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The biggest “belief-system” group to blame here are just doctors. I know this is a highly controversial opinion, but we should stop listening to doctors because
by santiagobasulto 4y ago
The biggest “belief-system” group to blame here are just doctors. I know this is a highly controversial opinion, but we should stop listening to doctors because they’re “doctors” and start fact-checking them.
Most Drs I know have NO idea of the basics principles of statistics. They just repeat things, eg “fat is bad, a healthy diet has a base of >=50% grain”.
When you ask them where they get that from, they tell you they read it while in school (in the 90s), from a book that was edited in the 70s, that took it from a study conducted in the 60s, that is just an appeal to P-hacking.
- ReptileMan 4y ago>The biggest “belief-system” group to blame here are just doctors. I know this is a highly controversial opinion, but we should stop listening to doctors because they’re “doctors” and start fact-checking them. That didn't go well - the way covid sceptics were treated by the Cathedral was not nice.
- santiagobasulto 4y agoWith Covid it was exactly this case. There was a few months that nobody knew nothing about it. Most doctors were treating COVID as any other coronavirus. At the time, I helped with some Data-related tasks to a group of researchers (Biologists, Biochemists, PhDs, etc) and I remember it clearly. A lot of uncertainty, but yet doctors had already arrived to a conclusion.
- noobly 4y agoWhat did your data related tasks imply?
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoThat's what doctors are paid to do. Unfortunately, they can't wait for the RCT's to be finished before making a decision, and so we train them well and pay them well to make decisions under uncertainty. It's rather like software engineering, but with lives/health at stake.
- mort96 4y ago"COVID skeptics" describes a group which includes people who think vaccines poison you with 5G, think COVID was an engineered bioweapon targeting the US, people who think injecting disinfectant would be a good treatment, people who advocate taking horse dewormer, people who think the right approach to dealing with a pandemic is to just let people die, etc etc. You may want to be more specific. Although your use of the phrase "the Cathedral" doesn't lead me to believe you're very grounded in reality yourself.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- andybak 4y agoI think your first paragraph makes a valid point. Your second is just raising the temperature without adding any real value, hence the downvotes you appear to be getting.
- mort96 4y agoI'm sorry, but I don't think invoking a conspiracy is adding much value either. I think it's completely unwarranted. That conspiracy nuts don't like it is their problem. You'll get downvoted if you enter a flat earth convention and describe those assholes accurately too. Hacker news is weirdly populated by people with no grounding in reality on very specific topics, like this and the MOND bullshit people spew in all physics discussions. I think it's an unhealthy obsession with being contrarian mostly.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago> Hacker news is weirdly populated by people with no grounding in reality on very specific topics You see the phrase "the Cathedral" flung about a lot. I take this as a fairly solid indicator of ESR-fellating big-L Libertarians.
- ReptileMan 4y agoDo you have a better description of the journo political academical hivemind? Big brother maybe? Because it was almost Orwellian the way narratives switched and no one admitted at being wrong even as the policies prescribed were either less effective or counterproductive.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago> the way covid sceptics were treated by the Cathedral was not nice. As it should be, because they were dangerous idiots coming away with stuff that would have made a Victorian-era quack patent medicine seller blush. No, Stoney McDooberson, smoking weed will not protect you from COVID. "BuT BiG PhArMa Is TrYiNg To KeEp EveRyOnE SiCk WiTh VaCcInE cLoT sHot! BuY hOrSe WoRmEr InStEaD!!!" Yeah, who do you think makes the horse wormer? Hint - not a naturopath.
- im3w1l 4y agoIvermectin is a generic medication, and the use as horse-dewormer has made it a low cost commodity. So you can't make big bucks peddling it. Unlike new and patented vaccines.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoYes, but it is also primarily a large-animal dewormer. You can use it in humans, but in a far smaller dose than you'd expect. It works quite well as a dewormer in humans too. It does precisely fuck all against COVID or any other sort of virus. Solid gold against intestinal parasites though.
- pandaman 4y agohttps://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...
