I might sound more rational. But I would not be able to explain the apparent contempt in which these terrible diseases seem to be widely held. I seek the truth. Political correctness often hinders that search.
I can’t resist saying at this point that some of my best friends are middle-aged women.
What was the life...
Low, I’d imagine. What does that matter?
Was there other prescriptions …...
An excellent point. It may be that we can alleviate these syndromes with amphetamine. But then we need to explain how that knowledge got forgotten. It is not as if doctors are reluctant to hand out ill-understood prescription drugs to the sufferers.
As far as tranquillizers go, they might shut the sufferers up, but I’m not sure that’s what I mean by alleviate.
Don’t focus on explaining. Focus on providing arguments for the claims you are making.
What’s the difference?
The claim that middle-aged woman are a class of patients that generally easy to ignore is a significant claim for which you provide no evidence.
Then as evidence I refer you to the site http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/, which is largely devoted to middle-aged women complaining about displaying terrible symptoms, and being ignored.
I predict that you will be tempted to ignore them. They are certainly doing a good job of looking like lunatics. It is a problem with what I am increasingly tempted to think of as ‘my tribe’.
If they’re too mad for you, then try http://www.tiredthyroid.com/, where one brave and clever lady, who does not look mad at all to me, has comprehensively debunked the medical theory and treatment of hypothyroidism proper.
I have not read the website, but I have recently read the book ‘Tired Thyroid’. She has done a wonderful job and gone much deeper into the literature than I have. She debunks not only conventional medicine but all the lunatic alternative treatments too. She provides references from the literature for everything she says.
The book is closely argued. It is heartbreaking. Its arguments affect the lives of millions. Tell me why she is ignored.
The most open-minded thing I’ve read from “medical science” recently is called ‘Dissatisfaction with thyroxine therapy — could the patients be right?’ by John Walsh. This man is being ludicrously brave by sticking his neck out that far.
‘Could the patients be right?’. About their own symptoms.
This is not science. This is some pathetic parody of science, where idiots in white coats claim the glory of physics despite not being able to reason their way out of paper bags. I call bullshit.
Explaining is about providing a narrative. Adding additional detail can make a narrative more persuasive. On the other hand it also makes the whole story less likely to be true.
Then as evidence I refer you to the site http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/, which is largely devoted to middle-aged women complaining about displaying terrible symptoms, and being ignored.
I don’t see how that’s evidence for the fact that middle-aged women get treated differently than men or woman that aren’t middle-aged.
How do you know that you aren’t simply ignoring people who aren’t middle-aged women because they aren’t complaining as loud as the people towards which you linked?
The book is closely argued. It is heartbreaking. Its arguments affect the lives of millions. Tell me why she is ignored. [...] This is not science. This is some pathetic parody of science, where idiots in white coats claim the glory of physics despite not being able to reason their way out of paper bags. I call bullshit.
If she has the same mentality as you, that mentality is a good recipe for getting ignored.
This reminds me of a woman who thinks that a lot of women lose their needlessly lose their uterus because of operations to remove myomes.
Because financial relations between stakeholders in Germany are different than in France, there are a lot more operations in Germany than in France and in France other treatments get used that don’t remove the uterus.
She was willing to make that case behind closed doors. In public she was using much more friendly language to be in a position where all-stakeholders would talk to her. As a result she’s finds herself in a position where people listen to her.
Where am I falling for the just-world fallacy? That seems quite plausible, especially since I’ve lost my usual ability to see both sides of the argument. And I’ve come down in favour of nut-jobs and against science. That scares me very much.
You think that the fact that patient complains about symptoms should get the system to hear the complaint and fix them. In a just-world there would be people to look at every complained to see whether it’s valid. We don’t live in that world.
The most common way treatment get’s changed is when a corporation finds they can produce a new drug that can be protected by a patent that treats a disease. After the FDA approved the new drug, the corporation pays pharma representatives to run around the country and talk to doctors so that they learn about the virtues about the new drug and the new drug get’s adopted.
Most academic departments get pressured to seek third-party funding and thus try to do research that can help with the discovery of new drugs.
Even if “Natural Desiccated Thyroid” is susperior the system is not designed to find that it’s superior. That’s not because anything went wrong in the specific case, but simply because the economics aren’t there to push “Natural Desiccated Thyroid”.
There’s still a possible way for change. Find out what makes “Natural Desiccated Thyroid” better. Create a synthetic analog and patent it. Pay 70 million to run the trials that prove that it’s better. A company could then make billions if the new drug would successful treat Fibromyalgia.
