I think you’re probably right in general, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that, for example, a rumour could get around the ALS community that lithium was bad, and be believed by enough people for the lack of blinding to have an effect. There was plenty of paranoia in the gay community about AZT, for example, despite the fact that they had a real and life-threatening disease, so it just doesn’t always follow that people with real and life-threatening diseases are universally reliable as personal judges of effective interventions.
Similarly if the wi-fi “allergy” crowd claimed that anti-allergy meds from a big, evil pharmaceutical company did not help them that could be a finding that would hold up to blinding but then again it might not.
I do worry that some naive Bayesians take personal anecdotes to be evidence far too quickly, without properly thinking through the odds that they would hear such anecdotes in worlds where the anecdotes were false. People are such terrible judges of medical effectiveness that in many cases I don’t think the odds get far off 50% either way.
I think you’re probably right in general, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that, for example, a rumour could get around the ALS community that lithium was bad, and be believed by enough people for the lack of blinding to have an effect. There was plenty of paranoia in the gay community about AZT, for example, despite the fact that they had a real and life-threatening disease, so it just doesn’t always follow that people with real and life-threatening diseases are universally reliable as personal judges of effective interventions.
Similarly if the wi-fi “allergy” crowd claimed that anti-allergy meds from a big, evil pharmaceutical company did not help them that could be a finding that would hold up to blinding but then again it might not.
I do worry that some naive Bayesians take personal anecdotes to be evidence far too quickly, without properly thinking through the odds that they would hear such anecdotes in worlds where the anecdotes were false. People are such terrible judges of medical effectiveness that in many cases I don’t think the odds get far off 50% either way.