Ok, I see what your concern is, with the hype around Soylent everyone’s opinion is skewed (even if they’re not among the fanboys).
You decided above that it wasn’t worth your time to try your own self-experiments with it. What if someone else were to take the time to do it? I like the concept but agree with the major troubles you listed above, and I have no experience with designing self-experiments. But maybe I’ll take the time to try and do it properly, long-term, with regular blood tests, noting what I’ve been eating for a couple months before starting, taking data about my fitness levels, etc. Of course, I would need to analyze the risk to myself beforehand.
What if someone else were to take the time to do it?
If they actually go through with it and write it up, that’s better than the status quo, yes. But if they don’t determine to go through with it and may give up, it’s another selection bias, specifically, publication bias (person A does a self-experiment but halfway through runs out of spare effort and abandons it; person B, by chance, gets better results and blogs about it etc).
Ok, I see what your concern is, with the hype around Soylent everyone’s opinion is skewed (even if they’re not among the fanboys).
You decided above that it wasn’t worth your time to try your own self-experiments with it. What if someone else were to take the time to do it? I like the concept but agree with the major troubles you listed above, and I have no experience with designing self-experiments. But maybe I’ll take the time to try and do it properly, long-term, with regular blood tests, noting what I’ve been eating for a couple months before starting, taking data about my fitness levels, etc. Of course, I would need to analyze the risk to myself beforehand.
If they actually go through with it and write it up, that’s better than the status quo, yes. But if they don’t determine to go through with it and may give up, it’s another selection bias, specifically, publication bias (person A does a self-experiment but halfway through runs out of spare effort and abandons it; person B, by chance, gets better results and blogs about it etc).