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You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

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Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#121

Post by beagle3 »

phren0logy wrote: post #44
bad_user wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with much of modern medicine is that much of it is based on flawed and biased statistical studies. Whether this is done because medical personnel don't have training in statistics, or because such studies generate funding, I don't know, but something is definitely rotten. Let's take anything involving nutrition. Some challenges are: (1) people lie, (2) such studies can't be double-blind so placebo kicks i…

When you cannot control all the variables, it's important to have a large enough sample that the randomness in each direction for the different variables essentially cancels itself out. Also what does "the statistical significance of short-term studies is zero" mean? I don't think it means what you think it means. I would argue that short-term studies (for nutrition anyway) have little clinical significance, despite…

> When you cannot control all the variables, it's important to have a large enough sample that the randomness in each direction for the different variables essentially cancels itself out.

That's nice in theory, but does not happen for most published research.

> I'm in medicine, and I read papers all the time detecting a statistical difference between control and experimental groups, but the difference is so tiny that it's meaningless.

I'm trained in statistics. My ex was an MD. I used to read the NEJM for fun for a couple of years. Most of the results published are barely statistically significant for the small group they tested ("our sample included 40 caucasian females between the ages of 37 and 48, and we have a p value of 0.03" with no mention of the context which might make that p value meaningless - but let's assume they got that part right). And then, a couple of years later, some other study takes that result as absolute truth, but assumes it applies to any woman aged >30. And a couple of years later, it is assumed to be universal and speculated to apply to males as well.

Is your experience different?

> I blame bad science reporting for a lot of the anger you are feeling.

I blame tenure publishing requirements. While bad reporting certainly deserves its share of contempt, people these days do everything in order to meet the publishing requirements for tenure. Most stay away from outright fabrication, but otherwise every manipulation of the data that would make it fit for a higher caliber publication is being done as long as it is not outright fraudulent -- including dropping the background context so nicely exemplified by this xkcd comic http://xkcd.com/882/ . It often is the researchers doing the bad reporting with no outside help.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#122

Post by beagle3 »

dmauro wrote: post #108
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

I had to vote this up because of the meta-nature of the article. If anybody makes a comment disagreeing with it while sharing an anecdote they only play into's the author's theme! It's like accusing somebody of being in denial: there's nothing they can say in return that doesn't somehow support the idea that they are in denial. Love it. Having said that, this is another really bad article in what seems like an endles…

The author was referring to contrarian anecdotes in reply to statistical data, not someone's opinion. - He is only arguing that there is universal truth in proxy by arguing that the scientific method is more valuable than anecdotal evidence. If you don't agree with that, you probably disagree with most of HN (pure conjecture, does anyone else here think anecdotal evidence is more valuable than statistical analysis?)…

> He is only arguing that there is universal truth in proxy by arguing that the scientific method is more valuable than anecdotal evidence.

The strawman here is in equating (published) statistical analysis with the scientific method. Of course the scientific method is more valuable, but that's not necessarily relevant.

Please have a look at http://xkcd.com/882/ if you haven't already - what this comic describes is a very valid statistical analysis, according to the "scientific method", (only neglecting base rates like 99% of published papers do).

This is (unfortunately) very commonly practiced in the life sciences, including medicine -- sometimes knowingly but mostly unknowingly. Bad reporting not required for a horrible, long lasting effect on the future.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#123

Post by iy56 »

beagle3 wrote: post #119

You shouldn't downvote contrarian anecdotes. You should just take them at face value for what they are. His notion that in the field of medicine you should disregard contrarian anecdotes because there's statistical evidence is horrible advice. If you actually looked at said statistical evidence, you'd realize it is very rarely strong, and often only relevant to 70% or so of the population (which is great for 2 out of…

>You should just take them at face value for what they are.

The problem is that this is impossible for most people.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#124

Post by Symmetry »

vannevar wrote: post #91

You shouldn't downvote to censor relevant information, period. You should only downvote if the material violates site guidelines. Downvoting to disagree is lazy, substituting easy censorship for thoughtful response. Instead, post your counter-argument or upvote an existing opinion that already expresses your position.