Take a look at Michael Vassar Tedx talk* The legend of healthcare. Michael Vassar was CEO of MIRI and then went to found MetaMed.
*Just disregard Vassar’s claims about life expectance of Jordan. It seems that Jordan publishes life expectancy statistics in a creative way, that’s not in line with numbers of outside observers.
Oh, if by ‘just-world’ fallacy, you mean that medical science ought to be about understanding things and making things better, then I most certainly do believe that.
I seem to be being rather forcefully rammed up against the fact that you can’t get an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’.
But again, you have strengthened my position. I want to be defeated. Show me why I am wrong about type 2 endocrine disorders.
Oh, if by ‘just-world’ fallacy, you mean that medical science ought to be about understanding things and making things better,
Medical science is about understanding things and making things better but it’s not about understanding everything. Different organisations focus on trying to understand different things and focusing on whether different interventions work.
I want to be defeated.
In a world of very uncertain knowledge that’s not to be expected.
But if that’s actually what you want you have to move to make more specific claims. You still haven’t provided probability values for any of the claims you are making. As a result it’s hard to argue that you are wrong about the probability of various claims.
OK, I think I have to start drawing conclusions in public. Some of them terrify me, but I’ll try a few of the safer ones. Thanks. Actually I’ve just read Broda Barnes (I was originally assuming he was a lunatic who’d confirmation-biased and placebo-effected himself to death), and his clinical observations agree pretty much with my predictions, although I’m not sure yet what I think of his theory, which isn’t the same as mine.
Yes, I guess I’ve been believing that I believe that, while not actually believing it. If I’m right, medical science has, as a body, over the long run, managed to make the situation worse. Despite the fact that most of the people in it are good, clever people, trying their best and caring very much.
I’m shocked by this conclusion, and it makes me distrust the reasoning by which I came to it.
And yet I have a strong feeling that my reasoning is correct, and that my simple obvious hypothesis explains far too much to be entirely wrong.
All I wanted was to be a bit less tired and stupid!
Yes, I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about how a mind might remain sane under self-improvement. That’s why I felt such a fool when my ‘less stupid’ drugs sent me mad. Especially given that not a week before I’d come up with a theory that strongly suggests it might happen!
I can see the reason for Attitude 2, but I think you’re only allowed to use it if your arrogant airy dismissal then results in a drill-down to find the real problem, which real problem then leads to an intervention that actually helps and clears up the original difficulty.
One reason I think I’m a loony is that Yvain liked my first post, and sent me some clever questions which prompted the metamorphosis into the second post.
So I sent him the second post wondering what he thought, and now he’s stopped talking to me. Good evidence that I’m unhinged.
My attorney thinks I’m sane (and he should know). And he thinks I’m wrong (and he should know). But he can’t tell me why. (and he should be able to).
Absolutely agree, again. I must be wrong, for reasons I cannot see.
But the fact that this idea is obvious (to a child!), widely believed, often believed by empirically-minded doctors, causes striking-offs of those doctors brave enough to act on the belief and yet has no obvious refutation in the literature or in any public place I can find, is itself a scandal.
Can you imagine how easy it would be for a man to find the reason that his clever method of squaring the circle must be wrong? Or that his perpetual motion machine doesn’t work? Or that he can’t communicate faster than light?
I might not be able to understand the refutation, if it exists. I accept that. I don’t have the knowledge. But it should be in a public place, and someone should be pointing me at it while calling me a moron.
But it should be in a public place, and someone should be pointing me at it while calling me a moron.
You’re at LW which is not inhabited by a large number of doctors or biomedical PhDs :-) I don’t know the right places for you to go to, but watering holes for medical geeks must exist. LW is not it, though.
I’ve been digging through it for the last three months. And I can’t find what I’m looking for. That’s why I’m asking for help. The author of Tired Thyroid has obviously been digging through it for years.
Evidence against my idea! Firstly I was looking for reasons to believe that the replacement of clinical diagnosis by the TSH test in the early 70s was done carefully.
Now I’m looking for any attempt that has ever been made to refute the claims of Broda Barnes, or to investigate why there should be ‘insulin resistance’, but not resistance to other hormones.
As far as I can tell, there aren’t any. They’ve just assumed their stupid TSH test to be gospel, despite massive patient complaints, and ignored a seventy year old tradition of treatment that appears to work really well, and that seems to be working really well on me.
