Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I wrote something here but I lost it to browser issue, so shorter:
tl;dr my issue isn't with non-expert science, my issue is specifically with this guy's results and conclusions. It's really easy to 'cite data', there are piles of bad studies everywhere, and you can draw ridiculous conclusions from reasonable studies easily. Tweet threads or better blogposts with strong conclusions are fine, but the results need to be correct, and this guy (and a lot of other vaguely right-wing posters) are not putting out correct stuff.
this is what I was thinking of when I wrote OP. Lots of data is cited, but it's not useful data. Japan high EPA+DHA (sure), "There’s a national correlation -0.63 (strong) between seafood consumption and homicide rate." is uncited (nation-level correlations like thisare totally useless, horrifically confounded), cited "The effect of omega-3s on aggression is powerful enough that it has also been noticed in dogs" n=36, in dogs is not evidence for anything in humans. He quotes "The mood profile was improved after Omega-3 with increased vigour and reduced anger, anxiety and depression states. This was associated with an effect on reactivity with a reduction of reaction time in the Go/ No-Go and Sustained Attention tests" without citing it, which is from this - a n=33 psych study that finds a large number of effects of omega-3! It improves scores on the sustained attention (p<.01, p<.0003 for physical reaction time and EMG latency) and go/no-go (p<.0005, p<.0001) tests, improves vigour (p<.0001), reduces anger (p<.001), anxiety (p<.01), depression (p<.01), fatigue (p<.04), confusion (p<.04). Ofc, the systematic review i could find on one of those topics (depression), found no significant result despite a pooled N of 3000. So I just don't believe that paper, tbh.
This is what I mean - yeah, he cites data, but not in a 'literature review to find out what's accurate post replication crisis' sense, but a 'here's a paper that agrees with me!' sense. It's really easy to get papers that agree with you! There are some 'meta-analysis of 4000 RCTs of traditional chinese medicine finds that it works' papers, but that doesn't mean that TCM works!
His most recent tweet thread (which I still haven't read, just saw when i clicked his profile and it was relevant) ends with
With a link to the paper ... is this supposed to be evidence that omega-3 helps with inflammation? "Omega 3 helps with vitamin d/inflammation/depression/schizophrenia -> it helps with TB" is not a conclusion you can make if you've even had a HS biology course. Benadryl+SSRIs+antipsychotics+IV vitamin D won't treat TB.
Even his non-sourced assertions are just weird
huh?
More options
Context Copy link