Bio

Seth Roberts Ph.D. is a maverick psychologist who does not test on animals. Instead, he uses himself as a lab rat. Self-experimentation is a rare practice in modern science. With no obvious control group, a double-blind experiment is impossible when the researcher is the same person as the subject. Yet Seth started his experimentation with personal problems: acne, depression, insomnia, and weight control. In turn, his self-interest was more obvious than a large number of lab-based experiments, mostly those in the medical field, that are revealed years later to have been altered by faulty methodology or concealed self-interest. Seth's methodology is so basic, experimenting with hundreds of solutions until one works, that it creates the ultimate transparency. When he's not self-experimenting, Seth works as an associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and serves on the editorial board of Nutrition magazine.