Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[Nonpareil]

Except when people on Facebook or text me me how they're feeling, I still take it face value.

Observed behaviors involving patterns of honesty, further failure to grasp the difference between anecdotes and observed behavior, et cetera. Previously addressed by other users, including Garrette and, I believe, JayUtah, across this thread and the brief split in the Science subforum. I don't care to go over it again.

But, because you apparently failed to read this bit last time:

How you act in day-to-day life is irrelevant here. You are free to be as irrational as you like in your everyday activities. I do not care, and it has absolutely no bearing on the argument in hand.

The rest is frippery. Even if you were right, and everyone utterly failed to act this way in day-to-day life, it wouldn't change a thing about what is and is not rational.

Just admit that anecdotes can be evidence. It's not like it's controversial.

You're right. It's not controversial.

Because it's just wrong.

 

[jt512]

I have never said that anecdotal evidence is "validating evidence," since there is special category "validating evidence" in statistics.

I meant to say that there is "no special category 'validating evidence'...."

 

[Jedi]

I have never said that anecdotal evidence is "validating evidence," since there is special category "validating evidence" in statistics. Indeed, the phrase "validating evidence" does not appear anywhere in the current (3rd) edition of the book you cite.

you're using anecdotal evidence to update your prior. so you're using it to validate your hypothesis.
Riffenburgh in his book says that anecdotal evidences's ONLY use is in 'suggesting a credible study be done' which is what i've been suggesting.

"validating evidence" is just my phrase to mean evidence used to validate a hypothesis. just english.

What I have said (over and over again) is that anecdotal evidence is evidence, a fact with which your very own source explicitly agrees:

"The accumulating information resulting from medical studies is evidence. Some types of study yield more credible evidence than others. Anecdotal evidence, often dismissed by users seeking scientific information, is the least credible, yet is still evidence." [emphasis added] [1]

Are we done now?

i never said it wasn't evidence, i just said it's only use is in suggesting hypotheses for future studies, as Riffenburgh himself says in the part of his quote you left off.

if you don't respond with an argument i won't pursue this, so yes we can be done.

funny enough i'm watching a special on finding the Yeti with my kids. it's called "yeti or not"


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1. Riffenburgh R. (2012). Statistics in Medicine, 3rd ed. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.[/QUOTE]

 

[Fudbucker]

Delete.

 

[annnnoid]

No, you equivocated.

Is the above statement also an anecdote?

Lets see…according to Nonpareil…an anecdote is an ‘unverified report.’

I guess that makes your post an anecdote then…doesn’t it.

Are...or are not...the words you just wrote in your post evidence of what you were thinking / feeling / experiencing when you wrote them???

 

[Jedi]

delete

 

[jt512]

i never said it wasn't evidence, i just said it's only use is in suggesting hypotheses for future studies

Since apparently you are permanently stuck with that misconception, I'll stop trying to disabuse of it.

 

[Jedi]

Since apparently you are permanently stuck with that misconception, I'll stop trying to disabuse of it.

it's evidence that can only be used to suggest hypotheses for further studies. it's not evidence that can confirm anything. is that better?

 

[jt512]

In the last US presidential election, most polls predated a Clinton win. they ask a random, representative and statistically adequate sample of people who they are voting for. pretty straight forward question; either Clinton or Trump. People reported Clinton over Trump. Problem is they didn't take into account whether that person they asked would actually go our and vote.

Of course the polls ask people if they're going to vote. Beginning around September 1, the overwhelming majority of polls are conducted only among voters who indicate they will likely vote. You can verify this in the table here. Look at the "Sample" column. The letters "LV" or "RV" indicate whether the sample comprised likely voters or registered voters.

 

[jt512]

it's evidence that can only be used to suggest hypotheses for further studies. it's not evidence that can confirm anything. is that better?

No. I disagree with you. In fact, if the hypothesis is about an individual, it's the other way around. Controlled studies usually only tell us what the average effect was in a group, not what the effect will be in an individual. They might suggest the hypothesis that a drug will benefit an individual, but the hypothesis is confirmed by the experience of the individual. In fact, controlled studies might suggest that the drug will ineffective for an individual, and the drug, when actually administered to the individual, is beneficial.

But the division between hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-confirming evidence is artificial. There are good experiments that give us reliable evidence and lousy experiments that are completely worthless, and we'd learn more about the subject from anecdotes. There are hypotheses that require carefully controlled studies to confirm, and hypotheses that don't. Aspirin was known to be an effective pain reliever long before randomized controlled trials were invented. Similarly, the hypothesis that beer can get you drunk was settled with finality in the Stone Age.

 

[jt512]

I overlooked this earlier, and it's important, and goes, I suspect, to the heart of your confusion. You wrote:

you're using anecdotal evidence to update your prior. so you're using it to validate your hypothesis.

