5 ms·

What does N=1 mean?

memling 6y ago
the number of experiments. one challenge is distinguishing between actual effects and random chance. hence the need for replication.
- feralimal 6y ago
  Absolutely, replication repetition does help understand and draw out a hypothesis. But why does that mean that anecdotal evidence is invalid?
  - Retric 6y ago
    N=1 means the sample size within an experiment. Combining several experiments might seem like it’s the same thing as one larger experiment, but biased sampling is a major issue. Let’s assume some Democrats go to trump rally’s for the experience. If you take say 100 people chosen randomly from a rally you could estimate how common that was. However, if you look at interviews of people at Trump rallies the interviewer may have been more or less likely to include such people. As such what your examining is people the interviewer found interesting who where also at a rally which is a very different group. The surest way to get sampling bias is to some other criteria after the initial selection that can exclude samples from your examination. This might be as obvious as people who hung up on political polling or it can happen before the selection process. Aka I want 1,000 random Americans very often excludes people living outside America at say embassy’s, the homeless, prisoners, children, etc depending on how people are selected. For a given experiment you could look at how people where selected, but when combining random interesting examples you have no idea what’s being excluded which is why their considered worthless.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      Thanks. But are you doing all that personally? Do you have time? Probably not - I certainly I'm not polling hundreds of people over each minutaie in my life. So, it is likely that neither of us have done the work personally. The difference is that I distrust the output of science by default. I understand that it is an industry and I'm deeply suspicious of all its pronouncements. I'm on the lookout for the monetary upside, and what isn't being discussed. I love the scientific method, but it is not the be all and end all. What q Could a drug company ever say: "Guys, we've done the testing, and the best thing if you have XXX disease is NOT a drug. No, the best thing is to go on a juice diet and prolonged fasting."? It could not. With individuals, I am more open. If you can speak to someone, eg Doreen in this case has offered her perspective, that counts for far more with me. I know most individuals are happy to offer help and their perspective out of natural good will. Mostly individuals are trustworthy. The system that individuals are forced to engage with however is degenerative, and system/corporate/governmental outputs are propagandistic and in the service of the system itself.
      - Retric 6y ago
        > It could not. The entire point of clinical trials is to see if a specific drug is a good option and a great many of them fail, which is the drug company saying nope try something else. In specific cases they actually do compare them to other treatments like exercise. It’s mostly a question of what’s the current treatment, if they wanted to sell a post operation drug you can bet they would need to test exercise. Edit: Now I agree drug companies would not make a big deal about advertising that result, but that’s a different story. There are any number of studies in the effect of exercise and physical therapy currently uses motion not drugs to help people recover from surgery. Diet and exercise are actually prescribed to manage many health issues, it’s also recognized that people will often ignore such advice. We don’t do gastric bypass surgery etc for people who need to lose 10 pounds, but when people simply don’t follow medical advice there are simply fewer options. So, a huge body of evidence suggests this deeply held belief of yours is wrong. PS: there were approximately 210,900 physical therapists employed in the United States Exercise is actually the most commonly prescribed and studied treatment.
        feralimal 6y ago
        > Edit: Now I agree drug companies would not make a big deal about advertising that result, but that’s a different story. Well, its only a different story for drug companies. For you and I, as individuals, what value is science, if it will provide you with drug options to imperfectly manage your diabetes, but not tell you how to avoid it completely. Would you say that science is progressing towards truth and greater knowledge, or towards truth and greater knowledge of how to extract more money from those it is purporting to serve?
        Retric 6y ago
        That’s a false dichotomy. Science doesn’t really serve humanity it’s simply a method. Drug companies very much benefit from making products that work, but viagra isn’t curing cancer. On the older side, people don’t study quasar’s because that makes some billionaire richer. It’s easy to argue the first one is less pure, but it’s also more useful to more people. Commercial science has many issues. It’s probably a net negative for humanity that advertising is using science to sell more stuff, or gaming companies to make more addictive games. In the end science is used for all kinds of things from saving billions of lives to putting those same lives at risk. Thinking of Science as good or bad is like thinking of Math as good or bad. It’s simply a tool used by humans doing human things, both great and terrible. PS: As to drugs not curing diseases, that’s kind of a limitation on what drug actually are. I think Vaccines really confuse the issue in people’s minds, but that’s not the drug that’s someone’s immune system at work. Drugs can kill organisms, but they generally can’t cause permanent changes. Your body is constantly recycling material, breaking stuff down, and excreting it for a permanent change to occur they would need to cause long term physical changes even after being removed from the body. Mimic a growth hormone at the right time or kill off some cells and sure that can stick, but that’s about it.
  - ganafagol 6y ago
    One way to answer this is to point out that an anecdote always comes with its own replication crisis. The term "replication crisis" is essentially a generalization of the concept of an anecdote. In other words, if a result can't be reproduced, then it's essentially just an anecdote. So, your (rightful) mention of the replication crisis gives you a direct explanation for why anecdotal evidence is inherently problematic in the scientific endeavour for knowledge.
- monktastic1 6y ago
  More commonly it refers to the number of test subjects, actually.
shlant 6y ago
it's quite revealing that you have spent so much time trashing science in these threads while not knowing one of the most fundamental ideas behind the importance of the scientific method. Something about "know thy enemy" and the Dunning-Kruger effect comes to mind...
- feralimal 6y ago
