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I have hung around a few health related forums and left a few in disgust. The echo chamber for unproven alternative remedies, untested theories and conspiracy t
by shirro 14y ago
I have hung around a few health related forums and left a few in disgust. The echo chamber for unproven alternative remedies, untested theories and conspiracy theories totally dominates over rational discussion of evidence based medicine. I am afraid trawling this data is just going to tell practitioners that vaccines cause autism, lots of stuff about crazy diets and detoxing and the importance of organic and non-gmo produce. And that would be the least crazy stuff.
- short_circut 14y agoExactly! I imagine they have some way of filtering this out that NYtimes hasn't gone into. But who knows?
- ZoFreX 14y agoThe signal is probably stronger in what they search for than in what they read or post in forums (which far fewer people do than search for things, anyway).
- ericb 14y agoI agree about the poor data, but I don't think this is an issue chiefly because you are trawling for an untested hypothesis, which you can then test using more robust methods. This is more about what to investigate, which is nearly infinite in theory. If this points you in the right directions, all the better..