Comment · Thu, November 13, 2014 · Ceretropic
How does /r/nootrpics feel about anecdotal reports?
Original post in this thread
smellybaconreader · 9 points
Inspired by this thread over in /r/psychology, I'm curious how this community views anecdotal evidence. Sift through any thread in this subreddit and you'll find dozens of anecdotal nootropic reports. To me, that's frustrating.
I can't help but to agree with the posters over in that thread who are decidely against anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is the lowest form of scientific evidence; it's notoriously unreliable, and borderline useless. Pretty much the only value I see is to generate hypotheses which can be scientifically tested.
What do you guys think?
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
Also, please excuse my painful typo in the title.
What they were answering
chrico031 · 14 points
If you eliminated anecdotal reports from this sub, ~75% of the content would disappear.
There isn't much money to be made in studying most of the substances we talk about here, so anecdotes is what we have to work with for the most part.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
When studies are posted, nobody comments. I have to usually come in a start some semblance of a discussion about the study's findings. The people commenting on how the sub sucks, because of a lack of scientific discussion, certainly do not show up. So we are left with scientific posts with little comments, and a boatload of anecdotal posts with a lot of comments. How can we change that, if those that want more scientific discussion do not participate when there is a chance to? This whole post is a circlejerk about something that everyone can change, but choose not to. /u/shillthrill is usually the one posting most of the studies he finds.