I might sound more rational. But I would not be able to explain the apparent contempt in which these terrible diseases seem to be widely held. I seek the truth. Political correctness often hinders that search.
I can’t resist saying at this point that some of my best friends are middle-aged women.
Low, I’d imagine. What does that matter?
An excellent point. It may be that we can alleviate these syndromes with amphetamine. But then we need to explain how that knowledge got forgotten. It is not as if doctors are reluctant to hand out ill-understood prescription drugs to the sufferers.
As far as tranquillizers go, they might shut the sufferers up, but I’m not sure that’s what I mean by alleviate.
Don’t focus on explaining. Focus on providing arguments for the claims you are making.
The claim that middle-aged woman are a class of patients that generally easy to ignore is a significant claim for which you provide no evidence.
What’s the difference?
Then as evidence I refer you to the site http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/, which is largely devoted to middle-aged women complaining about displaying terrible symptoms, and being ignored.
I predict that you will be tempted to ignore them. They are certainly doing a good job of looking like lunatics. It is a problem with what I am increasingly tempted to think of as ‘my tribe’.
If they’re too mad for you, then try http://www.tiredthyroid.com/, where one brave and clever lady, who does not look mad at all to me, has comprehensively debunked the medical theory and treatment of hypothyroidism proper.
I have not read the website, but I have recently read the book ‘Tired Thyroid’. She has done a wonderful job and gone much deeper into the literature than I have. She debunks not only conventional medicine but all the lunatic alternative treatments too. She provides references from the literature for everything she says.
The book is closely argued. It is heartbreaking. Its arguments affect the lives of millions. Tell me why she is ignored.
The most open-minded thing I’ve read from “medical science” recently is called ‘Dissatisfaction with thyroxine therapy — could the patients be right?’ by John Walsh. This man is being ludicrously brave by sticking his neck out that far.
‘Could the patients be right?’. About their own symptoms.
This is not science. This is some pathetic parody of science, where idiots in white coats claim the glory of physics despite not being able to reason their way out of paper bags. I call bullshit.
Explaining is about providing a narrative. Adding additional detail can make a narrative more persuasive. On the other hand it also makes the whole story less likely to be true.
I don’t see how that’s evidence for the fact that middle-aged women get treated differently than men or woman that aren’t middle-aged.
How do you know that you aren’t simply ignoring people who aren’t middle-aged women because they aren’t complaining as loud as the people towards which you linked?
If she has the same mentality as you, that mentality is a good recipe for getting ignored.
This reminds me of a woman who thinks that a lot of women lose their needlessly lose their uterus because of operations to remove myomes. Because financial relations between stakeholders in Germany are different than in France, there are a lot more operations in Germany than in France and in France other treatments get used that don’t remove the uterus.
She was willing to make that case behind closed doors. In public she was using much more friendly language to be in a position where all-stakeholders would talk to her. As a result she’s finds herself in a position where people listen to her.
You seem to suffer from the just-world fallacy.
That all seems fair!
Where am I falling for the just-world fallacy? That seems quite plausible, especially since I’ve lost my usual ability to see both sides of the argument. And I’ve come down in favour of nut-jobs and against science. That scares me very much.
You think that the fact that patient complains about symptoms should get the system to hear the complaint and fix them. In a just-world there would be people to look at every complained to see whether it’s valid. We don’t live in that world.
The most common way treatment get’s changed is when a corporation finds they can produce a new drug that can be protected by a patent that treats a disease. After the FDA approved the new drug, the corporation pays pharma representatives to run around the country and talk to doctors so that they learn about the virtues about the new drug and the new drug get’s adopted.
Most academic departments get pressured to seek third-party funding and thus try to do research that can help with the discovery of new drugs.
Even if “Natural Desiccated Thyroid” is susperior the system is not designed to find that it’s superior. That’s not because anything went wrong in the specific case, but simply because the economics aren’t there to push “Natural Desiccated Thyroid”.
There’s still a possible way for change. Find out what makes “Natural Desiccated Thyroid” better. Create a synthetic analog and patent it. Pay 70 million to run the trials that prove that it’s better. A company could then make billions if the new drug would successful treat Fibromyalgia.
Take a look at Michael Vassar Tedx talk* The legend of healthcare. Michael Vassar was CEO of MIRI and then went to found MetaMed.
*Just disregard Vassar’s claims about life expectance of Jordan. It seems that Jordan publishes life expectancy statistics in a creative way, that’s not in line with numbers of outside observers.
Oh, if by ‘just-world’ fallacy, you mean that medical science ought to be about understanding things and making things better, then I most certainly do believe that.
