Russ Altman

Professor of Bioengineering, Stanford University · 0 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Russ Altman is a professor and former chairman of bioengineering at Stanford University. He also hosts the radio show "The Future of Everything" on SiriusXM and Stanford.

9statements → 6claims → 0claims resolved → average certainty → average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

2 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 5 assertions · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Russ argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Combining Paxil and Pravastatin causes unexpected spikes in blood glucose levels
“And in one story that I'll just summarize very briefly, we looked for drugs that might cause glucose in, glucose increases, diabetes, if you will, in combination, where individually, they did nothing. So we had a very strong signal that the drugs, when taken a…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:47 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery

How they sound: speaking style how? →

245 words/min while actually speaking · 5.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Russ Altman: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to 2,606 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Russ Altman is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Russ Altman said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Scientific understanding of approved drugs remains severely limited
“Even for drugs that are on the market, and have been used for many years, our ability to really describe what they actually do is very limited.”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:52 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Assertion Supported
Combining Paxil and Pravastatin causes unexpected spikes in blood glucose levels
“And in one story that I'll just summarize very briefly, we looked for drugs that might cause glucose in, glucose increases, diabetes, if you will, in combination, where individually, they did nothing. So we had a very strong signal that the drugs, when taken a…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:47 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Assertion Supported
Microsoft search logs revealed unreported side effects of combining common drugs
“In a collaboration with Microsoft, we looked at what people who were on, well, we don't know if they were on these drugs. We just looked at search logs and said, how often do people type in these two drugs and words that might be associated with the symptoms o…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:47 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Assertion Supported
Data mining reveals tens to hundreds of unlisted side effects per drug
“We were able to find replicate what was on the drug label, but using the exact same methods, we were able to find tens or hundreds of extra side effects per drug with very high confidence from looking at a combination of FDA records and electronic medical reco…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:41 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Insight
Pharma must mine social media and online portals for side effects
“All of these also, it's clear, I think, to most pharmaceuticals have to be sources of data, both for understanding the actions of these drugs, but also understanding the patient preferences about which symptoms of these diseases they're really most interested …”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:07 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Insight
Insights for repurposing drugs come from side effects, not approved labels
“If you're going to repurpose a drug, though, All the information in the drug label that was focused on getting you approved for one indication is not going to be where you're going to get the insight about the new uses. You're going to get the insight about th…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:30 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Assertion Supported
7% of European descendants cannot convert codeine into morphine
“Seven percent of people of European descent don't have a version, because of genetic differences in that enzyme, they can't turn codeine into morphine.”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:54 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Genomic information systems will guide personalized drug prescribing
“Knowing a little bit about your genetics will allow us in the future to implement this vision of an information system with knowledge of your genome securely, which can then help your prescriber make decisions about the drugs that are most likely to work and t…”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:24 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery
Insight
Validating molecular data against medical records confirms real drug signals
“However, if you're seeing a signal at the molecular level and at the electronic medical record level, That gives you oodles more confidence that this might be a real signal, and not just a weird artifact of the data.”
Russ Altman Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:20 a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery

The other half of the tape: Russ Altman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jeff Kaditz 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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0112019episodes it came up in
000.50.5112019episodesmentions per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Russ Altman was played rather than Russ taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
a16z Podcast | The Genetics Of Drug Delivery Jan 2, 2019 12m aired address
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