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Jiro comments on A Medical Mystery: Thyroid Hormones, Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia - Less Wrong
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Comments (159)
Sorry this discussion is not interesting to me.
It's only mildly surprising that fibromyalgia patients have lower temperature in one study, or that improvement was seen in one study with thyroid hormone. Fibromyalgia patient's having lower metabolic activity is a plausible component but does not necessarily implicate the thyroid. Taking anything with a stimulant effect would do similarly to thyroid hormone here.
People with fibromyalgia present similarly to patients with other chronic pain syndromes, and other presumed multifactorial syndromes like irritable bowel syndrome. It is associated with childhood trauma, sexual abuse, etc (just as is IBS) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9407574
It's likely a massive combination of metabolic, psychiatric/psychosonatic, social and physical factors at play here. That's because the gestalt of the condition is that someone is complaining of pain that you can't explain, which is apparent if you spend time seeing these people. Of course this is not going to be always caused by a problem in one hormonal controller of metabolism. Many (combinations of) problems can cause body pains!
I apologise that this note is less carefully proofed than previous ones but spending more time on this investigation does not seem likely to bear fruit.
Ryan, thank you, I really appreciate your time, and that is exactly the sort of thing that someone needs to say to me. I have come to the conclusion that I must be trolling.
My idea, which I have arrived at quite independently by a long chain of dodgy inferences from a minor puzzle to do with my own illness, it now seems to me can be summed up as:
Almost all the remaining unexplained human ailments can be explained as disorders of the endocrine system.
This idea seems to have been first thought of in the 1940s, and independently deduced, observed, or inferred many times since. If true, it would have a great number of disturbing implications. If untrue but widely believed, it would cause a catastrophe.
Now I look for them, there are published books suggesting this, and an entire tradition of alternative medicine based on it. Which reports success. But then, they would say that, wouldn't they?
And yet no one except a few quacks believes it.
And so my mystery is now:
Where is the obvious refutation that means that it is false?
I apologise for wasting everyone's time. I am not being sarcastic.
I realise that my argument is 'You cannot prove me wrong, and therefore I must be right'
I realise just how bad that argument is.
I realise that I have blundered into a complicated subject that I am not in the least qualified to discuss.
I have already had to discard one simple obvious explanation for a complicated problem (they are almost always wrong). I do not like to believe in chocolate teapots.
I am asking for help in discarding another one.
What on earth is Less Wrong for, if it is not for this?
I do not imply that you must waste your time helping me. But I am damned sure that someone needs to say it plainly. It has fooled me. It is causing havoc. Why is it not true?
You admitted it yourself. You're using dodgy inferences!
This is especially bad if you have a chain of them, as the errors accumulate--if your reasoning depends on five dodgy inferences each with a 60% chance of being correct, you're already down to 8%.
Right! So now I have an 8% chance of being right about something really serious. And so I need to make a prediction and work out whether it's true, and then adjust. You try it!
What kind of prediction could you possibly make about "almost all the remaining unexplained human ailments", that could be checked to see if it's true?
And even if there was something, you haven't actually made or tested the prediction yet. So not only have you used dodgy inferences, you're putting the burden of proof on the wrong side. It's not up to other people to prove it false, it's up to you to prove it true, and if you haven't done that yet, you have no business believing it.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/nbm/thyroid_hormones_chronic_fatigue_and_fibromyalgia/
Certainly not putting the burden of proof on the other side. Don't believe it myself.