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Lumifer comments on MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare - LessWrong
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Comments (191)
Really? You consider MetaMed unethical and dangerous. Robin Hanson considers it a useful source of second opinions but thinks it may not be all that much better than second opinions from other sources (e.g. doctors).
You say "I find this absolutely shocking and reading the endorsement of this company on this website"
Robin Hanson says "Even so, I would very much like to see a much stronger habit of getting second opinions, and a much larger industry to support that habit. I thus hope that MetaMed succeeds."
MetaMed has been granted immunity from lawsuits..?
The legal risks are lesser if you are a licensed MD.
Upon more reflection, I'm not able to defend my point and my thoughts are confused and therefore I'm gravitating towards the established and mainstream viewpoint that only licensed and authorized doctos should do doctor stuff. On uncertain territory it's better to stick to well-known landmarks. Since I'm not confident in my capability of a deep enough analysis of the pros and cons, I feel that the way to convince me would be to first convince people who are experts of the medical field and of the regulations, towards whom I already have an established chain of trust.
Yay for more reflection! :-)
I would recommend to continue with even more reflection, now about that chain of trust you say you have established. Ioannidis would probably be helpful and you can google up his actual papers.
Yes I'm familiar with his most famous paper and what he says about medical research findings. Has he ever endorsed MetaMed in particular? If peer reviewed research finding are often false, how can MetaMed tell the difference without trying to replicate them? Different research papers use different assumptions, differently calibrated measurements, different subjects, it seems very hard to aggregate this in practice, although I'm not a medical researcher. Why should I believe that a company started by futurists and entrepreneurs would be up to this task? Where is the evidence for the actual efficacy of their particular methodology, as evaluated by independent third-parties?
Yes, it is. However there is, for example, the Cochrane Collaboration which is dedicated to exactly that.
You should not. I am not arguing that MetaMed is better than everyone else or even that it is very good. I am arguing that it's not evil, not dangerous (relative to the usual baseline), and a useful thing to have around.
It's goal is not to provide you with THE TRUTH, it's goal is to give you a digestible summary of the current research on topics of particular interest to you. Often this summary functions as a second opinion, or it could provide the context for making medical decisions. It is as fallible as the rest of contemporary medicine.