I suppose that is a valid point. Oxford English Dictionary defines anecdote as “an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay”, and data as “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis”. English is not my first language, so I tend to use the literal definitions of words instead of colloquialisms. I understand that such a perspective does not make me right and you wrong, but that is simply how I use the English language.
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It’s a phrase I used to use, before I came to realize that it isn’t actually true. It is an over simplification that simplifies the issue to the point that it becomes a false statement.
I think that if we want to champion science, rationality and clear communication it behooves us to model it, not resort to pithy, but inaccurate rhetorical devices.
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Little kids usually aren’t in it for the money.
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I think the issue is that we all know that twice as much haphazardly collected data of dubious reliability does not become twice as reliable and want a shorthand to that effect, and “the plural of anecdote is not data” is a handy way to share that intent - it just happens to be misleading. I’d add that it is a compound claim, a rhetorical trick that combines two claims into one phrase, where it is a fact that the plural of anecdote is literally not “data”. The plural of annedote is annecdotes, not “data”. But the implied claim, that data cannot be comprised of anecdotes, is false.
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I’m not sure True Believers necessarily are, either. Though some certainly combine True Belief with avarice (coughMikeAdamscough)
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An anecdote implies that the data, if it were reduced to a true or false, can not be determined to be true or false. At least when I record whether or not a temperature is below freezing, it is deterministic within a bound of error. An anecdote isn’t. At least that’s my take.
As ActionAbe pointed out not all data is instrumented recordings, but can, and does, often consist of subjective reporting. Phone surveys, for example, undeniably create data, data which does not meet the narrow definition you just gave. Quality of data is something we can seek to account for, and anecdotes are low quality data. But that doesn’t make them not data.
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I do think there’s some room for fuzziness here though.
– The placebo effect is a real thing.
– The experience of pain, and pain relief, is always subjective and anecdotal.
I do think if you pay someone for alternative medicine you should realize that a placebo is what you’re getting.
But I’ve certainly had the experience of sore knees/back/shoulders/neck being less sore after unscientific hand-wavy woo freely given, and you know what? I’ll take it. It’s like a kiss from mommy to make it better. If she hasn’t been licking the wrong kinds of frogs it’s not going to do any harm. The idea that attention from someone who cares can make you change how you feel seems pretty basic and… while unfalsifiable in a scientific sense, also undeniable in a basic human sense.
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Ahh, Reiki.
An energy force that transfers from one being to another, giving pleasant feelings in both the transmitter and the receiver. The receiver then goes on to spread the word about how great it is and often goes on to become a transmitter (or maybe conduit is a better word) themselves.
Dunno about anyone else, but that sounds an awful lot like an alien mind-controlling parasite to me. 
And don’t even get me started on Toxoplasma Gondii… :tinfoil hat:
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I was about to make the same point. The placebo effect can be helpful. If standing on your head and singing makes your headache go away - go for it. If taking a sugar pill can calm you from an anxiety attack, then yay. Sometime believing you are doing something to help your medical problem is enough to alleviate some of it.
The harm in alternative medicine is from people extorting money for miracles and telling people not to trust medical science. That should be criminal as it is harmful and dangerous.
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See also: Steve Jobs
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I also completely agree with this point. My mother had and eventually died of cancer. After the chemo stopped working, she started seeking alternative medicine treatments including shark cartilage which was exploding in popularity at the time. I don’t even want to think of how much money was spent on different shark cartilage products. I still get mad when I think back at this – not at my mother for seeking alternative treatment, but at the quackery behind the claims that this would help. Despite what the book title said, sharks do get cancer.
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The problem is that using therapies that are only placebo effect can be lethal. The placebo affect only effects some subjective symptoms of disease in some people some of the time. It does not affect the organic cause of disease at all. So people can be led to thinking they are getting better when, in fact, they are not.
A study examined the effects of an Albuterol inhaler, 2 kinds of placebo (sham acupuncture and a sham inhaler) and no treatment on asthma. Here’s the subjective improvement, as reported by patients:
Wow! The placebo effect works as well as dangerous Big Pharma drugs, but without any of the side effects!!!
Not.
Here’s the actual objective measurement of their breathing ability, the change in maximum forced expiratory volume:
The placebos had zero effect.
However, the placebos gave the patients the dangerous false impression that they were better when, in fact, they were not.
The lesson is not that we should go to quacks to feel better, it’s that we should demand that HMO’s and insurers pay doctors enough so that they can give us their time and personal attention that helps us subjectively feel better, in addition to the actual treatments that treat the organic causes of disease.
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So, i wanted to find if maca (a peruvian plant) root extract had the libido-enhancing properties (don’t ask) that some scientific studies (peruvian scientific studies) seem to suggest.
Thus, not one, but two times i created a series of pill boxes (the process entailed blindfolding, and video recording myself blindfolded, but again, don’t ask) that contained either a placebo, the maca extract, and started taking the pills from the containers, one container at a time, in random order.
After exhausting all the containers i unveiled the content of said containers, and compared it with a sex-libido diary (don’t… well, you know by now) to see if there was a match when i was taking more maca.
This made me discover two things
- apparently maca does not have much of an effect on me (at least not on my libido)
- i have waaay too much time on my hands
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Yes, but were you double-blindfolded?
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Oh yes, i didn’t know what i was taking, and i didn’t know what i was giving to me.
But i did know that in the end i was taking some maca so i guess i was one and a half blindfolded, and hence i triple blindfolded during the initial setup to compensate.
This however left me double-dumbfounded because i was wondering, if i can’t see a blindfold because there is another one in front of it, does the tree really fall on the maca extract when making that noise i can’t see because i am blindfolded?
Science is so hard!
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Yeah. But naked molerats don’t. So what we must do, of course, is grind up their claws into a fine powder then inject it up cancer patient’s asses.
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Yup! Because sympathetic magic. It’s why rhinoceros horn and tiger penis make you virile. And why if a plant has a leaf that looks vaguely like a kidney it means that plant cures kidney disease. Simple!
/s
I do think that is a large part of the appeal of alt med. Simple to understand nonsense from providers with good people skills is much more superficially appealing than hard to understand science from people who give you data rather than hugs. Vivid stories are more appealing than databases - well, to the average person.
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For many years I’ve had to deal with my sister touting the health benefits of echinacea or kombucha, and if I bring up that tests have been done, and there’s no scientific evidence of any benefit, it makes no difference to her. For some people anecdotal evidence is enough.
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It is much harder to unlearn a belief than to learn it.
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