I seem to be being rather forcefully rammed up against the fact that you can’t get an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’.
But again, you have strengthened my position. I want to be defeated. Show me why I am wrong about type 2 endocrine disorders.
Medical science is about understanding things and making things better but it’s not about understanding everything. Different organisations focus on trying to understand different things and focusing on whether different interventions work.
In a world of very uncertain knowledge that’s not to be expected.
But if that’s actually what you want you have to move to make more specific claims. You still haven’t provided probability values for any of the claims you are making. As a result it’s hard to argue that you are wrong about the probability of various claims.
Oh, most definitely. Endocrinology is only my third-favourite hobby, and I’d like to put this idea to bed and get back to the things I enjoy.
OK, I think I have to start drawing conclusions in public. Some of them terrify me, but I’ll try a few of the safer ones. Thanks. Actually I’ve just read Broda Barnes (I was originally assuming he was a lunatic who’d confirmation-biased and placebo-effected himself to death), and his clinical observations agree pretty much with my predictions, although I’m not sure yet what I think of his theory, which isn’t the same as mine.
Careful. Many things claiming to be science aren’t. And science is a process, not a temple the high priests of which pronounce infallible truths.
Yes, I guess I’ve been believing that I believe that, while not actually believing it. If I’m right, medical science has, as a body, over the long run, managed to make the situation worse. Despite the fact that most of the people in it are good, clever people, trying their best and caring very much.
I’m shocked by this conclusion, and it makes me distrust the reasoning by which I came to it.
And yet I have a strong feeling that my reasoning is correct, and that my simple obvious hypothesis explains far too much to be entirely wrong.
All I wanted was to be a bit less tired and stupid!
Wanting to be less stupid is a dangerous path to set on.
Yes, I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about how a mind might remain sane under self-improvement. That’s why I felt such a fool when my ‘less stupid’ drugs sent me mad. Especially given that not a week before I’d come up with a theory that strongly suggests it might happen!
The track record of people who claim things like that is not good.
Go one meta level up and consider the likelihood of all the endocrinologists being knaves or fools...
A recent Yvain post might be relevant.
Happens all the time X-) but still does not imply that “comprehensive debunkings” are correct. Reverse stupidity, y’know...
Read Yvain’s post. As always brilliant.
I can see the reason for Attitude 2, but I think you’re only allowed to use it if your arrogant airy dismissal then results in a drill-down to find the real problem, which real problem then leads to an intervention that actually helps and clears up the original difficulty.
One reason I think I’m a loony is that Yvain liked my first post, and sent me some clever questions which prompted the metamorphosis into the second post.
So I sent him the second post wondering what he thought, and now he’s stopped talking to me. Good evidence that I’m unhinged.
My attorney thinks I’m sane (and he should know). And he thinks I’m wrong (and he should know). But he can’t tell me why. (and he should be able to).
Absolutely agree, again. I must be wrong, for reasons I cannot see.
But the fact that this idea is obvious (to a child!), widely believed, often believed by empirically-minded doctors, causes striking-offs of those doctors brave enough to act on the belief and yet has no obvious refutation in the literature or in any public place I can find, is itself a scandal.
Can you imagine how easy it would be for a man to find the reason that his clever method of squaring the circle must be wrong? Or that his perpetual motion machine doesn’t work? Or that he can’t communicate faster than light?
I might not be able to understand the refutation, if it exists. I accept that. I don’t have the knowledge. But it should be in a public place, and someone should be pointing me at it while calling me a moron.
And God help us all if I’m actually right.
You’re at LW which is not inhabited by a large number of doctors or biomedical PhDs :-) I don’t know the right places for you to go to, but watering holes for medical geeks must exist. LW is not it, though.
Or you can start digging through PubMed X-)
I’ve been digging through it for the last three months. And I can’t find what I’m looking for. That’s why I’m asking for help. The author of Tired Thyroid has obviously been digging through it for years.
What are you looking for?
Evidence against my idea! Firstly I was looking for reasons to believe that the replacement of clinical diagnosis by the TSH test in the early 70s was done carefully.
Now I’m looking for any attempt that has ever been made to refute the claims of Broda Barnes, or to investigate why there should be ‘insulin resistance’, but not resistance to other hormones.
As far as I can tell, there aren’t any. They’ve just assumed their stupid TSH test to be gospel, despite massive patient complaints, and ignored a seventy year old tradition of treatment that appears to work really well, and that seems to be working really well on me.