English here, but to get the full story I have to get creative.
Do you need a US angle to pitch stories to US markets?
Often, yes. You have to really know the landscape of magazines out there and what they want. Some just want to have foreign material. But, yes, usually you have to have a US angle. I’m looking at a story today, in fact, dealing with earthquakes that is sort of missing a US angle, and I’m having to go through that process. I’m not sure if it’s going to work.
But at the same time, I think as time goes on, research is research. New discoveries happen, and it doesn’t matter where they happen. They’re furthering our scientific knowledge, and they’re just interesting. There are a lot of stories that are like that, that you don’t need an angle for.
Have you found a community of journalists?
There’s a very strong community of journalists here, and it’s a very supportive community. No matter where you live, as a science journalist, it’s important to be in touch with other journalists—people who do food writing and war coverage and travel writing. That was something that I didn’t have enough of before I came here. I wasn’t talking to enough normal journalists. So, I spend a lot of time with general interest journalists. There is a community of Mexican science journalists, as well. It’s young. It’s not as strong a community as you’d see in San Francisco or Washington, DC, but it’s growing. I think the biggest challenge right now is for them to find outlets that can support good science journalism. I think Mexico is going through a process right now where it’s trying to figure out what the market is, and I think it’s a matter of general interest Mexican outlets realizing that they want science. A lot of magazines here are getting more serious about science, doing real science and not fluffy stuff. It’s changing, but there’s still way too many weird religious overlaps with science or UFOs and stuff like that. I think Mexico’s ready for real science journalism. I think people are hungry for it. A lot of people here read Scientific American, which is sad.
What have you done to stay in touch with your US networks?
I go to AAAS. I went to NASW this year. I try to make it a point to go to more science writer gatherings than I would have if I was living in Berkeley, where I had a community around me. It’s important to keep a network around you in a foreign country, but it’s also important to go back and remind yourself of the US network.
IMG_0320Any final thoughts to share for someone considering doing this?
It’s hard. It sounds glamorous, but it’s hard. I’ve had a few stories where I just felt completely over my head, and I derived some solace from the fact that other journalists feel the same way.
It’s hard. It’s confusing. You’ll get stuff wrong. You’ll miss cultural cues. You’ll look like a jerk because you’re some white guy in a poor community. All these things happen. So, you just have to stick it out and tell yourself, “I’ll do better tomorrow” because you’re going to mess up, and it’s going to be really awkward at times. And we should be doing it. You should be out of your comfort zone. It turns out that’s what journalism is.
You sound like you want some competition.
No one person can cover a country’s science endeavors. Probably no ten people, no matter how good they are, can do it. And I am kind of the least likely person to be covering Mexican science and totally under-qualified. I expect the next generation of science writers in Mexico to be way better than me. I’m hoping that someday there is a fleet of journalists from outside covering research here and a fleet of Mexicans covering work and sharing it with a wider audience in the US and Europe. And the same goes for every emerging market on the planet.
Photos courtesy of Erik Vance.
SUGGESTIBLE YOU: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal
October 19, 2016
WASHINGTON (Oct. 19, 2016)— What you believe has literal, biological, quantifiable—in other words, real in every way—effects on your body and overall health.
Award-winning science writer Erik Vance plumbs the depths of our mind-body relationship in SUGGESTIBLE YOU: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal (National Geographic Books; on sale Nov. 8, 2016; ISBN 978-1-4262-1789-0; 228 pages; $26), investigating what our brains can lead our bodies to achieve and considering the implications of that power. A fascinating excerpt on the subject will be the cover story of National Geographic magazine’s December issue.
A few facts from SUGGESTIBLE YOU:
In many drug trials more than half the people receiving a placebo feel better and peer pressure can boost placebo effectiveness.
There are placebo trends! Bigger pills work better than small ones. In Asia, injections work better than pills, suppositories work better than either in France.
A medical practitioner making eye contact, establishing an empathetic connection, can affect the success of treatment.
Certain conditions respond particularly well to placebo, including chronic pain, a condition 100 million Americans suffer from annually. fMRI brain scans of patients reporting less pain due to a placebo showed less activity in the pain-related regions. People did not imagine less pain, they felt less of it!
In SUGGESTIBLE YOU—praised as “compelling” and “eye-opening” by Kirkus, and “inspired” by Publishers Weekly—Vance considers the incredible power of our minds from every angle. From the historical perspective (Plato was in favor of placebo to help patients) up through current cutting-edge research, Vance isn’t afraid to jump into the fray. In the course of his research, Vance attempted to become a hypnotist, was electrocuted, and chose to be cursed so a brujo (witch doctor) could work to remove it. His own upbringing as a Christian Scientist, a group that believes in prayer not medical intervention for healing, opens the book in dramatic fashion and offers a unique perspective and unexpected entry into the topic.
