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Comment by anonymouswacker | Hacker News Reader

Clickbait.

I have taken a lot of these in the past, and the label "pseudoscientific" is unwarranted. The "writer" cherrypicks and generalizes data to discount it, but if you want to understand the mechanism of, say, Ashwagandha, you probably should spend a few hours reading research and meta-analyses and not spending 10 minutes on Google to decide if it's "good" or "pseudoscience".

Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others? Should tech writers write health articles when they don't know what they're talking about?

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> Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others?

That is correct, yes. Pharmacologically active ingredients are medicine. Encouraging someone to take mental health meds without supervision, especially when made who-knows-where with who-knows-what quality control, because they're unregulated, is incredibly irresponsible.

There's a reason you can't buy Zoloft over the counter. Anything else in that space is either:

1. A placebo, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and thus keeping people from seeking qualified help, or

2. The real deal, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and selling it for unmonitored home use by people with zero education in the field.

There are a multitude of supplements with clinical evidence to support their efficacy that are neither #1 nor #2. These include caffeine, ginseng, various vitamins, etc. If you go to examine.com, they analyze the strength of the studies and the effect size. Most won't have the effect size of prescription drugs but some are absolutely worth taking, particularly fish oil and vitamins like B and D.

Caffeine and gensing have immediate onsets. You know in a small number of minutes whether you’ve had enough or too much. Vitamins usually have a wide range between enough to be useful and enough to harm you, although you’re crazy to take fat-soluble vitamins for a long period without telling your doctor and getting a blood test.

You generally have to take psych meds for quite a few days before determine their effect. If you take too little, you risk your mental health. Take too much? Have fun riding out Seratonin Syndrome!

People just want to feel good about themselves, and mocking infowars (etc.) is a easy way to assert their superiority.

Um. From the article:

Animal studies in the lab suggest Ashwagandha may be effective for treating cancer, diabetes, and somehow, both reducing fatigue and as a sedative, but these effects have not been thoroughly tested on humans.

The article doesn't use the term psuedoscientific at all. That was OP.

>Should tech writers write health articles when they don't know what they're talking about?

Should hedgefund owned news outlets publish stock news? Should the US government secretary of defence be on the board of Raytheon?

People with power will always abuse their authority to further their cause.

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