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So how do i, a regular person without a neuroscience or sleep background, know who to trust? The about page on this page doesn't lead me to believe that this is

• MattRix 6y ago
  It’s true that it’s hard to know for sure, but there are a bunch of things you can do. One of the most obvious is to see what other reputable sources say about the author. What’s their track record in the past? Then for any specific piece, you can look at the arguments they’re making, and then look at the sources they reference. Are those sources reputable, etc. To put it another way, you need to have a bunch of sources you trust, and then see how strong the connections are from any new data back to those original trustworthy sources.
• dojitza1 6y ago
  You shouldn't trust anybody other than yourself and your ability to recognise scientific consensus. This process is not easy and as goes for most things in life, diversification is key. Basing your research on a single article/book/source is bad, and your confidence that you understand/are knowledgeable about a topic should rise as you do more research.
  • neolog 6y ago
    You can also trust individual people and institutions if you follow them for a while and know how they do things.
    • Retric 6y ago
      That’s only slightly marginally better than randomly trusting any well respected source. In the end no single source should ever be viewed as definitive. On the other hand you can’t spend all that much time researching every individual topic. Which is where the problem comes from, but trick is to hold options lightly.
      • neolog 6y ago
        > That’s only slightly marginally better than randomly trusting any well respected source. Following someone's work for years is a much stronger signal than just checking their credentials imo.
        • Retric 6y ago
          It feels better, but in terms of actual evidence it’s not. One core issue is everyone makes mistakes, and nobody can research everything. So, the minimum error rate in all human content isn’t that great.
  • thomasahle 6y ago
    > You shouldn't trust anybody other than yourself And probably not even that either.
    • kergonath 6y ago
      Yourself is the last person you should trust. It’s much easier to detect logical flaws in other people and be critical about what they say.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • habitue 6y ago
    > You shouldn't trust anybody other than yourself Oh, definitely don't trust yourself. Everybody is wrong about almost everything, that includes yourself
    • mensetmanusman 6y ago
      Hide under a blanket?
      • habitue 6y ago
        it's the only way
    • jkhdigital 6y ago
      So you’re saying trust nobody, not even yourself. Let me know how that’s working for ya
      • habitue 6y ago
        I'd probably rephrase "trust" to "maintain appropriate confidence intervals on your beliefs" that being said, there's clearly something to trusting yourself beyond rational levels. How far would Kanye have gotten if not for boundless self belief?
  • michaelcampbell 6y ago
    > You shouldn't trust anybody other than yourself and your ability to recognise scientific consensus. This is the anti-vaxxer motto, almost. I think I'll pass.
    • jkhdigital 6y ago
      If you are highly intelligent, and recognize your own ignorance, then this works quite well. Anti-vaxxers get it wrong because they lack intellectual humility.
      • thu2111 6y ago
        I thought we'd stop using "anti vaxx" as a slur now most of Europe and multiple world leaders have spent the last four months spreading or consuming anti-vaxx propaganda. It's not like that's a fringe position anymore.
        • michaelcampbell 6y ago
          > most of Europe and multiple world leaders have spent the last four months spreading or consuming anti-vaxx propaganda. What? MOST of Europe? When did this happen?
          • thu2111 6y ago
            I guess it depends how you define it, but France, Germany, Italy, Denmark etc all have been suspending the AZ vaccine as 'dangerous' although the actual reports of side effects are far less than the claimed danger from COVID. I admit I haven't made a formal list of every country and ticked them off to see if it's literally >50% of countries, but it's certainly >50% of Europe by GDP at this point.
            • michaelcampbell 6y ago
              That's still a far cry from "spreading propaganda".
  • vatican_banker 6y ago
    > ou shouldn't trust anybody other than yourself This is not good advice. I’d say find experts that you trust and be aware that these experts may commit mistakes as any other human. In short: find the experts that make the least mistakes.
    • dojitza1 6y ago
      Perhaps I should have been more precise (since you ommited a key part of my sentence) in pointing out that any person on their own is probably wrong about a lot of things. Only by taking into consideration a large enough sample of opinions can you begin to formulate your own with sufficient confidence of it being correct. Outsorcing your opinions to an 'expert' is giving up critical thinking.