Through it all Vance does what the best communicators of science can do—presents compelling, complicated ideas in a clear voice full of the excitement of discovery.
About Erik Vance
Erik Vance is an award-winning science writer based in California and Mexico City. Raised as a Christian Scientist, he graduated with honors from the Christian Science school, Principia College, in 1999 with a degree in biology. After working as a scientist on research projects dealing with dolphin intelligence and coastal ecology, Vance became an educator and then an environmental consultant. In 2005, he attended UC Santa Cruz’s famed science communication program and discovered a passion for journalism. There he learned that only through compelling characters can stories touch and inspire us. Since then, Vance has built his career around science-based profiles of inspiring, dedicated or controversial figures in society. His work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, Scientific American, and National Geographic. He is also a contributing editor at Discover magazine.
About National Geographic Partners LLC
National Geographic Partners LLC, a joint venture between National Geographic Society and 21st Century Fox, combines National Geographic television channels with National Geographic’s media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic Studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children’s media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, catalog, licensing and e-commerce businesses. A portion of the proceeds from National Geographic Partners LLC will be used to fund science, exploration, conservation and education through significant ongoing contributions to the work of the National Geographic Society. For more information, visit www.nationalgeographic.com and find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
How The Brain Powers Placebos, False Memories And Healing
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Our unconscious brains can have a big effect on pain and healing.
Stuart Kinlough/Ikon Images/Getty Images
Erik Vance didn't go to a doctor until he was 18; he grew up in California in a family that practiced Christian Science. "For the first half of my life, I never questioned the power of God to heal me," Vance writes in his new book, Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain.
As a young man, Vance left the faith behind, but as he became a science journalist he didn't stop thinking about how people's beliefs and expectations affect their health, whether it's with placebo pills, mystical practices or treatments like acupuncture. The answer, he found, is in our brains.
Erik and I chatted about the book while attending a recent meeting of the National Association of Science Writers. Here are highlights of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Interview Highlights
You point out that even though most of us didn't grow up Christian Scientist, we often use belief to manage our health.
I've learned from writing this book that there are a lot of people around the world who really rely on expectation and placebos. And I grew up in the most extreme possible group, but it's not that different from seeing a homeopath. You're using faith to manage your body; what a psychologist would call expectation. Having had that experience really prepared me to ask some of these questions.
How would your mom take care of you when you were sick?
As a kid we might have 7UP with orange juice; we might go that far because it made you feel better. But the treatment was to call a practitioner, to call a healer. Mine was named Lameice; she had the most amazing comforting voice ever. You'd call her up and this voice would say, "How you doing honey, how you feeling?" And everything would feel OK. You'd talk about the Bible and you'd talk about the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. The key in all this is the belief that you're actually healthy, and once you're able to see that, it will be manifest. And that in psychological terms is actually more powerful — hoping or asking doesn't have as much power in your brain as thinking it's already happened. It's certainty. And that has a big effect on brain chemicals and how your body responds to those chemicals.
The idea that the mind affects the body isn't new. How has the science changed to help us understand what's going on?
Saying that going to church will lower your blood pressure or lengthen your life a little bit; that's been known. But my question is, what's the mechanism? I actually didn't clue into this until I was at a conference for brain mapping and I saw a name on the speakers list talking about placebos and I recognized him as a Christian Scientist. I thought, wow, what's a Christian Scientist doing talking at a brain conference? Talking about placebos, which I think of as a very medical thing.
Placebo is a connection between the mind and body that can be measured, that can be seen in a brain scan; for the first time we have a tool that we can actually see working.
We just covered a study by Ted Kaptchuk, a professor of medicine at Harvard, that found that even if people know that a placebo was a fake pill, their back pain got better. Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, it's called open label. With an earlier, famous study by Kaptchuk, I kind of assumed that they just gave them a form that said placebo somewhere. But then I talked to Ted, and it turns out that the subjects had to tell the researchers they knew it was a placebo. They weren't subtle about it; they were very explicit.
But we're also learning now that people can have a placebo response even if they're unaware of any suggestion that they'll get better or worse; it's part of the unconscious brain. It may be a totally different pathway, but it's a very important part of the whole mix.