  Had I better not ask what something means?
  - shlant 6y ago
    nothing wrong with asking, but you might want to consider that your bias is heavily influencing your perspective of science. You make some valid points about the replication bias, profit motives etc. but throwing the baby out with the bath water and then claiming that anecdotes are somehow more reliable shows a lack of nuance in response to a very complex topic.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      Yes - I think I knew what n=1 is/was. There were 2 reasons I asked the question. Firstly, I don't like 'inside baseball' talk. In fact we are not at a science convention - it is a public forum. Secondly, I want to know what the poster means by it. The last sentence where they say: "those where not tested because again N=1" - that doesn't make sense.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Discussion here is serious discussion. It's not people shooting the breeze. Low value comments are actively discouraged. HN is not very transparent in some respects. It may not be obvious if someone is new here that a lot of people here have significant expertise in various domains. So coming here is not like wandering into a coffee shop where random people are shooting the breeze and doing that "armchair politician" thing, though it may seem like it is. It's more like wandering into some academic club at some major university and joining the discussion without having to be enrolled in the university because they have some extreme inclusive policy. You have more or less told everyone here "Doctors and scientists are all dumb! And furthermore I know better than them!" and then asked "What does N=1 mean?" You are basically attacking and insulting a lot of the people you are addressing and then asking them to explain their field to you after having just dismissed them. It's always okay to ask what something means, but a best practice is to google the question first, especially for something simple/basic. (Granted, googling doesn't always turn up a good explanation -- some things are surprisingly hard to google.) However, sometimes all that does is signal that you don't really know what you are talking about and can't back up your strongly stated position. And that's what's going on here in terms of social dynamics.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
N=1 is a shorthand. It means it’s a science experiment with a sample of one. You. In the even older times, we used to say, “Your mileage may vary.” https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/in-case-anyone-else-wondered-what-n-1-means/32103 https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/in-case-anyone-else-wonder... It's not actually an accurate description of my situation because my two adult sons still live with me and one of them has the same diagnosis I have and the other is a carrier. So N=2 or N=3, depending on how you wish to count that. While I agree with the gist of some of your points, I always cringe when people leave the kinds of comments you have left here, starting with "Don't worry about not being a doctor - that's a good thing!" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25014092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25014092 My statement that I'm not a doctor is a statement of fact. It's not an apology. It's not an expression of low self esteem. I have participated on HN for more than 11 years because the standards for discourse of scientific information here are high and that fact has helped literally save my life, which has made it worth my while to put up with drama swirling around me for a long list of reasons. Over the years, I've been fortunate to have some folks with PhDs in various fields (including chemistry and biology) answer some of my questions and explain some critical details in layman's terms to help me better understand cell function, among other things. Some of those folks were met via HN. My gut reaction to people acting like I have self esteem problems and need my ego massaged because the HN crowd is capable of dishing out criticism just makes me go "Please stop helping me" which is an old TV Tropes entry that has since been disambiguated into two separate categories: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe
- feralimal 6y ago
  I'm glad you agree with the gist of my points. I also absolutely understand that you would cringe at my comments. Whatever, I may say though, is no reflection on you. If you were to meet me in person I don't think you would cringe if we were to talk. But on a forum, you only have a short amount of time to make an impression, catch people's attention, and try to get them to consider what I think is truth. People are so indoctrinated, they can barely recognise it. Here, on HN, there are many people who love science - it is their religion. They don't think its a religion, but it is - they believe in it, they don't know it. They don't even know what knowing is. The accept the pronouncements from the priest-scientists, as if they were gospel. A cursory review of some science study is all it takes. But the point of science is that it should be verifiable, not based on belief. No one is verifying anything, and when studies are peer reviewed 70% cannot be replicated. 70%!! In fact, I love science done properly too, but that is nowhere to be found. I hold to application of the scientific method personally. In all areas of my life. If I have any ambitions in my interactions on HN, it is that I wish for others to engage their rational thinking, not just when tackling a gnarly coding issue, but also in other parts of their lives. I wish that people would think more individually, rather than just going along with the herd, what they have been taught, etc. Questions people should be asking include: Why is it so medicine so expensive? Has the 'health' system been captured? When was it captured? Why don't we know what the right food for humans is? Why were we taught the food pyramid? Is food medicine? Is pregnancy an issue that requires medical intervention? Etc. If you really start to find answers to those questions, the reality of this existence takes on an entirely different perspective. I appreciate that you are looking into this stuff for yourself. I appreciate that you are sharing your understanding and anecdotal results. I'm glad that you clarified that it is not n=1 but n=2 or 3. Given what I understand about science, I genuinely value the anecdotal points you raise highly. I have gained much more useful information anecdotally than from 'science'. Finally, I would say, that along with fasting, I understand that the Gerson method is excellent more providing you with nutrition and along your body the space to repair itself. And in repairing itself, I understand there will be a healing crisis, where the build up of toxins etc may be expelled and that that can mean that one feels worse than ever. But that this is an essential step on the path to wellness. All the best.

