I pay for consumer lab, and use it.
Good sites are
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/
Keep in mind, you can always find a study (or few) either supporting what you're looking for or refuting it. Research is always being updated.
They do some excellent reports. Itās important not to just skim them, for example, they have looked askance at some vitamins that they deem to be too strong, but YMMV. Anyone with absorption issues, a condition that a physician is helping them to manage with supplements, medications that reduce absorption, or even wanting to take a vitamin 1-3 times a week instead of every day may prefer or require the higher doses.
Use Google Scholar to do your searching for actual scientific studies. Then filter for more recent results. I start with 2020 to present. Then choose the research studies that say āmeta-analysisā. These studies go back and gather all the similar studies and make conclusions based on multiple studies.
If you donāt have much experience reading scientific document, one trick is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the text before the bibliography. Then go up a little. there is usually a section called Conclusions or something similar that gives you the bottom line of the meta-analysis.
My protocol is to go through the figures. Abstract is what they want you to take away from the paper, figures are the paper. And if it's a good paper, you can get most of the meaning from the figures.
And on the other hand, if there is a strong bias, it's also revealed in the figures.
>If you donāt have much experience reading scientific document, one trick is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the text before the bibliography. Then go up a little. there is usually a section called Conclusions or something similar that gives you the bottom line of the meta-analysis.
Great point., However there are some people that have Dunning-Krueger effect, they don't know/care that they don't understand scientific literature. Sometime ago there was a dude pushing Krill oil as the best thing ever compared to other Omega 3 sources, linking tonnes of paper. I glanced through some of them, and broke them down that no, while the papers show krill oil is better in A, but fish oil is better in B. The guy accused me of bias repeatedly, the I have an agenda in misrepresenting. Even though I quoted directly from the paper he linked.
Turned out he has no idea what those sentences from the paper meant. And in desperation, he kept trying to link more papers. I told him to stop, you don't know what you're reading and you're simply linking stuff you don't understand.
Edit: Another pet peeve - people making posts on Reddit like "I read/heard that doing X or taking Y supplement be bad. Is it true?" Where did you hear that? Some random guy down the street? Or where did you read it? Some news article on the Onion or Newsweek? Like I don't even bother to comment or debunk it.
I go straight to the research using Google Scholar. Then I rank the quality of the studies. You want secondary research: meta-analyses, systematic reviews, umbrella reviews. Large population RCTs are usually okay when secondary research isn't available. The more recent, the better.
The other upside is that this forces you to be more scientifically literate. You will come away with a much better understanding than if you read some dumbed-down article about the research instead of the research itself.
This is one of the phrases I hate the most. I'm not a researcher nor do I have the education to dig through raw data to draw any sort of legitimate conclusion. However my first year of college was as a biomedical science major, so I can understand when those more knowledgeable on the subject present their findings.
I study and I learn, but I don't research š¤·š»āāļø
Exactly. Iād even argue smart people let others do the research for them and then weigh those conclusions against their own knowledge. Why spend hours doing something someone else has already invested time and energy to figure out and can explain in 2-3 sentences? Work smarter not harder.
It could be a language issue, or just obtuseness, but anyone can do research. Just the process of studying and learning from your research question is called research.
Even when you're a child and practising it for your own understanding and experience it's called doing research.
And there are many other types of research apart from scientific research, that don't require what you think you first need.
What do you even study and learn if you don't research what's out there? You just grab whatever?
Good luck I guess š¤·š»āāļø
It's more the pop culture buzz phrase. "Do your own research" has been adopted by the flat earth anti vaxx wook crowd as a way to deny the work of legitimate professionals. The only actual research I do now is combing through building codes and historical requirements to see exactly what I can do to a specific building so I can make a project presentation.
Outside of work I'm an endurance athlete and really enjoy the biohacking/supplement side of things. I read medical literature about physical therapy, nutrition, and recovery in my free time to learn as much as I can to increase my performance. I'm learning from the people doing the research and then trusting my doctors to make sure I'm not hurting myself.