People say, "I'm not gullible, I don't fall for these things, but echinacea really works." The first thing is not true; we're all gullible. And the second thing is, that person probably experienced an unconscious placebo. They think they're way too smart to be fooled. We should just all accept that this is what we do and embrace it. It gives us an honorable way to say, "This is how it works."
But placebos don't work for everything. When do they help?
Suggestible You
Suggestible You
The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal
by Erik Vance
Hardcover, 283 pages purchase
Cancer is one good example. Pain, nausea and the symptoms of chemotherapy respond really well to placebo. Tumors do not respond to placebos, as far as we know. So you can endanger your life very easily by taking a placebo when you have a serious disease and don't seek an active treatment.
The actual rules are according to the brain chemical involved, like dopamine, or endogenous opioids. These are internal endorphins that act like morphine, or serotonin, or a bunch of other ones that I don't want to bore you with. Parkinson's disease involves dopamine, so Parkinson's symptoms respond very well to placebos.
A lot of these chemicals do double duty; dopamine has like 50 different roles in the body, and some of these chemicals respond to each other, they interact with each other, and they respond differently to drugs. That's one reason why it's been so hard to pin down these effects for so long.
How do the stories we tell factor into healing?
Your brain on a very basic level doesn't want to be wrong. It will shift the chemicals involved so it will be right. And we're not scientific creatures; we believe what we believe. The narratives shift to fit the story we want. I think that makes expectation more powerful. When you remember the time you did the acupuncture and immediately everything got better — that can prime your expectation for the next time you go get acupuncture.
How did you shift your narrative?
Part of it was probably just juvenile rebellion: I'm a rebel — I'm going to have an Advil. I've literally said that. Then fell in love with biology. And that leads you down the path where you have to get into these medical questions. Rather than being mysterious and scary, I found it to be really fascinating, almost as exciting as God's loving hand cradling you from disease. It didn't feel like a really big shift. It's not like I'm rebelling against anything anymore; it's just that the other thing is pretty cool, and the idea of proving things with logic, it just sort of works. I like my new narrative. And my new narrative is in line with evidence.
This Is Your Brain on Placebos
By RALEIGH MCELVERY Published FEBRUARY 13, 2017 KSJ NEWS
Like the placebo effect, Erik Vance told a KSJ seminar, hypnosis occurs when the brain fabricates reality, generating visceral, physical responses. Photo: Raleigh McElvery.
When he was 1½ years old, Erik Vance became very sick with what he now suspects was the rare and life-threatening form of pneumonia known as Legionnaires’ disease. His parents were Christian Scientists, so doctors and hospitals were virtually out of the question; instead, his mother took him to a religious practitioner, who told her that if she had full confidence her son could recover, it would be so.
The human brain is all about expectations.
Shortly after the session, she walked into the room to find Erik waiting, completely cured.
“But this isn’t the point of my book,” Vance — now 40, an acclaimed science journalist, and the author of the new book “Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal” — explained to the KSJ fellows during his visit at the end of the first semester.
“The point wasn’t to figure out what happened that night,” he continued. “But that story created powerful expectations for me whenever I want to heal myself. I thought, ‘I have some serious firepower.’”
The human brain is all about expectations — making predictions about the future based on the past. For example, “I know gravity works, so this cup will fall when I drop it.” The brain doesn’t like to be wrong, so sometimes it bends reality to meet its predictions. This process, Vance explains, releases brain chemicals like dopamine and serotonin that can trick the body into feeling a certain way. Therein lies the science of the placebo effect.
A powerful promoter of that effect is what Vance calls “the theater of medicine” — an environment or a collection of cues that indicate healing is imminent. These signals vary from culture to culture. In Western countries, a crisp white coat suggests the person before us is a medical professional. Churches and their associated saints can also embody healing, just as a young girl can serve as a trusted shaman in some parts of the world. Irrespective of location, creating expectations is something we all do.
Vance recounted the experience of a Parkinson’s patient who volunteered to participate in a drug trial. The man underwent the standard cranial operation — a “theater of medicine” procedure — to inject the drug. Afterward, he went from barely walking to Telemark skiing. Miracle cure? No, he had been in the group that received a placebo. It turned out that the placebo effect was so strong it consistently outperformed the drug.
Vance noted that the placebo effect can create obstacles for researchers, because it operates differently with different individuals and different diseases. Nor is it the only case in which the brain fools the body. “Suggestible You” also explores hypnosis, which — like many of the experiments described, with the exception of brain surgery — Vance tried for himself. (He learned he was virtually unhypnotizable.)