What does N=1 mean?

the number of experiments. one challenge is distinguishing between actual effects and random chance. hence the need for replication.

feralimal 6y ago
Absolutely, replication repetition does help understand and draw out a hypothesis. But why does that mean that anecdotal evidence is invalid?
- Retric 6y ago
  N=1 means the sample size within an experiment. Combining several experiments might seem like it’s the same thing as one larger experiment, but biased sampling is a major issue. Let’s assume some Democrats go to trump rally’s for the experience. If you take say 100 people chosen randomly from a rally you could estimate how common that was. However, if you look at interviews of people at Trump rallies the interviewer may have been more or less likely to include such people. As such what your examining is people the interviewer found interesting who where also at a rally which is a very different group. The surest way to get sampling bias is to some other criteria after the initial selection that can exclude samples from your examination. This might be as obvious as people who hung up on political polling or it can happen before the selection process. Aka I want 1,000 random Americans very often excludes people living outside America at say embassy’s, the homeless, prisoners, children, etc depending on how people are selected. For a given experiment you could look at how people where selected, but when combining random interesting examples you have no idea what’s being excluded which is why their considered worthless.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Thanks. But are you doing all that personally? Do you have time? Probably not - I certainly I'm not polling hundreds of people over each minutaie in my life. So, it is likely that neither of us have done the work personally. The difference is that I distrust the output of science by default. I understand that it is an industry and I'm deeply suspicious of all its pronouncements. I'm on the lookout for the monetary upside, and what isn't being discussed. I love the scientific method, but it is not the be all and end all. What q Could a drug company ever say: "Guys, we've done the testing, and the best thing if you have XXX disease is NOT a drug. No, the best thing is to go on a juice diet and prolonged fasting."? It could not. With individuals, I am more open. If you can speak to someone, eg Doreen in this case has offered her perspective, that counts for far more with me. I know most individuals are happy to offer help and their perspective out of natural good will. Mostly individuals are trustworthy. The system that individuals are forced to engage with however is degenerative, and system/corporate/governmental outputs are propagandistic and in the service of the system itself.
    - Retric 6y ago
      > It could not. The entire point of clinical trials is to see if a specific drug is a good option and a great many of them fail, which is the drug company saying nope try something else. In specific cases they actually do compare them to other treatments like exercise. It’s mostly a question of what’s the current treatment, if they wanted to sell a post operation drug you can bet they would need to test exercise. Edit: Now I agree drug companies would not make a big deal about advertising that result, but that’s a different story. There are any number of studies in the effect of exercise and physical therapy currently uses motion not drugs to help people recover from surgery. Diet and exercise are actually prescribed to manage many health issues, it’s also recognized that people will often ignore such advice. We don’t do gastric bypass surgery etc for people who need to lose 10 pounds, but when people simply don’t follow medical advice there are simply fewer options. So, a huge body of evidence suggests this deeply held belief of yours is wrong. PS: there were approximately 210,900 physical therapists employed in the United States Exercise is actually the most commonly prescribed and studied treatment.
      - feralimal 6y ago
        > Edit: Now I agree drug companies would not make a big deal about advertising that result, but that’s a different story. Well, its only a different story for drug companies. For you and I, as individuals, what value is science, if it will provide you with drug options to imperfectly manage your diabetes, but not tell you how to avoid it completely. Would you say that science is progressing towards truth and greater knowledge, or towards truth and greater knowledge of how to extract more money from those it is purporting to serve?
        Retric 6y ago
