What are you trying to find by taking the product of these probabilities? They are not independent, so I think you meant to use probabilities that are conditional upon each other. For example, to find the probability of their conjunction, we would need%20=%20P(A)%20\times%20P(B%20\mid%20A)%20\times%20P(C\mid%20B%20\cap%20A))
instead. 10^-7 seems a bit low for this.
That quote is great. :D
Yeah, as I said to jsalvatier, it may well be that my estimate was too confident, and of course you're quite right that I should have explicitly used conditional probabilities. We're still dealing with someone who we can label a crackpot with only a trivial chance of being wrong.
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?