5 ms·

Are you a doctor? Are you a veterinarian? If no, how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for

Are you a doctor? Are you a veterinarian? If no, how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects? Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It a vital drug for, among other things, cases where immune activity needs to be modified. The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge.

twofornone 5y ago
>how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects How much "training" do you think doctors get with respect to the thousands of drugs that they may prescribe? Doctors are almost all specialists, and read the same side effects labels (or google them these days) that you do. You are not required to rely exclusively on your doctor's risk/benefit analysis for a given prescription. Furthermore, as the commenter pointed out in his example, often times doctors simply do not know what is causing a problem and will throw drugs at it - a lot of medicine is guesswork. >Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines Which says nothing about its side effect profile >The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Drugs have side effects even when not misused. >Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge. Not treating a doctor's word as gospel truth is hardly "anti-science" - on the contrary, blind faith is anti-science. And what is researching a drug's side effect profile if not grounding oneself in "fact or knowledge"? Doctors make mistakes. Not proactively sanity checking their treatments is irresponsible when you have the same resources that they do.
- kwantam 5y ago
  OP said: "there is almost no condition for which the right treatment is prednisone." I said: "prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines," which is very strong evidence that the claim is incorrect. Your response obliquely claims that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone, by making reference to thousands of drugs that a doctor might prescribe. This is not an argument, it is an insinuation. You have no idea how much training doctors get, nor apparently are you aware that in 2019 prednisone was the 27th most prescribed drug in the United States [1]. It also has well known and possibly severe side effects. If, as you obliquely claim, doctors are not trained in its correct use, then it must also be the case that medical schools are astonishingly incompetent. I will note at this point that I am referring to your oblique claim because I suspect it was intentionally stated vaguely so that you could attempt to slip out of any counterargument merely by saying that you meant something else. --- Stepping back: the belief espoused in this thread is nothing short of a conspiracy theory, and you are engaging in classic conspiratorial thinking in order to support it. I encourage you, and anyone else reading this thread, to read "The Conspiracy Theory Handbook" by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook [2]. Let's go through the ways in which your argument maps directly to several of the hallmarks that are listed on pages 6 and 7 of the above pamphlet. I'm certain that if we continued this conversation (which I will not) we would see even more examples of such thinking. - Contradictory: you believe that doctors are specialists, and yet you appear not to believe that the specialist doctors at the WHO who decide which drugs are essential are qualified to balance the benefits and the side effects. - Overriding suspicion: if, as you claim, doctors throw drugs at problems with such frequency that one should almost never take a doctor's advice to take prednisone---in spite of the fact that it was prescribed nearly 23 million times in 2019---it must be the case that doctors are almost uniformly some heady mix of incompetent and malicious. - Immune to evidence: your response to my argument makes clear that you are not interested in reconsidering your position on prednisone---your belief system is a closed epistemological loop. The WHO's listing prednisone as an essential drug makes not a dent on your claims about its side effects---never mind that it is completely outlandish and unreasonable to believe that a cost-benefit analysis would not be considered when selecting a drug "with due regard to disease prevalence and public health relevance, evidence of efficacy and safety and comparative cost-effectiveness" [3]. --- I am not judging or insulting you. It is easy to fall into a pattern of beliefs that is not supported by facts, and to begin to identify with the beliefs themselves rather than the evidence that backs them up. I implore you, examine your beliefs and take seriously the possibility that you have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking. The pamphlet I have linked above is a short and very worthwhile read, and I am confident that if you take its contents seriously you will gain valuable perspective. --- [1] https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Prednisone https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Prednisone [2] https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/conspiracy-theory-handbook/ https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/conspiracy-theory... [3] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-MHP-HPS-EML-2021.02 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-MHP-HPS-EML-2021...
