Feedback #1 - Thanks to the science people

[andrewducker]

I'm not going to reply to everyone on the last post, so a general "thanks" to everyone that replied. Lots of interesting stuff there.

One of the interesting things in the responses was the number of people who thought they should let me know that it wasn't a peer-reviewed paper in a renowned journal. Clearly, I knew that - it was someone's personal page, with their thoughts on it. If it had been a published paper I wouldn't have bothered asking you lot, I'd have had a look to see if it had been refuted.

Similarly, some people seemed to think that because it wasn't presented as Pure Science, but also had personal opinion, it couldn't have anything to it, an approach I find frankly baffling.

However, there were also plenty of good arguments against it, and while some of the ideas are interesting, I'm certainly not taking it at face value. Cheers to all of you!

Comments

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Peer review process is flawed and doesn't stand up to the test of modern medium. The problem is that no-one has found a good alternative. Peer reviewed journals are not the be all and end all in modern health information, hence why I sent a variety of tools which can be used to evaluate content.

Why are you baffled by the science aspect? Let me ask you this - you are a health professional dealing directly with patient care. When you are legally liable for treatment, would you go on the strength of someones opinion or would you go on the results of scientific evidence?

Opinion (in relation to health care) is only crediable if it comes from an authoritive source, many people can not judge this simple basic principle.

There are heirarchies of evidence on which we judge the credibility of a study.

http://medicine.mercer.edu/files/fammed_clerk_evidencepyramid.pdf

There are variations of this model but they all run along the same principles. We generally only use case report upwards unless it is something with little literature. As your example has little literature it currently can not fully be dismissed and is in need of further investigation.

[andrewducker]

you are a health professional dealing directly with patient care.

No, I'm not.

I'm a person, interested in theories about the world. And therefore not going to dismiss something as nonsense just because it was someone's personal opinion.

And I know that peer review is flawed - that wasn't my point...

[ninox.livejournal.com]

You asked should it be believed. I answered from a professional perspective and I didn't say nonsense. I stated it was a theory yet to be proven and in need of research.

Science can prove or disprove these kind of theories and personal opinions. This is valid no matter who you are.

[andrewducker]

It wasn't you I was getting at - it was the comments that said "This is a personal blog, by someone outside of their field, and it has stuff in it that's their feelings. Therefore it's bad."

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Don't worry I'm not taking it personally, just answering in my own way and hopefully for those interested in appraising information giving them a start on how to do it.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

"This is a personal blog, by someone outside of their field, and it has stuff in it that's their feelings. Therefore it's bad."

Wasn't your question whether or not the claims she was making had any validity? "I'm wondering if it's junk science, or it's something I should be paying attention to." Eh? What was your question then? That's nothing about "are personal opinions valid?" I feel like this is some sort of trick..

[andrewducker]

Who by?

My question was "Is this worth paying attention to." - the other person then said "There's personal opinion in with the sciency bits, therefore it's not a proper scientific paper, so it should be ignored."
As I hadn't thought it was a scientific paper, I couldn't actually see how that was a valid attack.

Something can be worth paying attention to, after all, even if it's not a scientific paper!

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Ohh OK - I thought you were responding with "You're all wrong! HAHAHAHA!" I thought it wasn't worth paying attention to because it cited wikipedia, which, as we all know, is run by 16 year olds. But had you already decided if it was worth paying attention to when you asked the question?

[andrewducker]

Nope, not at all. I'd have said so if I had.

I'd also say that citing Wikipedia doesn't make something _wrong_ - it might add to the unreliability, but Wikipedia is neither righter or wronger than anywhere else on the internet.

What I wanted was someone to either say "Yes, this links in with X and Y, and makes sense of Z" or "No, this contradicts well-known principle X, and they clearly didn't know about studies Y and Z, which tell a very different story."

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Oh I see! I apologise for being particularly dense about all of this and not understanding the question *returns to kitten*

[andrewducker]

It's fine - I'm curious as to what I could have done to make it clearer.

I said "I'm wondering if it's junk science, or it's something I should be paying attention to." - how could I have phrased that better to get my question across?

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Something like "can anyone back up the claims in this essay better than I can?" or "is anyone familiar with this"? Is that more like what you meant?

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Sorry I meant credibility of information rather than study.