Anyone with the medical knowledge to evaluate an extraordinary claim?

ArisKatsaris

In a different forum I frequent ( The Ornery American ), a regular member there (LetterRip) has recently been making an extraordinary claim - a new theory of medicine he has devised that relates and can contribute in the cure of several neurological-related conditions.

I understand that the prior probabilities for him being a crank are much much higher than him being a new Louis Pasteur. Still I was wondering if there is anyone here with sufficient medical/medicinal knowledge that they can easily determine if there's something obviously ludicrous in LetterRip's theory, or even the opposite: if indeed there's something there that makes sense and is worth investigating.

Here are some of the relevant threads he began:

- where he requests contacts

- where he publishes portion of his theory as a Kindle book

- where he announces more "breakthroughs" and insights and offers to cure or at least alleviate simple ailments

Once again: I understand it's highly unlikely there's anything in his theory; still, I felt a cost-benefit analysis justified my making this post here.

So... anyone with enough understanding of biology/medicine to evaluate these claims of his?

Here are some of the relevant threads he began:

- where he requests contacts

- where he publishes portion of his theory as a Kindle book

- where he announces more "breakthroughs" and insights and offers to cure or at least alleviate simple ailments

Once again: I understand it's highly unlikely there's anything in his theory; still, I felt a cost-benefit analysis justified my making this post here.

So... anyone with enough understanding of biology/medicine to evaluate these claims of his?

I don't know why this post is being downvoted, but in any case I have a better idea: use it as a rationality exercise to figure out whether he is a crackpot without acquiring any additional biological/medical knowledge or consulting any biological/medical experts. I bet you can convince yourself to a near-certainty (my feeling is something like a 10^-7 chance of being wrong) that he is a crackpot using only information already available to you and some good heuristics.

Of course you may wish to consult John Baez's Crackpot Index, which is funny and insightful. But the best heuristics I can suggest are the three points of Sean Carroll's Alternative Science Respectability Checklist:

Acquire basic competency in whatever field of science your discovery belongs to.

Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections to your claims within established science.

Present your discovery in a way that is complete, transparent, and unambiguous.

See also Scott Aaronson's extremely good Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong, which makes the point that you can usually confer crackpot status on the basis of superficial characteristics alone, and his Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong, which is some sense a specific instantiation of Carroll's three points (especially the first two).

From these kinds of heuristics and some simple observations, the guy is too obviously a crackpot to even be worth asking an expert about.

I'll point out just a couple of things:

On a superficial level (which often provides great Bayesian evidence!), the guy can barely type -- his posts are littered with weird typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, and incoherent sentences.
He gives no account of why medical science has failed to figure out this stuff.
He emphasizes how exceptionally simple all his discoveries are, that biology boils down to just a few fundamental principles -- that the same basic idea will "cure" literally all common diseases. Again, just think of how much seemingly settled biological science would have to be wrong for that to be possible.

1e-7 seems too strong. That's 1 in 10 million.

4byrnema15y

It's such a common cluster of traits (and failure mode among people on the internet and homeless people I've met), it might be a particular mental state. Hasn't everyone had that feeling once that they suddenly understand everything and it's All Connected? It's a particular manic state, perhaps. When I find myself in it, I know not to trust anything I'm thinking but I write it down anyway just in case. Sometimes it's OK and there are insights.

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Anyone with the medical knowledge to evaluate an extraordinary claim?

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Anyone with the medical knowledge to evaluate an extraordinary claim?

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