5 ms·

> It's not anti-science to take your health into your own hands. It depends on how exactly it was taken into one’s hands right? Can’t really know if it’s pro-s

> It's not anti-science to take your health into your own hands. It depends on how exactly it was taken into one’s hands right? Can’t really know if it’s pro-science or anti-science until you see what a person is doing. Most people do pretty irrational stuff, based on stories of a doctor in my family.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Experiments are science, and if we knew how they’d turn out beforehand they wouldn’t be experiments. Sort of definitionally you can get pretty weird or unsafe and if you’re comfortable with it not working it’s still a totally valid experiment.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Experiments are potentially science. Not all experiments are done in a scientific manner. (And even then, experimentation is only a part of the scientific process.)
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  The article is about someone following what is basically the established diagnostic and treatment flow for sleep apnea. It’s not exactly an experiment. He was pushing the process forward faster than his medical system could, but it wasn’t novel or experimental.
- version_five 4y ago
  No, experiments are really only science in the usual sense if you have an expectation of how they will turn out and you run the experiment to test your hypothesis. And properly constructing the hypothesis, to include past knowledge and some causal mechanism is vitally important, the causal part being often neglected even in "real" science. There was a lot of this during Covid (which I know is a bad example because of it's political baggage, but anyway). Various "x cures / helps with covid" trends (sometimes including studies) but not really based on a anything. It's not really scientific to just imagine something could work, and then try it. Contrast it with vaccines, where, regardless of your view on the covid one, there's an actual plausible causal pathway from being exposed to it to getting immunity, so it's possible and a legit thing to do to run an experiment to see if it works.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "so it's possible and a legit thing to do to run an experiment to see if it works. " I think it is possible and legit scientific to run experiments on allmost anything, no matter how weird. What matters is how you do the experiment and what is the result - does it work? And if it does, is it reproducible? Thats the key difference between a scientific and a esoteric experiment. But you totally can investigate whether divine blessed guano shit cures cancer in a scientific way. Most researchers just won't waste their time with it. Experiments are expensive. This is why most experiments are indeed only conducted, if there is a solid theory about the process and not a shot in the blue. (And another actually sad part today is, that many new if not most scientific papers out there are actually not reproducible anymore (at least not with the data provided), but no one cares or does something about it, except complaining, because there is nothing to win, from redoing an experiment of someone else. Reputation and grants demand new research.)
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      > Experiments are expensive I wish there was an app where I could design experiments, and people could opt-in to participating in them. I'd of course participate in other people's experiments . The app could handle the statistical reasoning. Every now and then, there would be a strong enough signal in the data to attract "real" scientists to problems that would otherwise go unexplored. People are gonna do weird stuff anyhow, we might as well see if some good can come of it.
pixl97 4y ago
Working with the healthcare system is like a marriage, it requires 100% from both sides. I've had friends with relatively common illnesses like high blood pressure just not take care of themselves via diet, medicine, and exercise, then blame the medical system when their conditions got worse. At the same time I watched my sisters health degrade over years while she fervently tried to do everything possible to make it better and saw many specialists when they said nothing was wrong and she was being a hypochondriac. It was finally after very effectively documenting everything about her condition and keeping it in a binder and keeping daily charts of her vitals, that a doctor stated "You have some very rare condition, now we have to figure out what it is". Healthcare is deeply personal and individualized at the end of the day. The problem is we don't have the trained doctors and systems to give the level of care needed. And on the other hand, a lot of individuals don't put for one reason or another, the needed work to ensure they have good health outcomes.
akira2501 4y ago
> Most people do pretty irrational stuff, based on stories of a doctor in my family. The doctor gets self reported snapshots from a patients memory. It amuses me as an engineer that they detect what seems irrational, but never follow up on it in any meaningful way or ever attempt to observe the actual reality of their patients lives. The lack of time for real follow up is understandable, but the unwillingness to accept that this fact, more than anything, colors the way they see their patients is a little maddening. So, I always find it understandable when someone decides they'd rather take their care entirely into their own hands.
- hakunin 4y ago
  You know how it’s always easy to educate your colleagues when they make a sub-optimal architectural decisions that could bite them in the long run? How readily they accept your insight and proceed to rethink their mental models? No? Not even experienced engineers? Now imagine an average patient, like a mom with 7 kids that doesn’t speak English, or a 16 year old dad who smells intensely of pot. Vast majority of the patients are very different than our engineering bubbles, and doctors are humans who are trying their best. For people who are willing to have a deeper conversation, some doctors will engage more meaningfully. But most of the process for doctors is to give you instructions to follow, then when you report back, alter them, or proceed as before. Most people try the first thing doctor asked, and if it didn’t immediately work, change it themselves, and/or go to a new doctor. Then complain how they’ve been to 12 doctors and nobody helped, but then they stumbled on some YouTube guy who said to take 5000mg of vitamin C every 2 hours, and their back pain went away (hint: it went away on its own).