        That’s a false dichotomy. Science doesn’t really serve humanity it’s simply a method. Drug companies very much benefit from making products that work, but viagra isn’t curing cancer. On the older side, people don’t study quasar’s because that makes some billionaire richer. It’s easy to argue the first one is less pure, but it’s also more useful to more people. Commercial science has many issues. It’s probably a net negative for humanity that advertising is using science to sell more stuff, or gaming companies to make more addictive games. In the end science is used for all kinds of things from saving billions of lives to putting those same lives at risk. Thinking of Science as good or bad is like thinking of Math as good or bad. It’s simply a tool used by humans doing human things, both great and terrible. PS: As to drugs not curing diseases, that’s kind of a limitation on what drug actually are. I think Vaccines really confuse the issue in people’s minds, but that’s not the drug that’s someone’s immune system at work. Drugs can kill organisms, but they generally can’t cause permanent changes. Your body is constantly recycling material, breaking stuff down, and excreting it for a permanent change to occur they would need to cause long term physical changes even after being removed from the body. Mimic a growth hormone at the right time or kill off some cells and sure that can stick, but that’s about it.
- ganafagol 6y ago
  One way to answer this is to point out that an anecdote always comes with its own replication crisis. The term "replication crisis" is essentially a generalization of the concept of an anecdote. In other words, if a result can't be reproduced, then it's essentially just an anecdote. So, your (rightful) mention of the replication crisis gives you a direct explanation for why anecdotal evidence is inherently problematic in the scientific endeavour for knowledge.
monktastic1 6y ago
More commonly it refers to the number of test subjects, actually.

shlant 6y ago

it's quite revealing that you have spent so much time trashing science in these threads while not knowing one of the most fundamental ideas behind the importance of the scientific method. Something about "know thy enemy" and the Dunning-Kruger effect comes to mind...

feralimal 6y ago
Had I better not ask what something means?
- shlant 6y ago
  nothing wrong with asking, but you might want to consider that your bias is heavily influencing your perspective of science. You make some valid points about the replication bias, profit motives etc. but throwing the baby out with the bath water and then claiming that anecdotes are somehow more reliable shows a lack of nuance in response to a very complex topic.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Yes - I think I knew what n=1 is/was. There were 2 reasons I asked the question. Firstly, I don't like 'inside baseball' talk. In fact we are not at a science convention - it is a public forum. Secondly, I want to know what the poster means by it. The last sentence where they say: "those where not tested because again N=1" - that doesn't make sense.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Discussion here is serious discussion. It's not people shooting the breeze. Low value comments are actively discouraged. HN is not very transparent in some respects. It may not be obvious if someone is new here that a lot of people here have significant expertise in various domains. So coming here is not like wandering into a coffee shop where random people are shooting the breeze and doing that "armchair politician" thing, though it may seem like it is. It's more like wandering into some academic club at some major university and joining the discussion without having to be enrolled in the university because they have some extreme inclusive policy. You have more or less told everyone here "Doctors and scientists are all dumb! And furthermore I know better than them!" and then asked "What does N=1 mean?" You are basically attacking and insulting a lot of the people you are addressing and then asking them to explain their field to you after having just dismissed them. It's always okay to ask what something means, but a best practice is to google the question first, especially for something simple/basic. (Granted, googling doesn't always turn up a good explanation -- some things are surprisingly hard to google.) However, sometimes all that does is signal that you don't really know what you are talking about and can't back up your strongly stated position. And that's what's going on here in terms of social dynamics.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

