As someone who runs a lot of self-experiments and occasionally helps others, I’m disappointed in but sympathetic to this approach. People are complicated: the right thing to do probably is try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks. But people really, really want the answer to be simple, and will round down complicated answers until they are simple enough, then declare the original protocol a failure when their simplification doesn’t work.
I think it would be valuable for George to write up the list of interventions they considered, and a case report on how he fine tuned the procedure for himself. Possibly valuable enough to pay for it. But I think he’s doing the right thing by refusing to write out a formal protocol at this stage.
As someone who runs a lot of self-experiments and occasionally helps others, I’m disappointed in but sympathetic to this approach. People are complicated: the right thing to do probably is try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks. But people really, really want the answer to be simple, and will round down complicated answers until they are simple enough, then declare the original protocol a failure when their simplification doesn’t work.
I think it would be valuable for George to write up the list of interventions they considered, and a case report on how he fine tuned the procedure for himself. Possibly valuable enough to pay for it. But I think he’s doing the right thing by refusing to write out a formal protocol at this stage.