Over the past five years Dr Mair Underwood has infiltrated corners of the internet most people don't know even exist. She has got to know the world of steroids and other performance and image-enhancing drugs. Her research has focused on "broscience" a term used by some steroid users to explain the way they generate data on drug use. They have gathered so much data doctor underwood suggests more scientists should collaborate with the broscience community.
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00:00At first, I had to sort of lurk, and as anthropologists do, learn the language of the people and the
00:08ways of the people that they study.
00:11So I hung out in open areas, watched YouTube videos, got to know people, and eventually
00:17I got the trust of a few people who I would call key cultural consultants that helped
00:23me negotiate what was a really sort of foreign terrain for a middle-aged woman, steroid forums.
00:31So they taught me the language, they taught me the norms and the values of the community,
00:37and eventually I earned the trust of members of the community who told me their stories.
00:43Yeah, so you actually did a study on this and have published your research.
00:48What did you find?
00:51I found that a lot of steroid users really want to reduce the harms of their use.
00:57Of course, they want the use to be effective, but they don't want that increased muscle
01:04to come at the cost of their health.
01:07And admittedly, I only spoke to certain type of steroid user, the type of steroid user
01:12that welcomes a social scientist, wasn't paying anyone.
01:17So these were the guys that were more risk-averse.
01:20And what I found was that they want to practice their drugs in an evidence-based way, but
01:28there isn't the science to inform their use, so they generate their own knowledge.
01:34So we've unfortunately got two very separate knowledge systems when it comes to steroids.
01:40The bro-scientific, more experiential knowledge base, where they conduct sort of mini-experiments
01:47on themselves and they do blood tests and they collect the results and they report it
01:53online and they compile their data in a relatively haphazard way in forums and Facebook groups.
02:00And then you've got the scientific body of knowledge, which doesn't really know that
02:04much about steroid use.
02:06And so what I'm suggesting as a result of my research is that we as scientists collaborate
02:14with the bro-scientists who are already practicing harm reduction and we can give them our expert
02:20opinions on whether that's likely to work.
02:23If possible, we can investigate some of their theories and build a more solid bro-scientific
02:28basis for their use.
02:31Why do you think it's important to marry those sources of knowledge?
02:37Well basically because we as scientists know very little and these guys have been doing
02:42this research for decades.
02:45So I think it would be stupid to ignore such a massive evidence base of undoubtedly some
02:52of their ideas are going to be ill-informed.
02:56But there are people in these areas that have PhDs in biochemistry and nutrition and things
03:01like this.
03:02Some of their theories, I mean I'm not an expert who can judge the quality of their
03:08theories but they seem to be very complex and well-informed by science, as much science
03:14as they can get.
03:16As I said, it's lacking.
03:18So I think we've got a lot that we can learn from the community themselves and they're
03:23sort of trying out for us to collaborate with them so that they can practice these drugs
03:29in the safest way possible.
03:31Were some people doing incredibly dangerous doses of steroids?
03:36Well as I said, I was likely to attract a certain type of steroid user.
03:41The more risk-averse, one that's educated and reads the science.
03:48So I wasn't attracting the sort of YOLO user who uses to go to music festivals with his
03:54shirt off and combines his drugs with recreational use.
03:58It was a different camp of user.
04:01After a previous media appearance, I did have people just contact me out of the blue because
04:07they liked the fact that I was advocating for them and some of those were more reckless
04:13in their use, using large doses.
04:19Some felt they had an inability to sort of control their use.
04:23But I mean the reality is with steroids, we don't know what safe use and what reckless
04:28use is because we just don't have the science to say.
04:32And so yours wasn't a study about sorting out how many Australians are using steroids
04:37but were you surprised at the number who were using or did you get a rough idea of how many
04:44people you think in Australia are using?
04:48Well being online, my sample was very international.
04:51I did see a lot of people in these forums and groups discussing these issues.
04:59So from what I could see, working in these communities for a long time, use is widespread.
05:06And so what do you hope will come of your research eventually?
05:14Well I would love it if other academics, some of whom have stigmatised steroid users, could
05:21sort of see past their prejudice and I suppose their ego and acknowledge that people outside
05:30of the scientific community may have something to contribute.
05:34And I mean sometimes the boundary between us and them is actually quite blurred.
05:40So if we could recognise that there is some expertise here, that they, as I said, conducting
05:48their own experiments, collating their own knowledge, they're doing enough experiments
05:52that you can see patterns.
05:55And some of these cycles have been used for decades.
05:58So they've got some pretty solid evidence there that we could use to then inform our
06:04science in order to create one knowledge base rather than two separate knowledge bases that
06:13are sort of running in parallel but not really communicating very much.