There are numerous confounders and endogenous influencers in anything - nutrition, strength training, weightloss, or anything else. We have to maintain the same critical approach to anything, within the reality of our capabilities (particle physicists can run thousands upon thousands of experiments of the same phenomenon, so we cant apply the same criteria between disciplines sometimes, but saying that nutrition needs a lab but exercise only needs knowledgeable trainers and their observations isnt a reasonable comparison unless we can definitely demonstrate why our ability to observe and report data is superior in one vs the other - and in truth, we know that its not). Anecdotal evidence isnt useless, its only useless for anyone other than the individual directly experiencing the results. Now, I could listen to your experience and I could decide to try the approach myself, but without systematic evidence, I absolutely cannot expect to see the same response, nor can either of us assume that any response is true cause and effect. We would *never* accept a cause-and-effect conclusion from a correlational study design, even if it had many times the participants with far greater controls. We cant decide just because *we* observed the results from our experience (without any control of bias, statistical insight and analysis, etc) that our findings are reproducible or applicable to anyone else. If we allow that for ourselves, we must allow that for everyone else, and that would effectively negate the need or use of the scientific process, because everyones claims based on personal observations would be legitimate. This is ultimately the problem Dr Jonathan Fass
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 18:44:59 +0000
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