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 · 5 points
I think it also comes down to most people not being comfortable enough with academic papers to comment on them.
In the general public, if you gave 100 people any of the scientific papers that have been posted here, I'd be willing to bet 90 would not be able to read through it and give a good summary of it.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
Sure, that's fair. But people rarely even ask for someone to explain it. Even if they cannot understand it themselves, they can certainly try and get a discussion started by asking questions.