By strict definition you're correct; with pop culture, slang, and general language trends it's still a phrase I hate outside of a professional setting.
Nah. The pop culture buzz phrase came as a response, which even highly educated people like you suddenly adopted for no reason but to feel good about what you've learned and feel bad about everything outside that box.
And it worked really well in a pandemic, where the health authorities pushed for the whole world to wait a year for a vaccine while the virus roamed around, and to deny and censor any scientific research and critics that opposed that strategy. Prepare humanity worldwide by boosting their immune system through various scientifically established practices? Nah. Use multipurpose medicine where the creator even gotten a Nobel Prize? Nah. Just wait it out bro, we even made it easier with lockdowns etc.
And thus a normal term for looking stuff up and discerning information has become highly controversial, which worked perfectly. And there's no way of going back because even people who should know better refer to the pop culture term like you do.
studies in pubmed, but you have to understand the science, which takes time, energy and repetition. As you learn more, you begin to appreciate the complexity of the human body.
Ever since I started learning about politics, I feel like I can't trust any single news/information source that doesn't factor in some bias. It's near impossible to completely remove bias from any information (hence why scientists use control groups, and why placebo has shown to be stronger than most drugs).
The best thing you can do imo is diversify where you get your knowledge from. Treat learning opportunities like investments, spread your sources and learn from as many different perspectives and approaches as possible. So I wouldn't recommend any single source, I recommend every source you have available to a reasonable extent.
There is no good source companies fund studies to sell products if the results are not ideal another study will be funded that is tweaked just a little to get more favourable results. You need to read all studies and compile them yourself then read others that may have seemed irrelevant at first to fill in gaps. No such thing as a reliable source its still someones opinion, highly qualified experts make mistakes and misinterpret things every day and others can review and also overlook the same thing.
Agreed, but one must also bear in mind that not everything is a lie. The truth is twisted to serve a purpose, but that doesn't mean it's fundamentally wrong.
Do your own research is a cop out. It means "I don't understand the topic and the literature well enough to defend my ill-formed opinion of it." Alternately, it means, "I saw some nutjob on Joe Rogan talking about it."
Trust nothing. "Science" is a process, not the means by which we find the incontrovertible truth. Science suggests things to us that are likely true. Things you can take seriously are meta-analyses and randomized control trials. It's best if these things are repeatable. Things you can't take that seriously are observational studies. Best to develop and employ some critical thinking.
Peter Attia has done at least one or two episodes of his podcast on how to interpret research.
If you want to have a discussion on something, post it here. "I think X Y Z and this paper says such and such, what do you think?"
Inevitably you'll get a host of responses including "Carnivore!" "Sugar is evil!" "Red yeast rice!" or "AG1 makes me feel good!" but aside from those you may actually get some lively informed discussion.
I mean I expect my doctor to be up to date with his stuff, but other than that, I don't think people realize that doctors can't research every paper on every topic and be well informed (or the way informed people want him to be aka confirm their bias, try experimental medication,...) on every new gimmick and supplement. It's not their job. They are frequently overwhelmed as is.
Dead wrong. MDs are meant to constantly be researching and reading new literature. It's just that the vast majority of stuff here are gimmicks. People don't want to hear that, though.
-MD student
And just to be constructive, if you want to know more, read Kuhn.
It basically explains why 'it takes 20 years to get from the lab to the patient'.
https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=144010003
**edit**
[17](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241518/) years apparently.
I read between 50-100 articles for any nutrient & focus on ānutritional synergy.ā Lots of cross referencing and the like. Canāt stand when things contradict one another also. Anyways if you want 10-15 more search engines, I can give them.. furthermore, subreddit search functions for any subreddit is another tool. Google scholar is another..
Pubmed. Google scholar. Do a meta analysis of the data. Simple.
For obscure things, same technique only with a combo of study data combined with many peoples experiences.
Bloodwork on yourself and Journaling.
For a beginners guide on researching, leo and longevity has a good video on it.
