[This is just a rant I’ve had saved up for a while. I’ve got a post about ginseng root coming up this week on Wednesday so stay tuned.]
These days people will clamor over themselves to righteously proclaim that something isn’t “scientifically valid,” their phrase often meaning that something isn’t peer-reviewed in an academic setting or investigated in a laboratory, or they will outright dismiss scientific information because it doesn’t meet their expectations.
Two blogs I read, one by Seth Roberts (a PhD who professed at UC Berkeley) and another by well-informed sci-fi writer Vox Day often discuss the corruption and inaccuracy of studies produced by modern academia. Mr. Roberts frequently advocates self-experimentation and using the scientific method to get reproducible results and to understand them correctly.
Truth be told, the scientific method better represents science than people in white lab coats.
While people in scientific institutions have access to more resources and have better technology to measure and document outcomes, the further removed they are from Joe Everybody, the less likely it will be that you and I can reproduce the results they’ve obtained for themselves.
For all we know, they could’ve been paid off by a corporate 3rd party in order to represent a product well. “Science” in this instance becomes a moot point.
Secondly, even scientists don’t know what they’re looking for. In Cracked’s recent piece “6 Shocking Studies That Prove Science Is Totally Broken,” they pull out five very good examples:
- A Shocking Amount of Medical Research Is Complete Bullshit
- Many Scientists Still Don’t Understand Math
- … And They Don’t Understand Statistics, Either
- Scientists Have Nearly Unlimited Room to Manipulate Data
- It’s All About the Money
The sixth one is that scientists won’t accept female applicants for some reason, but that neither is here nor there. The point is that if Cracked — a somewhat-informative humor site that has largely gone downhill in the last few years — is writing about corruption in scientific institution and publication, then you know there has got to be a problem.
I think the biggest issue however is that people blindly trust Science®
as if it were a brand name. If something says “study” it’s automatically believed and never to be questioned.
Granted, many of us aren’t inclined to pore through pages and pages of studies that have the potential to be bogus. There’s one site that does just that however. The folks over at Examine have and more or less rank the validity of claims of the efficacy of herbs and supplements based on studies that can illustrate them.
They even have a Supplement-Goals Reference Guide which is handy if you ever wanted all of the up-to-date knowledge available on herbs and supplements. As for Examine, I refer to them often throughout my site, and to be honest a lot of reference and reading could not have been done as quickly and as effortlessly without them.
Why question the science?
Ask yourself these questions: Where’s all of the institutional research on nootropics like Noopept and piracetam? Why aren’t these getting more coverage when random people are discovering the benefits and effects of these substances for themselves?
Often times, we’re left to anecdote, the information given to us by the sellers of these products, and a handful of obscure studies, so nootropics — especially the newest ones — are an exciting new frontier.
Where’s the extensive research for herbs like fenugreek and ashwagandha? Perhaps nobody wants to study these to death because they can’t be patented. That, or they haven’t come up with proprietary method to manufacture it. There has to be financial incentive for science to happen these days.
Conclusion
Science, the method of investigation used to better understand a phenomenon, is best thought of as a simple method and nothing more. Be aware of the corporate interests that lie behind many scientific studies and take that bias into account.
Scientific institutions have access to resources and educated experts, but are very much susceptible to the same corruption that can occur within any “elite” institution. With that in mind, you simply have to trust your intuition on these things. Never take the word of just one source.
Furthermore, it is entirely possible to conduct scientific experiments for yourself. Just don’t expect the scope to be as large as the pros, and don’t expect anyone to take it seriously if your findings or experiments are not able to be replicated.
If someone’s trying to sell you something, fact-check it. But don’t take the word from someone who hasn’t looked into it, or has a vested interest in a competing product. Science can typically be used as an endorsement or selling point for a particular product with studies conducted by the companies themselves.
Science is a method, not an institution appeared first on Pill Scout.
