In light of Keiths Ear Problems

[DJ Bone]

I'm about a week behind on shows right now,

But after hearing about Keith's ear problems and how the doctors cant seem to take care of it. I came across this news article I thought I might share.

As much as 90% of physicians' medical knowledge has been found to be substantially or completely wrong.

See Keith, you were Right!

[DWarrior]

Originally Posted by DJ Bone

I'm about a week behind on shows right now,

But after hearing about Keith's ear problems and how the doctors cant seem to take care of it. I came across this news article I thought I might share.

As much as 90% of physicians' medical knowledge has been found to be substantially or completely wrong.

See Keith, you were Right!

"as much as 90% of their knowledge is wrong, therefore I know better"

It's crucial to also test how much knowledge knowledge of a layperson is wrong. If 99% of what you know is wrong (and I'd imagine that's close to the real number) then it may be worthwhile to seek someone who's only 90% wrong.

FYI, medical knowledge is progressed by science, and the whole point of science is inductive: to speculate how the world works and follow the line of thinking that best fits current knowledge. In the past, that meant physicians believed Leeches were healthy because they thought bad blood causes illness. Then they thought carbonated water was a cure-all for reasons I won't go into. There's always some speculation, and so of course with time some knowledge will get outdated.

But what exactly was Keith right about? That he shouldn't go to a doctor? OK now what? He already found ear candles don't work, and probing with q-tips doesn't seem to be the solution either. Any physician would have told you that.

From the blog posts I read, all he seems to be advocating is to seek advice from several sources, know where the sources are coming from (former training, any possible biases, history). But for that you need to know how to seek out information, and also have some way of evaluating it. I think Keith has demonstrated weakness in this area with his ear candle endeavor, because many people here have linked to many sources claiming they don't do anything, while the only evidence in favor of candles was anecdotal and came from individuals on these forums who have no relevant qualifications.

[DWarrior]

Here is a sample blog post:
Making Sense of Medicine: Why We Keep Questioning Exercise and 'Healthy' Eating

I can give an example of how 90% of some studies may be refuted. The way science publications work is a scientist performs a set of experiments to test some hypothesis and then publishes their results. As Mr. Freedman says, even if their results don't agree with previous findings, the ethical thing to do is publish their results. This is to help thwart groupthink where scientists cherry-pick findings to not take flack from the rest of the community (not that they follow this code of ethics all the time, but enough to keep scientific progress occurring). So, take this situation:

1 scientist performs an experiment that validates his hypothesis and publishes. 7 others repeat his experiments and get agreeing results, they are then published. Later, someone else attempts to replicate the experiment and finds evidence to the contrary, and publishes, refuting the 8 previous studies. Eventually, another group repeats the experiment and finds they agree with the 8 studies and that the guy disagreeing had some flaw in his setup.

The consequence: 9 of the experiments agree on some set of results and the first person is validated. A single experiment to the contrary has been found to contain errors. However, 9 of the experiments had technically been "refuted", 8 early valid ones by the 1 incorrectly performed, and then the incorrectly performed experiment. Hence, 90% of the experiments in this example had at some point been refuted.

Add to this the fact that studies claiming to refute previous knowledge come from biased sources: Atkins researchers, "Creation Scientists", Oil companies' research on global warming, etc. These biased sources all serve to "refute" the other papers by unbiased scientists and pad Freedman's statistic.

Again, the lesson is to evaluate the source.

I read 2 other posts by him. One claiming studies showing links to genetics are wrong, which I wasn't entirely impressed by, but don't have enough Biology to argue. Another claiming a lot of prescriptions by doctors are wrong because there's no perfect cure and the docs have to take risks. That's not an argument for not trusting experts though, that's just a fundamental limitation of medicine that nothing else can overcome.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by DWarrior

But what exactly was Keith right about? That he shouldn't go to a doctor? OK now what? He already found ear candles don't work, and probing with q-tips doesn't seem to be the solution either. Any physician would have told you that.

Yes. Exactly.

[funnygurl1979]

Keith your ears scare me, it's been 2yrs! I've been staring at the ear wax pics in the show notes, is it possible that maybe you q-tipped out a scab and it got infected. I ask this because when i got infected by a broken tooth i was perscribed the antibiotic amoxycillin, after taking it for a week the pain got much worse and i ended up with blood poisoning. I was immune to the drug and I needed a much stronger antibiotic like Clindamycin. I'm of course not a doctor but i have alot of medical issues and I use alot of perscriptions.

[DudeEMETIB]

Maybe pop rocks & soda...but in your ear.