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

Experiments are science, and if we knew how they’d turn out beforehand they wouldn’t be experiments. Sort of definitionally you can get pretty weird or unsafe and if you’re comfortable with it not working it’s still a totally valid experiment.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Experiments are potentially science. Not all experiments are done in a scientific manner. (And even then, experimentation is only a part of the scientific process.)
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
The article is about someone following what is basically the established diagnostic and treatment flow for sleep apnea. It’s not exactly an experiment. He was pushing the process forward faster than his medical system could, but it wasn’t novel or experimental.
version_five 4y ago
No, experiments are really only science in the usual sense if you have an expectation of how they will turn out and you run the experiment to test your hypothesis. And properly constructing the hypothesis, to include past knowledge and some causal mechanism is vitally important, the causal part being often neglected even in "real" science. There was a lot of this during Covid (which I know is a bad example because of it's political baggage, but anyway). Various "x cures / helps with covid" trends (sometimes including studies) but not really based on a anything. It's not really scientific to just imagine something could work, and then try it. Contrast it with vaccines, where, regardless of your view on the covid one, there's an actual plausible causal pathway from being exposed to it to getting immunity, so it's possible and a legit thing to do to run an experiment to see if it works.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "so it's possible and a legit thing to do to run an experiment to see if it works. " I think it is possible and legit scientific to run experiments on allmost anything, no matter how weird. What matters is how you do the experiment and what is the result - does it work? And if it does, is it reproducible? Thats the key difference between a scientific and a esoteric experiment. But you totally can investigate whether divine blessed guano shit cures cancer in a scientific way. Most researchers just won't waste their time with it. Experiments are expensive. This is why most experiments are indeed only conducted, if there is a solid theory about the process and not a shot in the blue. (And another actually sad part today is, that many new if not most scientific papers out there are actually not reproducible anymore (at least not with the data provided), but no one cares or does something about it, except complaining, because there is nothing to win, from redoing an experiment of someone else. Reputation and grants demand new research.)
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    > Experiments are expensive I wish there was an app where I could design experiments, and people could opt-in to participating in them. I'd of course participate in other people's experiments . The app could handle the statistical reasoning. Every now and then, there would be a strong enough signal in the data to attract "real" scientists to problems that would otherwise go unexplored. People are gonna do weird stuff anyhow, we might as well see if some good can come of it.

pixl97 4y ago

Working with the healthcare system is like a marriage, it requires 100% from both sides. I've had friends with relatively common illnesses like high blood pressure just not take care of themselves via diet, medicine, and exercise, then blame the medical system when their conditions got worse. At the same time I watched my sisters health degrade over years while she fervently tried to do everything possible to make it better and saw many specialists when they said nothing was wrong and she was being a hypochondriac. It was finally after very effectively documenting everything about her condition and keeping it in a binder and keeping daily charts of her vitals, that a doctor stated "You have some very rare condition, now we have to figure out what it is". Healthcare is deeply personal and individualized at the end of the day. The problem is we don't have the trained doctors and systems to give the level of care needed. And on the other hand, a lot of individuals don't put for one reason or another, the needed work to ensure they have good health outcomes.

akira2501 4y ago

> Most people do pretty irrational stuff, based on stories of a doctor in my family. The doctor gets self reported snapshots from a patients memory. It amuses me as an engineer that they detect what seems irrational, but never follow up on it in any meaningful way or ever attempt to observe the actual reality of their patients lives. The lack of time for real follow up is understandable, but the unwillingness to accept that this fact, more than anything, colors the way they see their patients is a little maddening. So, I always find it understandable when someone decides they'd rather take their care entirely into their own hands.

hakunin 4y ago
You know how it’s always easy to educate your colleagues when they make a sub-optimal architectural decisions that could bite them in the long run? How readily they accept your insight and proceed to rethink their mental models? No? Not even experienced engineers? Now imagine an average patient, like a mom with 7 kids that doesn’t speak English, or a 16 year old dad who smells intensely of pot. Vast majority of the patients are very different than our engineering bubbles, and doctors are humans who are trying their best. For people who are willing to have a deeper conversation, some doctors will engage more meaningfully. But most of the process for doctors is to give you instructions to follow, then when you report back, alter them, or proceed as before. Most people try the first thing doctor asked, and if it didn’t immediately work, change it themselves, and/or go to a new doctor. Then complain how they’ve been to 12 doctors and nobody helped, but then they stumbled on some YouTube guy who said to take 5000mg of vitamin C every 2 hours, and their back pain went away (hint: it went away on its own).