John Speakman

Who is John Speakman?

Professor John Speakman is a British biologist working at the University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences. He directs the University's Energetics Research Group, which is one of the world's leading groups using doubly labeled water to investigate energy expenditure and balance in animals. During the mid-1980s and early 1990s, Speakman made many contributions to the development of the DLW method, culminating in the book "Doubly labelled water: theory and practice", published in 1997 that remains the standard reference work for applications of this methodology in humans and other animals.

Speakman is also well known for his work in obesity, in particular for criticising a long-established theory for obesity known as the thrifty gene hypothesis. His alternative hypothesis proposes that the modern distribution of obese phenotypes arose via the release from predation and random genetic drift: the 'drifty gene hypothesis'. This idea is controversial and has been criticised by others that support the original thrifty gene hypothesis.