- Gordonjcp 4y agoRight, so we're back to woowoo stuff from Smokey McStonerface's blog?
- pandaman 4y agoI am not sure what are you asking. Do you think NIH are some stoners who know less about diseases and medicines than you? It might surprise you but those people [1] actually have education and experience, unlike yourself. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health
- laserlight 4y agoDoctors' not understanding statistics is a pet peeve of mine. I wonder how all of us are not already dead. I guess doctors who understand statistics have more impact than those who do not. That's why.
- WHATDOESIT 4y agoI guess it's more about intuition - they see when they damage someone immediately and stop doing that (e.g. wrong choice of prescription pills). With nutrition, they don't see the effect and/or don't attribute it to their advice because it takes decades to take effect, so they keep repeating the old advice. Practically all doctors I ever visited acted primarily on their intuition - "I have experience this works so use it".
- quickthrower2 4y agoResiliance of human body!
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> I wonder how all of us are not already dead. I guess doctors who understand statistics have more impact than those who do not. That's why. The reason why is much simpler: in virtually all cases, if you don't bother to see a doctor, you won't die. Doctors aren't killing people at such high rates that most of us should already be dead.
- agumonkey 4y agoDoctors are a bit of a giant placebo at times, but they rely on enough material success to back it up. Medicine is also very very large and very fuzzy when you step out of the time tested knowledge. Reading pudmed is surprising. Everything is statistical and there's always a paper contradicting a previous one.
- austinjp 4y ago> pudmed A more appropriate typo I haven't seen in a while. I'd definitely read pudmed. (For those with English as a second language, "pud" is a folksy abbreviation for "pudding".)
- petra 4y agoSo let's say the aim is to optimize personal supplements use in the context of a medical condition. You could follow the paper results as written. But everything is statistical and youre and individual. Isn't there a better way?
- agumonkey 4y agoI'm not in a position to answer but finer non invasive tests about your own body state so you can adjust and reflect on your case rather than averages.
- Bancakes 4y agoDoctors should lead by example. Get fit and start prescribing working, tried and tested methods. No reason to listen to a chubby doctor over a fit youtuber.
- andybak 4y agoExcept chubby vs fit is the result of many factors only one of which is "has a set of beliefs about nutrition that are consistent with reality".
- hericium 4y agoLooking healthy over looking unhealthy then.
- brippalcharrid 4y agoNonetheless, having a set of reality-according convictions that can be (and which are) practically applied appears by far to be a dominant factor, especially when you consider how many of the alternative explanations (eg. endocrine disorders) are heavily influenced by lifestyle choices (which in turn are caused by views about nutrition or exercise that either don't accord with reality or are being incorrectly applied).
- Gordonjcp 4y agoA "fit youtuber" probably isn't fit.
- tpush 4y ago
- jiggywiggy 4y agoThis is simply untrue. The fault is not with the doctors, but the nutritional scientists. Doctors just repeat advice given by national boards. These organisations are a bit slow, but still update their advice every few years, and these are heavenly reliant on statistics & research. Just read Harvard's nutritional advice pages, they are exactly what a doctor will tell you. The problem is nutritional science is highly unreliable. And the main reason is, that it's incredibly difficult. Lots of the generic advice given is based on large scale studies over long years of population in the advice against red meat etc. But there are just too many variables. Which is why they keep changing their advice, however they thoroughly understand statistics. Also the main focus has been on risk factors instead of understand in the mechanisms behind certain things, partially because the mechanisms are just so darn complicated.
- manfre 4y agoThe larger issue is from studies being intentionally misleading for corporate gain. The food pyramid is the most prominent example that comes to mind.
- jiggywiggy 4y agoThat's only possible because the science itself is difficult.
- voisin 4y agoI think you are being generous. The science behind cigarettes isn’t difficult and yet the industry was able to obfuscate for too long. It happens all the time and there are many, many examples. Climate change is another recent one.
- jiggywiggy 4y agoClimate change science is super complicated. Cigarettes was pretty clear pretty fast, they resorting to hiding the research, it was much more difficult to obfuscate it.