How To Know Whom To Trust In The Health World

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❝How to tell good sources from bad, who to believe when everyone’s disagreeing about what’s healthy, what’s unhealthy, what’s dangerous? I know there’s a lot that modern science doesn’t know, but there’s also a lot of BS and quacks❞

Short answer: there is almost always a clear scientific consensus, and then some countermovement. In such cases, the consensus almost always correct. About once every decade or so there is a huge counterexample, but guess what happens in such cases? It’s huge and scientific consensus adjusts accordingly. If ever there was a case for the phrase “the exception that proves the rule”, this is it, because even those exceptions highlight how scientific consensus swiftly follows good science.

However. From a lay perspective, it might seem a lot more equal, because it’s just two sides shouting opposite things and they both seem equally loud. There are several reasons for this illusion:

• Media thrives on conflict, and controversial statements increase viewing figures, clicks, or whatever else is being measured and sold to advertisers. Thus, many media outlets are incentivized to make it look more balanced than it is, and thus give extra weight to things that are, in the science world, fringe beliefs.
• Conscientious scientists and grifting quacks make their respective statements in very different ways. Consider:
  • “These results suggest that supplement xyz’s antioxidant and antiproliferative effects may offer therapeutic potential as an auxiliary treatment in cases of [specific cancer type]. Further trials are necessary to establish dosage and safe limits.”
  • “Common health food XYZ is KILLING YOU and destroying your kidneys! Here’s what doctors won’t tell you and why you should immediately get it out of your fridge!”

The latter, of course, is much less likely to catch attention and stick in someone’s mind.

So, how to figure out what the consensus is?

There are two ways to go about this; a fiddly-but-near-certain way, and an easy-and-usually-correct way.

The fiddly-but-near-certain way involves at least some scientific literacy. If you go to a large repository of scientific literature such as PubMed, you can plug in keywords and see what comes up.

Here’s an example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=vaccines+autism

At time of writing, it shows 1,235 results, and from browsing through those, we can see page after page of “no, vaccines do not cause autism”.

PubMed searches are how we at 10almonds have sourced most of our Mythbusting editions.

The easy-but-fallible-but-usually-correct way is, honestly, Wikipedia. No, it’s not reliable. However, while it has unavoidable biases in many areas (e.g. politics, history, etc), when it comes to science, including medicine and health science, it can usually be relied upon, not for any kind of detail, but if you see the word “pseudoscience” in the intro, that’s a pretty clear indicator.

Of course, because something is pseudoscientific does not necessarily mean it doesn’t work, it just means that the explanation for how it works is pseudoscientific. Whether or not the thing works anyway, is usually a question that actual science can answer fairly easily.

For example, if a child hears “for good health, you should eat the rainbow and get plants of all colors”, and then believes that this is because of magical rainbow powers, then that is pseudoscientific, but eating the fruits and vegetables will still convey health, for actual scientific reasons (usually: many plant pigments have beneficial health properties).

However, it is fair to say that many pseudoscientific complementary/alternative therapies do not outperform placebo.

Some do have some clear benefits, though! Check out our mythbusting section to learn more about these 😎

What if this is one of those once-in-a-while cases where the consensus is wrong?

A flippant answer would be “statistically speaking, it’s not likely it is”.

A more useful answer is that the crux lies in how the consensus has been wrong, and what new evidence has come to light. If this new evidence comes from one study, or a handful of studies with clear flaws, then it is usually best to wait for further evidence before changing our health practices, as any decent scientist is always telling us. Sometimes, the previous consensus was built on one study, or a handful of studies with clear flaws, and now it’s simply that more science has been done since.

This is, of course, another instance where the media problems we mentioned up top can come into play.

See for example: How Science News Outlets Can Lie To You (Yes, Even If They Cite Studies!)

What about people? How can we tell the difference between a real expert and quack?

We have an article about this:

4 Ways To Spot A Dodgy “Expert”

Besides those points, another thing to bear in mind at least as a factor, is someone’s qualifications. Note, however, that this is not a surefire way of telling, because:

• Someone can have an MD from Harvard and at some point in their career they decided they’d get more rich and famous if they did their own thing, and are now doing it, good science be damned
• Someone can have confusing or unclear qualifications, and be a genuine expert in their field, operating at the cutting edge of science, with a robust evidence-based approach*
• Someone can be somewhere in between; a lot of science educators fall into this category. Indeed, we at 10almonds are not world-leading scientists and doctors, but we critically examine and follow good-quality evidence, and thus give you information that’s backed by good science, and if in some cases we don’t have good science for it yet, we’ll tell you that, too.

*Robin McKenzie is a great example of this. Indeed, one could correctly say he’s “not even a doctor”. But he’s a career physiotherapist with over 40 years of practice to his name and 33 letters after his name (CNZM OBE FCSP (Hon) FNZSP (Hon) Dip MDT Dip MT). And certainly, if you visit any other physiotherapist, they will probably have some of his books on their own shelves. He is truly an expert in his field.

On the other hand, if someone is keen to big up some qualification that, when examined, means little more than that they paid for a short course from an unaccredited institution that sells certificates of being something that sounds good but doesn’t actually mean much and isn’t a protected title, then that’s probably a sign that “something wrong is not right” there. For this reason, if you don’t understand someone’s job title or qualification, it’s often a good idea to Google that title or qualification to see what (if anything) it actually is.

This goes double if they want to sell you that qualification too! Self-regulating industries can sometimes do a good job of that and thus provide respectable qualifications, but it’s worth at least asking yourself whether something looks suspiciously like a pyramid scheme and/or “diploma mill”.

If in doubt…

You might want to apply a personal version of the Hippocratic oath.

By this we mean: where the Hippocratic oath says “first, do no harm”, a personal version can be “first, doubt”.

This doubt can and should be open-minded skepticism, but until the evidence is clear one way or the other, it is usually best to not make a change to your health practices if there is any way it could conceivably be dangerous.

For example:

• Mindfulness meditation? Actually very well-evidenced, but even if you didn’t know that, it would be reasonable to try it anyway if you like, since it’s difficult to imagine how it could possibly cause harm.
  • See also: No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
• Ear candling? Doctors are usually telling you not to put anything in your ear unless they themselves prescribed it, so putting flaming items in your ear is probably a bad idea, unless strong evidence to the contrary appears (so far, all science for this says “not only does this not work, its proposed mechanism of action is actively disproven”).
  • See also: Ear Candling: Is It Safe & Does It Work?
• Putting castor oil on your eyeballs? Surprisingly, the evidence is there for this one. But without knowing that, the default stance should be “that sounds like it could cause harm”.
  • See also: Castor Oil: All-Purpose Life-Changer, Or Snake Oil?

…and so on.

Take care!