Lecturer in human anatomy & physiology, interested in science, philosophy & religion; https://teapawt.net/t.co/RbzduGKuDr…
Joined November 2019
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Bart Klink retweeted
The epistemological problem behind the "supernatural" is illustrated by what I call (in Truth) Sagan's Dragon:
Imagine that I tell you that I have a dragon in my garage. Would you like to see it?
Sure you would! Who wouldn’t? Dragons are popular in works of fiction, so wouldn’t it be exciting if it turned out that dragons are real?
But you need evidence to believe, so you ask to see this dragon.
I eagerly oblige by taking you to my garage and opening the door. You look inside and see some boxes, paint cans, a ladder, a bicycle and other knickknacks, but no dragon. You ask, “where’s the dragon?”
I reply, “oh, this is an invisible dragon.”
An “invisible dragon?” you respond skeptically.
Perhaps there’s a way to get around the dragon’s invisibility, you suggest, by sprinkling flour on the floor of the garage so that when the invisible dragon walks around, its footprints will become apparent. This would provide empirical evidence in support of a potentially objective truth about the existence of dragons.
“That won’t work,” I explain, “because this invisible dragon hovers a foot above the ground.”
“An invisible hovering dragon?” you raise your eyebrows in doubt. You then suggest that we get one of those portable thermometers everyone has been using during the pandemic and measure the temperature at different places in the garage to detect the dragon’s body heat.
“Sorry,” I reply, “but this is a cold-blooded dragon. It doesn’t give off any heat.”
“Let me get this straight,” you groan in exasperation. “This dragon of yours is invisible, can levitate, and gives off no heat whatsoever. What about the fire it breathes? Surely our thermometer can detect the hot fire from a fire-breathing dragon?”
“Actually,” I dissemble, “this dragon breathes cold-fire, a little-known phenomenon vouchsafed only to this particular species of dragon.”
By now, you are growing frustrated and ask me in a challenging voice: “What’s the difference between an invisible levitating cold-blooded cold-fire-breathing un-detectable dragon…and no dragon at all?!”
The answer is none. There is no difference between an invisible levitating cold-blooded cold-fire-breathing un-detectable dragon…and no dragon at all.
And these religious-like convictions don't help:
"I feel the presence of the dragon"
"I feel the love of the dragon"
"Through the dragon all things are possible"
"After I started believing in the dragon my life changed"
Goede uitleg over hoe je kritisch naar wetenschappelijk onderzoek moet kijken: youtube.com/watch?v=PfhPQ4vV…
Begrijpt AI wat het doet? In dit stuk betoog ik van wel, ook al betekent dat niet dat het bewustzijn heeft. deatheist.nl/begrijpt-ai-wat…
@emanuelrutten en @WillemJanBlom2 mede naar aanleiding van onze eerdere discussies is dit artikel ontstaan.
Mijn site heeft de afgelopen tijd een flinke update gekregen, met veel dank aan
@lennartvtuijl. De oude site was technisch verouderd en daardoor slecht of niet bereikbaar. deatheist.nl
Bart Klink retweeted
The first ~6 weeks of strength training are mostly neural.
After that, the structure of the body starts to change.
What heavy loading does to muscle, tendon and bone 🧵👇
Bart Klink retweeted
Does exercise wear your discs out?
A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 39 studies (4,152 people) looking at disc health on MRI.
Only one row sits fully to the right ➡️ upright activity, mostly running (7 studies, 586 people). A small benefit.
Cycling, swimming, lifting, more vs less training volume — all crossed the line. No clear difference either way.
Running doesn't appear to wear discs out. If anything, the opposite 🏃
Goed dat Lubach de (groeiende) weerstand tegen homeacceptatie in *zowel* christelijk als islamitisch orthodoxe kringen aankaart. youtube.com/watch?v=uv5BZn9W…
Bart Klink retweeted
Fascisten lopen weer openlijk door de straten. Dit keer niet met spijkerlaarzen, maar met modieus-politieke sjaal en een trommelaar.
Tachtig jaar later en Nederland heeft niets geleerd
Ik heb een hypothetische (dus niet-bestaande) spier aan de AI van Google voorgelegd en gevraagd naar zijn functie. Het antwoord kan hij dus niet uit de bestaande literatuur halen. Hij komt toch met het juiste antwoord én met de juiste verklaring. Knap hoor! Is dit redeneren?