Censoring relevant information is, of course, never good but the authors contention was that the information isn't actually relevant. Its always good that people who are wrong get a cogent reply, but beyond that adding a "me too" post doesn't have any more benefit than a downvote does. I used to just upvote post I agreed with, but since those are no longer public the only way to clue readers in to what the consensus is is to downvote.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#125

Post by loup-vaillant »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #69
loup-vaillant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just not some people. It's everyone . Including you, me, and those who know about the various failure modes. And please don't straw man me. Personal experience is mostly great. Successful entrepreneurs may have better decision making processes, not just more luck. Programming issues should be weighted on, since there are so little reliable studies here, and the field is so young. Etc. I was just talking about th…

Disagree. Successful entrepreneurs are lottery winners with attitude, by and large. The programming field is no longer young, we should give up that old excuse. And no you are not being straw-manned, the argument is. Good to not take things personal here. Studies are necessarily narrow and context-laden, even 'solid and definite' ones. The suggestion to automatically downvote anecdotes is too broad, and should be ref…

> Successful entrepreneurs are lottery winners with attitude, by and large.

Possibly. Actually I don't know. Anyone knowledgeable should disregard my opinion.

> The programming field is no longer young, we should give up that old excuse.

Right. However, I don't feel like we're anywhere near clearing the chaos around the psychology of programming. I still don't know for instance why so many people cannot understand functional programming, which I personally find simpler than procedural programming in most cases I deal with. Or why technical debt doesn't seem to be taken seriously. Programming is several decades old, but it still feels young to me.

> And no you are not being straw-manned, the argument is. Good to not take things personal here.

Hmm, yes, I was too aggressive here. Sorry.

> Studies are necessarily narrow and context-laden, even 'solid and definite' ones.

Ah, I didn't think of this danger. You're right, we at the very least need safeguards. Like, tying downvotes to reasons why they happen, so we (high karma users, moderators?) may be able to nullify those which turn out to be bogus. But that's complicated.

Or, maybe we could just not downvote, but point out in a reply that this is contrarian anecdotal evidence?

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#127

Post by j_baker »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

I had to vote this up because of the meta-nature of the article. If anybody makes a comment disagreeing with it while sharing an anecdote they only play into's the author's theme! It's like accusing somebody of being in denial: there's nothing they can say in return that doesn't somehow support the idea that they are in denial. Love it. Having said that, this is another really bad article in what seems like an endles…

Another thing worth pointing out: how common is it that an actual valid scientific study is posted and someone says "Well this isn't true in my experience"?

More often than not, it's a case where some other article summarizes (most likely in an incorrect way) another study or someone on HN mentions a study, etc.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#129

Post by guelo »

beagle3 wrote: post #117
slurgfest wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never made any claim regarding my own certainty of knowledge, that is a straw man. Please refrain from giving me personal advice when you know nothing about me. There is a huge difference between saying "something is true, but I don't know what (yet)" and "there is no such thing as truth"; between "a lot of people try to commandeer medicine to sell things" and "there is no actual truth of anything to discover in th…

> Please refrain from giving me personal advice when you know nothing about me. I was not giving you any personal advice. I was taking your "you" as a general statement to the reader, and replying with the same language pattern (e.g. if I said "you can bring a horse to water", I would actually mean "one can bring a horse to water".) > There is a huge difference between saying "something is true, but I don't know what…

It's one thing when learned people dig into the science and find issues to disagree about, it is completely different when some ignorant reporter or blogger disagrees just based on anecdotes or how truthy it feels to them

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#130

Post by tomjen3 »

Confusion wrote: post #95
tomjen3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some people have bad, even fatal, reactions to vaccines shouldn't the physicians first duty (do no harm) mean that they should separate the people who would suffer sideffects from those who wouldn't?

No, not if 1 in 10000 people suffers that reaction, while there are equally negative consequences for 2 or more of those 1000 people if they don't get the vaccine and there is no known way to detect who will have the bad reaction. And the ratio is much worse for actual vaccinations. You don't want to see what not vaccinating kids against polio results in...

I have seen the pictures, and the interviews.

But those are hardly data and the kids who got the live version (due to a fuck up) are hardly better of.

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