Like the placebo effect, hypnosis occurs when the brain fabricates reality — but this time based on the hypnotist’s suggestions, which generate visceral, physical responses in the subject. Vance told the KSJ fellows that one burn victim refused to remove his bandages or clean his injuries until he was under the hypnotist’s trance, at which point he ceased to feel the pain of his wounds. While hypnosis is usually considered a pseudo-science at best and an act of sorcery at worst, Vance said it likely stems from many brain cells acting in concert, creating “waves” of electrical impulses.
KSJ fellow Bianca Vázquez Toness found this segment of Vance’s talk particularly captivating. “I’m interested in hypnotism as it applies to childbirth, and he definitely gave me a framework in which to think about that,” she said.
Meera Subramanian was impressed by the way Vance took a scientific approach to phenomena that are easily dismissed. “We only understand part of how these things work,” she said. “So his insight was revealing, although in some cases it introduced even more questions.”
The intersection of brain and mind is a mysterious one, since the brain is such a compelling storyteller. Addressing his audience of journalists, Vance concluded: “You guys will recognize this storytelling. In the case of hypnosis and placebo, we create expectations by telling ourselves a story. The story may be true or not, but that’s just how we operate as humans.”
5/14/17, 9)22 PM
Print Marked Items
Erik Vance: SUGGESTIBLE YOU
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Erik Vance SUGGESTIBLE YOU National Geographic (Adult Nonfiction) 26.00 11, 8 ISBN: 978-1-4262-1789-0
The human mind is capable of astonishing feats, but does it hold the power to alleviate pain, or even cure disease, simply through suggestibility?The placebo effect, in which an inert substance relieves symptoms simply because the patient thinks it’s an active pill, is among the most fascinating subjects in medicine. The importance of the placebo effect is so integral to clinical trials that no pharmaceutical study is permitted unless it compares the results of medicated subjects with those of a placebo group. In his compelling book, Discover contributing editor Vance, whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, Scientific American, and elsewhere, chronicles his travels around the world and through history to detail the unexpected ways our lives and outlooks are affected by similar forms of suggestibility. Raised as a Christian Scientist, the author grew up in a community that believed God’s healing power alone could cure any ailment. In an enthralling anecdote, he relives his recovery from Legionnaires’ disease as a toddler and how the turning point of his near-death experience was his mother’s abandonment of fear and trust in God. This is not to say that Vance is advocating religion in lieu of antibiotics—far from it—but in this and many other first-person narratives, he challenges traditional views on the effect of expectation, or suggestibility, on the physical body. He shows that modern neuroscience supports this line of inquiry. Brain chemistry has long been known to affect mood, regulate pain, and even affect gastrointestinal health, and cutting-edge techniques to map brain activity provide new insight. As the author frequently points out, if scientists are able to apply clinical data to the age-old mind-body problem, it may be possible to personalize medicine to an extent never before dreamed of. An eye-opening exploration of the intersection between philosophy and science and a fascinating peek into our innermost selves.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Erik Vance: SUGGESTIBLE YOU." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216063&it=r&asid=fde0a602efcd507fd0345e239e636942. Accessed 14 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216063
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5/14/17, 9)22 PM
Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories,
Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing
Brain
Publishers Weekly.
263.34 (Aug. 22, 2016): p99. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain Erik Vance. National Geographic, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4262-1789-0
Science journalist Vance takes an inspired journey into the profound and often unnoticed powers of our brains. Perhaps the book's most constant, fascinating thread is Vance's willingness to personally investigate each topic about which he writes. Many of the studies he outlines are described through his extensive conversations with the researchers themselves. In fact, Vance's interest in the topic of suggestion began with having been seemingly healed by Christian Science as a child--an experience that becomes a recurring theme, deserving of its own standalone memoir. But the subject of the brain's malleability leads Vance through a range of topics beyond his past, including hypnosis, false memories, and the challenges of measuring the efficacy of drug treatments. Supplementing this diversely experiential approach are compelling chapters on the science of the brain, in which the emphasis is not on finding the answers but on exploring the questions. Vance also presents a "Rapid Induction Analgesia Procedure" (hypnosis) exercise, though this seems to require a guided experience beyond reading. Most of all, he offers an understanding of the ways in which beliefs can lead to a better life. Agent: Susan Lee Cohen, Riverside Literary Agency. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Suggestible You: Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain." Publishers
Weekly, 22 Aug. 2016, p. 99+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461609334&it=r&asid=29ce6e63bda5cac7be6e4d5936d345b3. Accessed 14 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461609334
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