Bart Klink retweeted
An anterior section of the spinal column during axial rotation.
The real-time range-of-motion sliders track the exact angular contribution of each spinal segment through the full rotational arc.
Captured inside our app, Biomechanics of the Spine.
Bart Klink retweeted
Daar is ie dan, Pisa, en wie had dat nou toch verwacht, het gaat slechter, school als diefstal van tijd, 39% van de 15-jarigen kan na tien jaar onderwijs nog niet lezen. Ruim 20 jaar terug was dat 10%. En nu dan? Draadje. volkskrant.nl/binnenland/lee…
Bart Klink retweeted
Despite a mountain of research on its benefits, less than ¼ of the population performs resistance training on a daily basis. The primary reason cited: Lack of time. Given the importance of muscle-strengthening exercise, developing strategies to overcome this barrier has become a primary focus of my career.
Our narrative review published in Sports Medicine (PMID: 34125411) provided evidence-based recommendations on how to design time-efficient resistance-training programs while still promoting appreciable results.
Some key takeaways:
Prioritize multi-joint exercises. At minimum, consider a lower-body press (e.g., squat), upper-body push (e.g., bench press), and upper-body pull (e.g., pull-up/row).
Weekly volume matters more than frequency. If time is limited, accumulating sufficient weekly volume appears more important than how many days you train. We recommended at least ~4 sets per muscle group per week as a practical minimum effective dose.
A moderate repetition range is highly time-efficient. We suggested emphasizing approximately 6–15 RM, although hypertrophy can be achieved across a much wider range of loads when sets are performed with high effort.
Use advanced techniques to save time. Supersets, drop sets, and rest-pause training can substantially reduce workout duration while maintaining training volume. For example, research on supersets indicates that training time can be cut by roughly 50% while producing similar adaptations, although fatigue may be greater.
Take-home: You don't necessarily need to spend hours in the gym to make good gains. If time is limited, prioritize the exercises and training variables that provide the greatest return on your investment. A well-designed, abbreviated program can still produce meaningful improvements in strength and muscle development. 💪
Importantly, these recommendations are aimed at making training more time-efficient—not maximizing muscular gains regardless of time commitment.
link.springer.com/article/10…
Bart Klink retweeted
How does muscle growth actually progress over time?
Our new systematic review and meta-analysis, posted as a preprint (DOI:10.51224/SportRxiv.910), pooled 3,237 observations from 480 studies to model the trajectory of resistance training-induced muscle growth.
As expected, muscle growth follows a curvilinear trajectory.
Gains occur relatively rapidly during the early stages of training and then progressively slow as training continues. At 10 weeks, the model estimated an average increase in muscle size of approximately 7%. This increased to ~7.5% at 12 weeks, ~8.9% at 20 weeks, ~10.5% at 36 weeks, and ~12.6% at 78 weeks.
In other words, hypertrophy displays diminishing returns—but diminishing returns do not mean no returns. Gains continue to accumulate; they simply become progressively smaller over time.
Importantly, there was substantial variability around these averages. At 10 weeks, for example, the 95% prediction interval ranged from approximately −7% to +22%, highlighting just how much hypertrophic responses can differ across studies and individuals. Moreover, most of the included studies were relatively short in duration, limiting our ability to draw conclusions about the rate of hypertrophy over longer training periods (above ~16 weeks).
Perhaps more importantly, research studies are generally designed to determine group-level effects rather than to optimize muscle development for each individual. Thus, these findings provide a useful framework for understanding the general trajectory of hypertrophy over time, but should not be interpreted as defining the limits of what a person can achieve with a customized, well-designed training program.
Take-home: Muscle growth tends to occur most rapidly during the early stages of resistance training, with the rate of gain progressively slowing as training exposure accumulates. However, diminishing returns do not mean an end to progress, and early rates of growth should not be extrapolated linearly over the long term.
Shout out to @BM_Roberts_SkM for spearheading the project 💪
sportrxiv.org/index.php/serv…
M’n vijfjarige dochter tekent met een stift op de muur en gaf als verantwoording “Mijn hersenen wilden het, ik niet!”
Dualisme zit er blijkbaar al vroeg in…
Interesting paper!
How could mind be identical with physical processes in the brain? With @robertchisciure we show that physical terms can refer to mental phenomena. Eg., it's likely that "neural correlate of pain" refers to a mental process, ie., pain itself.
mindmatter.de/resources/pdf/…