3 ms·
How substantive is an n=1 anecdote about some biomarker interventions with no hard endpoints?
by tokenadult 13y ago
How substantive is an n=1 anecdote about some biomarker interventions with no hard endpoints?
- tptacek 13y agostatistically powerful stories ⊂ substantive stories
- tokenadult 13y agoThomas, in relation to my question and Daniel's answer, could you kindly explain the direction of the subset relation you are talking about there?
- dang 13y agoIt's not a peer-reviewed controlled study, of course, but HN isn't a scientific journal. In my view the post is clearly substantive enough for a general interest site. There's such a thing as a substantive anecdote, and self-observation and self-experimentation have a long and noble history. It's wrong, of course, to draw hard scientific conclusions from such a piece, but it's not wrong to read one, nor to write one, nor to do this kind of experimentation, nor to find it interesting. Plus there's a hacker angle in the DIY aspect. That's my take on it, anyway. I thought it was cool, and I hope that HN readers are smart enough not to draw the obvious bogus conclusions.
- jamesbritt 13y agoOne of the upsides to such posts is they can trigger comments that reference more rigorous sources. While I don't think this is intentional it feels like a variation on the trick of getting an answer to a question by either saying something can't be done or by posting obviously wrong or otherwise flawed code. Basically, xkcd 386.