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  - atdrummond 5y ago
    Why are you using multiple accounts to hold this conversation?
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      what?
    - dang 5y ago
      There are multiple possible explanations. People sometimes get confused about which account they're posting from, which is not the same thing as intentionally using a sockpuppet. Alternatively, people in the same household sometimes both post to HN, and same-household would readily explain same-dog. Either way, it seems unlikely that there was any attempt to deceive here.
Cupertino95014 5y ago
- kwantam 5y ago
  See my response to a sibling comment of yours. Your initial claim had absolutely nothing to do with "broad side effects." You claimed that prednisone is almost never the right treatment. That is false, and runs counter to evidence and fact---hence, it is anti-science, precisely as I have claimed. Your appeal to other hot-button topics here is an attempt at distracting from the content of the argument. Those topics are non sequitur, and it is clear you are arguing in bad faith. Please, re-examine your beliefs. You are on a dark path.
  - dang 5y ago
    Attacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't post like this to HN, and please don't fuel any more flamewars. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- decremental 5y ago
  This "anti-science" phrase is pure cancer. Most of the people who use it aren't pro-science. They're pro-authority. The science for them is whatever the authorities have greenlighted for them to believe.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, even when another commenter is behaving badly or you feel they are. It only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Cupertino95014 5y ago
Since, for some reason there's no Reply button under your second answer, I'm replying to it here. > I am not judging or insulting you I believe you are the wrong one to evaluate that. Not after you abstract-ify this into "conspiracy theory" and all sorts of things I didn't say. I didn't "obliquely claim that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone." Of course they do. I'm not anti-vax, either. I'm sure this vet did "get training" but I cut her some slack: it's the 27th most prescribed drug in the formulary, and she sees hundreds of pets per week, and probably most of the ones she gives it to, get well. Yet: another vet at the same clinic had no issues with my objection, and gave me a different drug instead. The dog's not licking his paws constantly and has no other symptoms, so I count that a successful objection. So find some other outlet for your passions today.
- kwantam 5y ago
  - twofornone 5y ago
    I assure you this account is not a sockpuppet. I don't know about the rest. I'm not sure what it is you find suspicious about this handle, except perhaps that I occasionally express the "wrong" opinion?
  - MathCodeLove 5y ago
    Jesus Christ. I don't necessarily disagree with you but maybe you should tone it down a little pal. If you truly believe you're on the right side of this argument then argue with rationality and civility. This behavior does nothing to further rational discussion.
metadat 5y ago
Hey Kwantam, When you suspect sockpuppet abuse on HN, I've found it highly effective to email dang directly (hn@ycombinator.com) rather than engaging further with the suspected bad actor (though I admire and commend your diligence and steadfastness ;).
dang 5y ago
Your comment here crossed into attack, which is one reason this thread turned into a flamewar—and you perpetuated the flamewar badly downthread. Please don't do those things on this site, regardless of how strongly you feel about science. HN is an internet watercooler—not an academic journal. The goal is to have curious conversation. Conversation involves anecdotes and it involves people being wrong about things, including important things, much of the time. If someone happens to be wrong, or you feel they are, piling on and shaming them is definitely not helpful. It is only going to evoke worse reactions from themselves and from others, and throw the thread off balance. Fortunately, we don't have to look far for examples of how to get this kind of thing right. These other users all responded to the same comment in a conversational way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040674 They made much the same point that you did, but they did it respectfully and in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review the guidelines and use HN that way too from now on, we'd be grateful. Of course it's not always possible—we all have our triggers and we all get into states where the internal reaction overflows. But in those cases, it's important not to post.

