Mark Haub

My teaching philosophy is rooted in a very pragmatic goal. I want students to look at the data, rather than simply accepting whatever sounds the most appealing. In the health sciences, people get very attached to dogma. They want clear villains and magic bullets.

Back in 2010, I wanted to test the theory that foods dictate obesity and weight gain versus “calories in calories out”. So, I turned my own body into a class project. I ate foods considered “bad” or obesity-causing while maintaining a caloric deficit. The outcome was not what many expected — health biomarkers and body composition improved.

The project and lesson was highly counter-intuitive. I was eating a terrible diet, yet my clinical health markers improved significantly. I did not do this to promote a junk-food lifestyle. I did it for students to question common sense and what they hear others say about food and lifestyle. A goal was to help them realize that human biology does not necessarily understand moral judgments around "clean" eating.

The experiment went massively viral. Suddenly, I was doing interviews with CNN, ABC News, and NPR. For an introvert who is much more comfortable quietly analyzing data or talking to a small group of students, becoming the center of a media circus was exhausting. I did not write a best-selling diet book to capitalize on the fame. I just went back to the classroom.

I expect my students to embrace the gray areas of science. If an intervention works on paper but a patient cannot afford it or stomach it, then that research outcome is not relevant to them. I want the health professionals who leave my classroom to understand that the real world is messy, and our job is to help people navigate the mess with facts — and deliver those facts at the bedside with compassion and empathy.