• wpietri 6y ago
  One way to do it is looking at what other experts say. I'm a long-time reader of statistician Andrew Gelman, who has a lot of good critiques of shoddy science. He responds to Guzey's critique here: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/24/why-we-sleep-update-some-thoughts-while-we-wait-for-matthew-walker-to-respond-to-alexey-guzeys-criticisms/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/24/why-we-sle...
  • kachnuv_ocasek 6y ago
    I second the recommendation of Gelman’s blog. He’s written a lot more about this particular case since then. Here’s a more recent article on the topic, for instance: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/10/07/alexey-guzey-plays-stat-detective-how-many-observations-are-in-each-bar-of-this-graph/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/10/07/alexey-guz...
• polote 6y ago
  > how do I pick out good information when I don't know the field Search HN threads on the topic, read people who agree and people who disagree then make your own opinion
  • bjl 6y ago
    > Search HN threads on the topic, read people who agree and people who disagree then make your own opinion I honestly cant tell if this is parody or not.
    • stevenhuang 6y ago
      Why would that be a parody? I can't see how it's a bad idea to get some quick signals on how a community approaches a topic.
• anonporridge 6y ago
  You don't know. And you never will. Even well credentialed experts aren't strictly trustworthy, because they can often be wrong or have big gaps in knowledge. Credentials can be faked or bullshitted into. Even honest experts can fall into self corrupting games that force them to spread bad information to maintain their position in their field. As individuals, we're going to constantly mess up and follow the wrong ideas. The best we can do is hold lightly to them and be willing to be proven wrong and always be weighing the risks of an idea being wrong. Always ask what the incentives of a person sharing an idea are. Profit incentives distort rational thinking. We all worship the thing that feeds us. It's important in some cases to take leaps of faith so that you don't become paralyzed to inaction from the vast uncertainty of the world. Just be wary that you don't get stuck on a sinking island or take overly absurd leaps that don't have the reward to justify the risk. Hopefully, the human colossus is marching closer to truth, even if we as individuals can never achieve it.
• inimino 6y ago
  Read the history of the field. Read textbooks, oldest ones first. Don't try to understand a field by looking at the new research. Ignore anything you see in the popular press, newspapers, TED talks, or the internet generally. Read opinions by experts in adjacent fields whose expertise you can more readily evaluate. Good luck :-)
  • lethologica 6y ago
    This is a good demonstration of the Lindy Effect. [0] Essentially, the longer something has been around, the more chance it has of still existing in the future. This is exactly the same approach I take when I’m trying to learn a new field, especially one in which I have little to no background. I always begin with the texts that have survived the longest and are still recommended to this day. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
  • jkhdigital 6y ago
    Can’t recommend this approach more. I’m a PhD student in cryptography and I often find that my understanding of a particular problem area is dramatically improved by reading stuff from 20-30 years ago (crypto is a young field) rather than recent publications.
  • SZJX 6y ago
    While this could very well be valid in natural science fields, I’ve heard that in humanity fields as well as in something as controversial and largely unknown as neuroscience (different from traditional hard science fields such as maths and physics), the consensus gets overthrown so quickly/gets a makeover almost every decade, that old research might appear completely different from the newest consensus in the field. Of course you still have to draw a conclusion yourself in the end by synthesizing all available information, but I wouldn’t say that old information would necessarily be more trustworthy in this case. A lot of understanding in psychology/health from a few decades ago seem to be deemed nonsensical nowadays, and in many of the cases I agree with the newer conclusions.
    • inimino 6y ago
• BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago
  The way I see it, something doesn’t need to be undeniably “True” to have utility. As humans we don’t actually need to be correct about everything we encounter, just correct enough. A working understanding can be perfectly sufficient because most of us aren’t neuroscientists who study sleep. It’s okay for us to be wrong and society will forget about this book in a short time. Someone will write a more “accurate” book about sleep that’ll get popular. But in the meantime if we start paying more attention to sleep hygiene that’s good enough for me.
• jkhdigital 6y ago
  > unless you are lucky enough to stumble on a god source the first time. But how will you even know that it is a “god source” as you so eloquently put it? Just read a lot. All the time. On a wide variety of subjects. Or, resign yourself to being deceived by charlatans sometimes. No real shortcut here.
• rsanek 6y ago
  For one, don't go to pop sci books expecting the truth. You'll have a better shot with a peer-reviewed textbook. For sleep, try Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine by Kryger.