twofornone 5y ago

>how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects How much "training" do you think doctors get with respect to the thousands of drugs that they may prescribe? Doctors are almost all specialists, and read the same side effects labels (or google them these days) that you do. You are not required to rely exclusively on your doctor's risk/benefit analysis for a given prescription. Furthermore, as the commenter pointed out in his example, often times doctors simply do not know what is causing a problem and will throw drugs at it - a lot of medicine is guesswork. >Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines Which says nothing about its side effect profile >The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Drugs have side effects even when not misused. >Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge. Not treating a doctor's word as gospel truth is hardly "anti-science" - on the contrary, blind faith is anti-science. And what is researching a drug's side effect profile if not grounding oneself in "fact or knowledge"? Doctors make mistakes. Not proactively sanity checking their treatments is irresponsible when you have the same resources that they do.

kwantam 5y ago
OP said: "there is almost no condition for which the right treatment is prednisone." I said: "prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines," which is very strong evidence that the claim is incorrect. Your response obliquely claims that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone, by making reference to thousands of drugs that a doctor might prescribe. This is not an argument, it is an insinuation. You have no idea how much training doctors get, nor apparently are you aware that in 2019 prednisone was the 27th most prescribed drug in the United States [1]. It also has well known and possibly severe side effects. If, as you obliquely claim, doctors are not trained in its correct use, then it must also be the case that medical schools are astonishingly incompetent. I will note at this point that I am referring to your oblique claim because I suspect it was intentionally stated vaguely so that you could attempt to slip out of any counterargument merely by saying that you meant something else. --- Stepping back: the belief espoused in this thread is nothing short of a conspiracy theory, and you are engaging in classic conspiratorial thinking in order to support it. I encourage you, and anyone else reading this thread, to read "The Conspiracy Theory Handbook" by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook [2]. Let's go through the ways in which your argument maps directly to several of the hallmarks that are listed on pages 6 and 7 of the above pamphlet. I'm certain that if we continued this conversation (which I will not) we would see even more examples of such thinking. - Contradictory: you believe that doctors are specialists, and yet you appear not to believe that the specialist doctors at the WHO who decide which drugs are essential are qualified to balance the benefits and the side effects. - Overriding suspicion: if, as you claim, doctors throw drugs at problems with such frequency that one should almost never take a doctor's advice to take prednisone---in spite of the fact that it was prescribed nearly 23 million times in 2019---it must be the case that doctors are almost uniformly some heady mix of incompetent and malicious. - Immune to evidence: your response to my argument makes clear that you are not interested in reconsidering your position on prednisone---your belief system is a closed epistemological loop. The WHO's listing prednisone as an essential drug makes not a dent on your claims about its side effects---never mind that it is completely outlandish and unreasonable to believe that a cost-benefit analysis would not be considered when selecting a drug "with due regard to disease prevalence and public health relevance, evidence of efficacy and safety and comparative cost-effectiveness" [3]. --- I am not judging or insulting you. It is easy to fall into a pattern of beliefs that is not supported by facts, and to begin to identify with the beliefs themselves rather than the evidence that backs them up. I implore you, examine your beliefs and take seriously the possibility that you have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking. The pamphlet I have linked above is a short and very worthwhile read, and I am confident that if you take its contents seriously you will gain valuable perspective. --- [1] https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Prednisone https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Prednisone [2] https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/conspiracy-theory-handbook/ https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/conspiracy-theory... [3] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-MHP-HPS-EML-2021.02 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-MHP-HPS-EML-2021...
AlbertCory 5y ago
- atdrummond 5y ago
  Why are you using multiple accounts to hold this conversation?
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    what?
  - dang 5y ago
    There are multiple possible explanations. People sometimes get confused about which account they're posting from, which is not the same thing as intentionally using a sockpuppet. Alternatively, people in the same household sometimes both post to HN, and same-household would readily explain same-dog. Either way, it seems unlikely that there was any attempt to deceive here.

Cupertino95014 5y ago

kwantam 5y ago
See my response to a sibling comment of yours. Your initial claim had absolutely nothing to do with "broad side effects." You claimed that prednisone is almost never the right treatment. That is false, and runs counter to evidence and fact---hence, it is anti-science, precisely as I have claimed. Your appeal to other hot-button topics here is an attempt at distracting from the content of the argument. Those topics are non sequitur, and it is clear you are arguing in bad faith. Please, re-examine your beliefs. You are on a dark path.
- dang 5y ago
  Attacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't post like this to HN, and please don't fuel any more flamewars. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
decremental 5y ago
This "anti-science" phrase is pure cancer. Most of the people who use it aren't pro-science. They're pro-authority. The science for them is whatever the authorities have greenlighted for them to believe.
dang 5y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, even when another commenter is behaving badly or you feel they are. It only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Cupertino95014 5y ago

Since, for some reason there's no Reply button under your second answer, I'm replying to it here. > I am not judging or insulting you I believe you are the wrong one to evaluate that. Not after you abstract-ify this into "conspiracy theory" and all sorts of things I didn't say. I didn't "obliquely claim that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone." Of course they do. I'm not anti-vax, either. I'm sure this vet did "get training" but I cut her some slack: it's the 27th most prescribed drug in the formulary, and she sees hundreds of pets per week, and probably most of the ones she gives it to, get well. Yet: another vet at the same clinic had no issues with my objection, and gave me a different drug instead. The dog's not licking his paws constantly and has no other symptoms, so I count that a successful objection. So find some other outlet for your passions today.

kwantam 5y ago
- twofornone 5y ago
  I assure you this account is not a sockpuppet. I don't know about the rest. I'm not sure what it is you find suspicious about this handle, except perhaps that I occasionally express the "wrong" opinion?
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Jesus Christ. I don't necessarily disagree with you but maybe you should tone it down a little pal. If you truly believe you're on the right side of this argument then argue with rationality and civility. This behavior does nothing to further rational discussion.

metadat 5y ago

Hey Kwantam, When you suspect sockpuppet abuse on HN, I've found it highly effective to email dang directly (hn@ycombinator.com) rather than engaging further with the suspected bad actor (though I admire and commend your diligence and steadfastness ;).

dang 5y ago

Your comment here crossed into attack, which is one reason this thread turned into a flamewar—and you perpetuated the flamewar badly downthread. Please don't do those things on this site, regardless of how strongly you feel about science. HN is an internet watercooler—not an academic journal. The goal is to have curious conversation. Conversation involves anecdotes and it involves people being wrong about things, including important things, much of the time. If someone happens to be wrong, or you feel they are, piling on and shaming them is definitely not helpful. It is only going to evoke worse reactions from themselves and from others, and throw the thread off balance. Fortunately, we don't have to look far for examples of how to get this kind of thing right. These other users all responded to the same comment in a conversational way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040674 They made much the same point that you did, but they did it respectfully and in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review the guidelines and use HN that way too from now on, we'd be grateful. Of course it's not always possible—we all have our triggers and we all get into states where the internal reaction overflows. But in those cases, it's important not to post.