Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman Accused of Bizarre Behavior

In an alarming exposé, several women have come forward accusing neuroscientist and celebrated podcaster Andrew Huberman of manipulation, bizarre behavior, and infidelity that may have led to a sexually transmitted infection in at least one of them.

Published by New York Magazine, this deep dive into the disparate public and private lives of the Stanford University neuroscientist illustrates a jarring portrait of a man who promotes physical and mental health and wellness — but engaged in bizarre interpersonal behavior, including secretly dating five women simultaneously.

Much of the story centers around a woman whom NYMag calls Sarah, who spent years dating the "Huberman Lab" host in what she believed to be an exclusive relationship. Along with accusing the 48-year-old podcaster of obfuscating about his other relationships, Sarah described Huberman as being intense and controlling, including — in a particularly unhinged twist — constantly relitigating her romantic and reproductive decisions from back before they were together.

At one point, she even accused the podcaster — who hawks the same expensive green powder as Joe Rogan — of saying that the second of her two children was a mistake, though Huberman denied that claim through a representative.

During the course of their relationship, Sarah learned that she had contracted human papillomavirus, or HPV, a treatable STI that men can be carriers for.

"I had never tested positive," the woman told NYMag, "and had been tested regularly for ten years."

Through his representative, Huberman claimed that he has never tested positive for HPV — which technically has to be true, since as the magazine notes, there doesn't exist an approved test for HPV in men.

STI aside, there were many unsettling behavioral patterns that Huberman is said to have exhibited that people close to him revealed to NYMag. He apparently has a penchant for disappearing, sometimes for days on end, and has done so not just with people he was romantically involved with, but to colleagues as well.

In one anecdote, he is said to have left anthropologist and investigative journalist Scott Carney alone in his house with his dog for a day-and-a-half after he invited him to go camping.

"It was extremely weird," Carney said.

With the multiple women who spoke to the magazine about Huberman's behavior, however, it seems that the disappearances did eventually add up — once they found out about each other and started putting the pieces together.

In one of those puzzle-piecing days, the women, all of whom were described with first-name pseudonyms to protect their identities, discovered that Huberman has flown one of them out to his house in Topanga, California, gotten coffee and had a serious relationship talk with another, and had his sometimes-live-in-girlfriend waiting for him back in Berkeley.

In another, Sarah described learning that he'd texted commitment-centric messages with another of the women while they'd been on a camping trip together, during which he'd injected her nightly for in-vitro fertilization because they were trying to have a baby together.

"Your feelings matter," Huberman texted another of his girlfriends, who like Sarah thought they were exclusive and had had unprotected sex with the neuroscientist. "I’m actually very much a caretaker."

With any public person, there are undoubtedly going to be parts of their personal lives that don't necessarily jive with the personas they market — but the blatant hypocrisy of the allegations against Huberman feels hard to defend.

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