Lumifer comments on MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare - LessWrong

83 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 March 2013 01:16PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 03 March 2015 03:57:57PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: minusdash 03 March 2015 04:36:13PM -1 points [-]

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?

Comment author: Lumifer 03 March 2015 06:09:34PM 2 points [-]

it seems very hard to aggregate this in practice

Yes, it is. However there is, for example, the Cochrane Collaboration which is dedicated to exactly that.

Why should I believe that a company started by futurists and entrepreneurs would be up to this task?

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.