"What do you have besides the oath? Are you doing reasearch, trying new things, keeping track of results, genuinely searching at long last for something that will actually work?" I agree with this, at least as a start. I would say "genuinely searching" is a tricky thing. Diet is one of the most sought areas to improve upon, and one of the most controversial for someone just looking around. One may think that looking at pubmed makes their search more rational, but that may just lead them to fall prey to existing biases in statistically confused researchers.

"For if you do succeed, it won't have been a miracle: you should be able to pin down at least approximately the causal factors that got you to where you are. And it has to be a plausible story." I only partially agree with this. Having a plausible-sounding story helps one commit and follow-through, but I see little evidence success is connected with actually understanding the causes of that success-which is why teaching excellence is so difficult. I say this agreeing that knowing the causal factors would give you more power.