Random Thoughts: Epistemology in Medicine and Carrots

[j.]

Some doctors like conveying the impression that their diagnoses and treatments are scientific, somewhat in the sense that physics or chemistry, or maybe even math, are rigorous or scientific.

But thinking more carefully, it quickly becomes clear that the standard of rigor is much lower. Consider the raw carrot advice Peat gives. There are some plausible explanations of why it might be beneficial, and when people try it they feel better, so that's why they keep doing it. There is nowhere near a scientific proof.

Imagine that you wanted to prove that having a daily raw carrot on an empty stomach is healthy, both in the short run and in the long run. How would you do that? Can you do it based solely on the chemical compositions of the carrot and intestine and how they interact? Or is the only way to have a bunch of people, divided in two groups, one which takes the carrot, and the other who doesn't? The latter experiment might be the closer to a 'proof', but it's very distant from the rigor of physics, or even something with less rigor like engineering.

So, if science can't prove, properly speaking, that a carrot is beneficial for health both in the short run and in the long run, it obviously can't prove much complicated things. So the proof process in medicine goes like this: there is a plausible argument, some reasons why a practice might be healthy. We do it. If people improve other health markers after a while, we keep doing it, otherwise, we stop. That can barely be called scientific. It's just a little bit above the methodology of cooking, of using new ingredients and finding new principles in a process of trial and error.

 

[j.]

The methodology in medicine shouldn't be called, I think, scientific. It would more properly be called a sophisticated method of trial and error, with help of scientific principles from other areas of knowledge, but which have great limitations in their applicability to human health and disease.

 

[j.]

All I'm trying to say here is that Ray Peat would be a good cook.

 

[Blossom]

They are calling it evidence based medicine these days but the problem is that if a treatment (a drug) is profitable, even if it doesn't work (or is harmful), it is usually not stopped IF it can be glossed over and made to appear beneficial. If carrots could be patented and sold at a great profit someone would find a way to prove they were beneficial.
I'd rather be a cook than a medical doctor any day.

 

[j.]

Being a cook seems to me is low stress a lot of the time. I bet they have great sex. Assuming, of course, you're not a poor cook, you need to be paid well to have a low stress life.

 

[j.]

One thing people who want to have a scientific aura when they give medicine advice do is they show off their scientific expertise in some related area, say chemistry, molecular biology, or whatever, but no matter how complex and deep the knowledge in that scientific area is, it's barely applicable to understand health in the human body. A whole body of knowledge, say even biochemistry, is only a tiny fraction of what can be known about the human body.

 

[Suikerbuik]

You're citing a sore point. Do agree to some extent, but the methodology of being a cook is something that may turn out to be wrong. I mean changing things based on our feeling may turn out to be great in short term but harmful long term. Why would things feel great in the beginning? Because it is very much possible that we interfere with some processes that are involved in immunity and suppressing this can be a HUGE relieve at first, but fuelling the underneath scalding fire that may sometime (after years) break out.

Won't be the case for everyone but can be for some, depening on the situation you're in. Hopefully the increased metabolism is able to take care of this issue. This possible but doesn't have to be so. We will see, time will tell, actually I don't think there's 1 particular truth.

Anyway may be in the coming decade views will change a bit, some science is really applicable other is not.. Medical treatment is flawed indeed and science is much further although you don't here so much about it, as they also can't assemble the puzzle yet. Though most science is just crap, especially when it's supported with the idea to make money.

Having said all this, I think my message is clear now and will only keep it Peaty from now on! Be critical, be skeptical and prove me wrong!

 

[Such_Saturation]

Imagine that you wanted to prove that having a daily raw carrot on an empty stomach is healthy, both in the short run and in the long run. How would you do that? Can you do it based solely on the chemical compositions of the carrot and intestine and how they interact? Or is the only way to have a bunch of people, divided in two groups, one which takes the carrot, and the other who doesn't? The latter experiment might be the closer to a 'proof', but it's very distant from the rigor of physics, or even something with less rigor like engineering.

So, if science can't prove, properly speaking, that a carrot is beneficial for health both in the short run and in the long run, it obviously can't prove much complicated things. So the proof process in medicine goes like this: there is a plausible argument, some reasons why a practice might be healthy. We do it. If people improve other health markers after a while, we keep doing it, otherwise, we stop. That can barely be called scientific. It's just a little bit above the methodology of cooking, of using new ingredients and finding new principles in a process of trial and error.

Trial and error IS scientific. Physics work like this too, it's just more cryptic. Truly to <<prove that having a daily raw carrot on an empty stomach is healthy [...] based solely on the chemical compositions of the carrot and intestine and how they interact>> is something dangerous, reductionism to the extreme (unfortunately big pharma reasons like this). An error might pop up a century later, but the scientist integrates the knowledge across the various time scales and if he's lucky the model is then enriched.

However if you reject the notion of time scale and the substantial similarities (connections) that they will share between each other, well that's not very productive isn't it?