Hacker News Reader

Comment by bageldaughter | Hacker News Reader

The core problem with examine, in my opinion, is that it embraces the attitudes that:

1. A wide range of subtle personal, emotional and health problems can in principle be solved/mitigated by taking supplements and unregulated drugs.

2. Positive effects from small-group trials are akin to mild recommendations to take a supplement, rather than to attempt to reproduce the effect in a larger trial.

The very premises upon which people base their visits to examine and other sites is flawed. Examine has zero incentive to address or repudiate them.

The success of their business is dependent on there being a perceived efficacy for supplements and unregulated drugs, and the idea that reading online about more varied and obscure supplements will eventually find you the one that fixes your problem. But for a lot of perceived problems, there will simply be no supplement-based solution.

View on HN

1. This is literally untrue. We consistently say supplementation is last. Exactly one month ago: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0tmWZA1CG/

2. Yes, we know this. That is why we note # of trials, size of trial, size of outcome, and quality of trial.

> Success of their business.

Wrong. It's analyzing nutrition research. Here's an example: https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...

#1 - Solved might be a bit much, but mitigation is certainly possible. The matrix shows effectiveness, and the details below the matrix quite clearly explain and summarize the potency and mechanism of the effects.

#2 - They do have ratings of how “confident” or conclusive results are, as one of the columns of the matrix.

IMHO, the site steers away most of the time from making a “yeah you should take this” recommendation. It simply lists the effects and details about those effects of the supplements/ingredients on its site. You’ll notice some herbs/supplements have nearly no effects at all or extremely mild effects.

Whatever a reader infers from the page is up to the reader. I do not believe Examine is pushy at all about supplements nor overemphasizes their effectiveness. They just present the data that they have found on supplements, good or bad, and it is up to the reader to make a determination from that.

I think your last paragraph is just uncharitable. Some supplements are effective at certain things and putting that data out there is fine. Having a single place where one can gather very detailed and collected information on individual herbs and supplements is a useful resource regardless of the effectiveness of them. Just having the information is important. I see nowhere where they claim that supplements will always fix or cure problems nor do I think that they only survive because of such “attitudes”. They’ve even put out posts that push the idea that supplements are kind of a “last resort” or are mild in comparison to other life changes

Final Note - There are plenty of supplements I’ve avoided taking (after initially being interested in them) because of the data on Examine showed they were highly ineffective, and I thank them for having that data available.

"But for a lot of perceived problems, there will simply be no supplement-based solution."

[Citation needed.]

This is an interesting question, actually- what problems is the research cited by Examine claiming to improve, which you have evidence cannot possibly be improved by the use of supplements?

As far as I can tell, too, your critique of Examine is really a critique of scientific papers in general. If the scientific studies have a flawed premise, you are right that that flawed premise would carry over to Examine, since they cite lots of scientific papers.

Which is sort of like critiquing Examine for not having God-like omniscience as to what is universally true and not true. This is not a fair critique.

And I also think that a lot of criticisms of Examine and other websites basically want to absolve the users of all personal responsibility.

I am extremely informed about health and supplements, and I have a ton of trust of Examine based on past experiences, and I also would never take its summaries as the gospel truth.

I always check a lot of other websites, sometimes skim the scientific papers themselves, and then use a personal experimental protocol if I think an experiment is warranted.

You must assign users some responsibility. (Although even if we hold users responsible, Google should not be giving higher search rankings to such comparatively crap websites.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com