4 ms·

Isabel, a cute 10-year-old girl from Texas who loved riding horses, walked into my office a year and a half ago with one of the most severe cases of autoimmune

Isabel, a cute 10-year-old girl from Texas who loved riding horses, walked into my office a year and a half ago with one of the most severe cases of autoimmune disease I had ever seen. Her face was swollen, her skin was inflamed, her joints were swollen, her immune system was attacking her entire body–her muscles, her skin, her joints, her blood vessels, her liver, and her white and red blood cells. Isabel couldn’t squeeze her hand or make a fist. The tips of her fingers and toes were always cold from Raynaud’s disease that inflammed her blood vessels. She was tired and miserable and was losing her hair. Isabel was on elephant doses of intravenous steroids every three weeks just to keep her alive, and she was taking prednisone, aspirin, acid blockers, and methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug used to shut down the immune system daily. Two months after I first saw Isabel and discovered and treated the underlying causes of her inflammation–after, as she says she, “stopped eating gluten, dairy, and sugar and took some supplements” she was symptom free. In less than a year, she was completely healthy, her blood tests were normal, and she was off all her medication. ---- That is pseudoscience.

kolev 12y ago
So, eliminating allergens is pseudo science?
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I can't tell you what u/conception means specifically, but I can point out that the story cites exactly one individual and has no control group. If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, you are conducting bad science.
  - kolev 12y ago
    You don't need to do a study when you're treating something as basic as gluten sensitivity.
  - jkimmel 12y ago
    >If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, you are conducting bad science. I would argue that a sample of 1 with no control is not worthy of being called science.
    - kolev 12y ago
      Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing physician, not a disconnected from patients (i.e. the real world) researcher. He's identified an intolerance and he's treating it, and he got positive results. What's unscientific in his centuries-old approach?
      - DanBC 12y ago
        You need a control group to protect yourself from bias. This is true even for people doing science who don't have an agenda.
        kolev 12y ago
        So, if I'm a physician, and if somebody comes to me with signs of a peanut allergy, I need to first do a control group before I treat by asking them to eliminate peanuts from their diet and see if they will get the symptoms? You're not being serious! Gluten intolerance is often asymptomatic and does harm that's not so obvious and directly correlated. In fact, it's probably better to have Celiac's and completely eliminate gluten with no doubts than have the asymptomatic form and keep living in denial!
        DanBC 12y ago
        Peanut allergy is real. You can tell when someone is allergic to peanuts because of anaphylactic shock. That other stuff? It's mostly bullshit spewed out by charlatans who are exploiting people.
        kolev 12y ago
        Celiac disease is also very real.
  - ScottBurson 12y ago
    I'm afraid science is more complex than that. It's true that you don't have a proven theory, verified to the point that it can be considered settled, until you have a statistically significant sample, a control group, and several replications. But a lot happens before you get to that point. You can't test every hypothesis you come up with; there's no time. The hypotheses that are worth testing have to be sorted from those that aren't. In fact, the medical literature is full of case studies. Do they prove anything? No. But they suggest things to try in subsequent cases that seem similar -- and if a technique finds enough success in practice, maybe it's worth doing a study on.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      I guess I could have been more exact: If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, and you think it proves something, you are conducting bad science.
      - ScottBurson 12y ago
        Okay, but the passage 'conception quoted said nothing about proving anything. I don't know what source that was quoted from or what other claims that document might make. (The quoted passage doesn't even tell us what theory its anecdote is being presented in support of.) But to claim that this passage in itself establishes that the source is "pseudoscience" or "bad science" is, frankly, ridiculous. You know, the scientific method has no special dispensations for orthodoxies -- if anything, the very notion of an orthodoxy should be repellent to a scientist. But scientists are human, and many people are attracted to orthodoxies. Yet if there's anything we know, it's that all theories, orthodox or not, have their limitations. Given that, isn't it a good thing that there are people willing to explore unorthodox possibilities even if most of them are wrong? I'm not suggesting credulity. I'm suggesting humility: a keen awareness of how much we still don't know.

kolev 12y ago

So, eliminating allergens is pseudo science?

sliverstorm 12y ago
I can't tell you what u/conception means specifically, but I can point out that the story cites exactly one individual and has no control group. If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, you are conducting bad science.
- kolev 12y ago
  You don't need to do a study when you're treating something as basic as gluten sensitivity.
- jkimmel 12y ago
  >If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, you are conducting bad science. I would argue that a sample of 1 with no control is not worthy of being called science.
  - kolev 12y ago
    Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing physician, not a disconnected from patients (i.e. the real world) researcher. He's identified an intolerance and he's treating it, and he got positive results. What's unscientific in his centuries-old approach?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      You need a control group to protect yourself from bias. This is true even for people doing science who don't have an agenda.
      - kolev 12y ago
        So, if I'm a physician, and if somebody comes to me with signs of a peanut allergy, I need to first do a control group before I treat by asking them to eliminate peanuts from their diet and see if they will get the symptoms? You're not being serious! Gluten intolerance is often asymptomatic and does harm that's not so obvious and directly correlated. In fact, it's probably better to have Celiac's and completely eliminate gluten with no doubts than have the asymptomatic form and keep living in denial!
        DanBC 12y ago
        Peanut allergy is real. You can tell when someone is allergic to peanuts because of anaphylactic shock. That other stuff? It's mostly bullshit spewed out by charlatans who are exploiting people.
        kolev 12y ago
        Celiac disease is also very real.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  I'm afraid science is more complex than that. It's true that you don't have a proven theory, verified to the point that it can be considered settled, until you have a statistically significant sample, a control group, and several replications. But a lot happens before you get to that point. You can't test every hypothesis you come up with; there's no time. The hypotheses that are worth testing have to be sorted from those that aren't. In fact, the medical literature is full of case studies. Do they prove anything? No. But they suggest things to try in subsequent cases that seem similar -- and if a technique finds enough success in practice, maybe it's worth doing a study on.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    I guess I could have been more exact: If you don't have a statistically significant sample size and a control group, and you think it proves something, you are conducting bad science.
    - ScottBurson 12y ago
      Okay, but the passage 'conception quoted said nothing about proving anything. I don't know what source that was quoted from or what other claims that document might make. (The quoted passage doesn't even tell us what theory its anecdote is being presented in support of.) But to claim that this passage in itself establishes that the source is "pseudoscience" or "bad science" is, frankly, ridiculous. You know, the scientific method has no special dispensations for orthodoxies -- if anything, the very notion of an orthodoxy should be repellent to a scientist. But scientists are human, and many people are attracted to orthodoxies. Yet if there's anything we know, it's that all theories, orthodox or not, have their limitations. Given that, isn't it a good thing that there are people willing to explore unorthodox possibilities even if most of them are wrong? I'm not suggesting credulity. I'm suggesting humility: a keen awareness of how much we still don't know.