All new evidence is used to update your prior. That's what new evidence is. It's newer than the last time you calculated your prior. Your updated prior, then becomes your prior for the next new bit of evidence. There is no such thing as "validating" a hypothesis—at least it's not something that I've ever done. In Bayesian inference, we just keep updating the probability of the hypothesis as new evidence arrives. Maybe the probability goes up, maybe it goes down, maybe it goes nowhere. But that's all we're doing.

To put it another way, there is no point in a Bayesian analysis when a hypothesis is generated. The hypothesis always has to have a prior probability. Even when you first think of the hypothesis, Bayes assumes that the hypothesis has always existed, and before you proceed, you have to assign it a prior probability.

 

[wollery]

No. I disagree with you. In fact, if the hypothesis is about an individual, it's the other way around. Controlled studies usually only tell us what the average effect was in a group, not what the effect will be in an individual. They might suggest the hypothesis that a drug will benefit an individual, but the hypothesis is confirmed by the experience of the individual. In fact, controlled studies might suggest that the drug will ineffective for an individual, and the drug, when actually administered to the individual, is beneficial.

That's not anecdotal evidence. Either the drug was beneficial or it wasn't. That's empirical evidence.

It would only be anecdotal if the patient said they felt better and no clinician did any follow up. Under those circumstances it would be impossible to determine if the drug had actually worked or not.




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[Sideroxylon]

As has been pointed out several times, all this talk of annecdotes and we are a million miles away from the crucial fact that people's reported experiences following serious bodily trauma are no evidence of life after death.

 

[jt512]

That's not anecdotal evidence. Either the drug was beneficial or it wasn't. That's empirical evidence.

It would only be anecdotal if the patient said they felt better and no clinician did any follow up. Under those circumstances it would be impossible to determine if the drug had actually worked or not.

According to dictionary.com, even case histories, which by definition are performed by experts, are anecdotal evidence.

 

[wollery]

According to dictionary.com, even case histories, which by definition, are performed by experts, are anecdotal evidence.

Of course case histories are anecdotal, it's when a clinician asks a patient to report their medical history. In that case the clinician can only go by what the patient reports, which is by definition anecdotal. If the clinician does any further examination then that's no longer anecdotal.




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[Squeegee Beckenheim]

…what I now have no trouble assessing is that you have admitted that you blatantly lie.

Would you consider it methodologically sound, in the testing of a scientific hypothesis, to assume that nobody could or would lie when speaking to you?

Having made that admission, your credibility has arrived at zero so I haven’t a clue whether you love your wife or not.

How would you eliminate this possibility when conducting a scientific experiment?

I rather doubt there is a single thing that you could say in the future that would influence me to change that conclusion.

How would you ensure that this wasn't the case when conducting a scientific experiment?

 

[jt512]

Of course case histories are anecdotal, it's when a clinician asks a patient to report their medical history. In that case the clinician can only go by what the patient reports, which is by definition anecdotal. If the clinician does any further examination then that's no longer anecdotal.

Sorry. I meant "case report," not "case history." Wikipedia states that "n medicine, a case report is a detailed report of the symptoms, signs, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of an individual patient."

Such a case report, if used as evidence to support a hypothesis of the effectiveness of a treatment would be anecdotal. Say a doctor has a hypothesis that a treatment causes improvement in a disease, say hypertension. The doctor checks one hypertension patient's blood pressure, perhaps over several visits; then gives the patient the treatment; then checks the patient's blood pressure, perhaps again several times; and the doctor finds that the patient's blood pressure has decreased. The doctor writes up the case report and gets it published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The report is anecdotal evidence that the treatment worked. It's completely uncontrolled: the improvement cannot be ascribed to the treatment with anything near the degree of confidence required by the customary standards of medicine.

Certainly, such a case report would have some evidential value for the hypothesis, but the evidence is anecdotal, at least as the term is usually used in medicine. Here you will find a compilation of the definition of "anecdotal" from various medical dictionaries. The majority of the medical dictionaries define the term as meaning data from a single case in contrast with a formal controlled study.

 

[Jabba]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11601160#post11601160

Originally Posted by Loss Leader View PostAbsolutely not. Even in the immortality thread there is no reason for you to "describe" any studies. Just let us know where we can find controlled, falsifiable evidence of immateriality - not a summary or a summary of a summary - the actual controlled studies. And be sure the studies accounted for confounding factors such as the person not actually being dead, and the person describing that which could not be known by a conscious person in the same position.

Originally Posted by Jabba View PostLL,
- So far, I can't find anywhere that someone is dealing with "falsifiable evidence." Can you give me an example? They talk about falsifiable hypotheses, but not falsifiable evidence.

Originally Posted by Loss Leader View PostI will pay somebody to answer this for me.

LL,

- How much?

- But first, do you accept that the summaries have included falsifiable claims of events or situations surrounding a resuscitation?
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[Belz...]

What's with the random quoting styles?

 

[MetalPig]

What's with the random quoting styles?

It's Effective Debate^TM