N=1 is a shorthand. It means it’s a science experiment with a sample of one. You. In the even older times, we used to say, “Your mileage may vary.” https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/in-case-anyone-else-wondered-what-n-1-means/32103 https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/in-case-anyone-else-wonder... It's not actually an accurate description of my situation because my two adult sons still live with me and one of them has the same diagnosis I have and the other is a carrier. So N=2 or N=3, depending on how you wish to count that. While I agree with the gist of some of your points, I always cringe when people leave the kinds of comments you have left here, starting with "Don't worry about not being a doctor - that's a good thing!" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25014092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25014092 My statement that I'm not a doctor is a statement of fact. It's not an apology. It's not an expression of low self esteem. I have participated on HN for more than 11 years because the standards for discourse of scientific information here are high and that fact has helped literally save my life, which has made it worth my while to put up with drama swirling around me for a long list of reasons. Over the years, I've been fortunate to have some folks with PhDs in various fields (including chemistry and biology) answer some of my questions and explain some critical details in layman's terms to help me better understand cell function, among other things. Some of those folks were met via HN. My gut reaction to people acting like I have self esteem problems and need my ego massaged because the HN crowd is capable of dishing out criticism just makes me go "Please stop helping me" which is an old TV Tropes entry that has since been disambiguated into two separate categories: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe

feralimal 6y ago
I'm glad you agree with the gist of my points. I also absolutely understand that you would cringe at my comments. Whatever, I may say though, is no reflection on you. If you were to meet me in person I don't think you would cringe if we were to talk. But on a forum, you only have a short amount of time to make an impression, catch people's attention, and try to get them to consider what I think is truth. People are so indoctrinated, they can barely recognise it. Here, on HN, there are many people who love science - it is their religion. They don't think its a religion, but it is - they believe in it, they don't know it. They don't even know what knowing is. The accept the pronouncements from the priest-scientists, as if they were gospel. A cursory review of some science study is all it takes. But the point of science is that it should be verifiable, not based on belief. No one is verifying anything, and when studies are peer reviewed 70% cannot be replicated. 70%!! In fact, I love science done properly too, but that is nowhere to be found. I hold to application of the scientific method personally. In all areas of my life. If I have any ambitions in my interactions on HN, it is that I wish for others to engage their rational thinking, not just when tackling a gnarly coding issue, but also in other parts of their lives. I wish that people would think more individually, rather than just going along with the herd, what they have been taught, etc. Questions people should be asking include: Why is it so medicine so expensive? Has the 'health' system been captured? When was it captured? Why don't we know what the right food for humans is? Why were we taught the food pyramid? Is food medicine? Is pregnancy an issue that requires medical intervention? Etc. If you really start to find answers to those questions, the reality of this existence takes on an entirely different perspective. I appreciate that you are looking into this stuff for yourself. I appreciate that you are sharing your understanding and anecdotal results. I'm glad that you clarified that it is not n=1 but n=2 or 3. Given what I understand about science, I genuinely value the anecdotal points you raise highly. I have gained much more useful information anecdotally than from 'science'. Finally, I would say, that along with fasting, I understand that the Gerson method is excellent more providing you with nutrition and along your body the space to repair itself. And in repairing itself, I understand there will be a healing crisis, where the build up of toxins etc may be expelled and that that can mean that one feels worse than ever. But that this is an essential step on the path to wellness. All the best.