On 9/27/2012 4:54 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:07:55 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
"To any skeptics I would simply say, it’s a simple enough experiment.
Try it for a couple of weeks. See what happens."

Nooooo! Don't do thaaaat! Wait for a freakin' "study"!

You can find similar anecdotes for Jenny Lind, Weight Watchers, the
grapefruit diet, the low fat diet, etc. Should we not do any studies at all then?

Your time in my kill file has apparently expired, James, so I'll try
to answer that question.

Yes, anecdotes can be very informative, and I'm sure there have been
many people helped by whoever Jenny Lind is, Weight Watchers, etc.

But anecdotes, just like "studies," should always be taken with a
grain of salt, i.e., skepticism. Including the one above.

Like I tried to explain in a previous post, when Dr. Atkins published
his first book, there really weren't any "studies" that gave much
credence to his ideas. But millions of people read his book, tried his
low-carb way of eating, lost weight, felt much better, improved their
health markers, etc. And by doing that, many of them saved their own
lives. Pretty cool, eh?

These people didn't wait around for "studies." They heard something
that made sense to them, they tried it, they got measured, and they
were handsomely rewarded.

So whatever anecdotes you've read about, say, Weight Watchers dieters,
need to be TESTED on yourself to see if they apply to you, too. Can
some people lose weight on Weight Watchers? Absolutely. Can you? Well,
you won't know unless you try it. Can Weight Watchers improve a
person's health markers? Sure. But will they improve yours? You can't
know that until you try it, and then get TESTED.

The only way to find out what effect eliminating wheat from your diet
will have on YOU is to try it YOURSELF for 30 days or so (like the guy
in the post above, and many others on Dr. Davis' web site) and see for
YOURSELF.

There's ZERO downside to performing this experiment on yourself,
because wheat doesn't provide you with anything that you can't get
from other, HEALTHIER food sources. Whether you choose to test your
blood sugars, or LDL-P levels, too, during this period of time, is
another matter altogether. The guy in the post above apparently didn't
go that far, but he still got rid of his migraines, food cravings,
GERD, pain in his hands and fingers, post-nasal drip, allergies, and
he got off of some drugs. Quite a reward, I'd say.

So, James, you can take these n-1 experiments as far as you want, and
then see what happens to YOU, or you can decide to wait around for the
perfect "study." You took a plunge once and went low-carb. It
apparently produced dividends for YOU. Which "study" was it that gave
you the confidence to try low-carb?


There are studies as you very well know.

The anecdote is the weakest form of scientific evidence but humans have
evolved to consider it to be the strongest form of evidence. Curious, no?

The problems with n=1 anecdotes are placebo effects, confounding factors
that may not have been measured, false attribution, simple errors, etc. A randomized study with
proper controls tends to minimize all of those.