[chrisdirkis]

Not exactly a knockdown argument, but: if he was wrong about "something meaningful", Guzey probably would have added it to his list.

More generally, if you make a claim and someone claims you're entirely wrong, it should be surprising if they don't attack the parts you consider meaningful. If they wanted to publicly demonstrate your incorrectness, why wouldn't they attack the important parts? Either they can't, or they chose not to, but the latter doesn't match the apparent motivations.

[Retric]

It’s often easier to rigorously disprove the small claims than big ones. Especially when the books author insinuates things rather than actually make bold claims.

Making a long list of everything they said that we don’t have evidence for isn’t really debunking anything. After all a broken clock may occasionally show the correct time. But showing some specific study was misinterpreted or wrong is far more direct.

[leereeves]

You might not be interested in lifespan and cancer but they are meaningful and important.

Personally I find the claim that sleeping too much can shorten your life quite interesting.

[chrisdirkis]

With "something meaningful", I'm using the parent's terminology. If Guzey has written arguments against non-meaningful stuff, I don't think that's evidence for the meaningful stuff being wrong. That's about the end of my stance; I definitely don't have the info or background knowledge (or effort!) to evaluate either the book or the response on technical merits.