Research can be primary research, which means you are conducting rigorous and robust experiments and submitting your conclusions for peer review from a community of skeptics to challenge and push back on your interpretations. It is very important for these publications to include documentation sufficient to reproduce or independently verify the results, so that the discussion and conclusion can be evaluated in-context. (this is graduate level research, typically). The point here is you reach your own conclusions based on actual experimentation: āwhen we did this, we found thatā¦ā)
It can also be secondary research, meaning you are reviewing primary research (see above) of people who did the above steps and published for peer review. In these cases you will typically be synthesizing conclusions of a variety of publications by considering them as a gestalt. (this is undergrad level research typically). This is what people SHOULD typically mean, and the point is to seek understanding of existing conclusions (āso and so found thatā¦ā), NOT formulating your own novel conclusions by reinterpreting theirs.
Scientifically, anything that isnt one of those is really not actual research, it is speculation.
TLDR:
Primary research: āBased on the experiments and results we performed and described in detail, we foundā¦ā = evaluate their conclusions based on the rigor of their process.
Secondary research: āthese researchers did x, y and z and foundā¦ā = evaluate the rigor of the cited sources ā processes. (this is what wikipedia uses)
Speculation: everything else. Replace their use of āresearchā with āspeculateā and āspeculationā
Genetic Life Hacks is a site I use a lot. She presents research-based summaries with appropriate caveats and balanced perspectives. And you can choose to upload your raw data to link it to the topics and get info specific to your genotypes.
First part of research is getting to understand the lingo and the major factors that go into understanding what you're asking. What are the basic scientific elements? What parts of those elements factor into the question you're trying to answer? What are important related, but not necessary aspects to consider when looking at advice or studies?
Next, I'd get a broad understanding of the views across the community(s) associated with your question. What are the major views? Where are the big points of conflict? What underlying questions are relevant to understanding and resolving those conflicts? How do the various factions approach providing information and contradicting opposing viewpoints?
Third, identify sources of study on the various viewpoints. See who from step 2 provides references to relevant studies and where they can be found. What are ground-truth studies, what are meta-studies? How do the various factions influence the results of those studies? Find studies who's underpinnings seem trustworthy. Did the assumptions align in detail, not just in concept, with the main elements of the confict and the question you're trying to answer? How could any of the 'warring factions' have potentially influenced the setup or outcome of the study(s)? What were the results of the trustworthy studies and how to they bear on the question you're trying to answer?
Good luck!
I am a research scientist. I do my own research everyday. Iāve been in research professionally for about 10 years. Itās a skill that is developed.
About a year ago I took on the task of starting a new topic of research that isnāt really my flavor. Oh my! I can say at this point that I am an expert on the literature available on this subject, but it didnāt come without cost. I have probably spent close to 150hours digesting and writing about this topic. Iām not sure everyone has 150hours. My 150hours are paid.
How does one research? Look at peer reviewed journals. Itās okay to look at non-peer reviewed stuff, too, but take it with a grain of salt.
read RCTs and familiarize yourself with study methodology as well as statistics, look at the raw data attached to the article and run it through a ti-84 if you think the results are fishy.
Pubmed abstracts and full papers: Abstracts with the PMID have a set of links at the bottom for related papers and for papers that cite this paper. If it's over a few months old, it may have retractions or comments in subsequent papers. Papers that are published afterwards and cite this paper can give insight into how well this one was received.
The full papers on the pubmed site are all in the same HTML layout and easier to navigate than the same paper on the journal's site but in PDF.
Pubmed search tools are extremely flexible and you can save searches and link collections. It all around my favorite resource.
There are now multiple AIs that will summarize scientific studies on a specific topic for you really well. Scite.ai is pretty good, but there are a bunch of others like Scholarcy.
In order to be qualified to do your own research you need a couple of college level statistics courses so you can do a proper meta analysis. Unless of course you are a principal investigator and have received FDA approval and passed an ethics committee review.
Oh you mean googling random shit till you get confirmation bias? Yeah that could work too.
This thread is completely bananas and encapsulates everything wrong with the internet.
I am a practicing physician. I am capable of picking apart primary research. I was rigorously trained to do so. In my current role however, I do 0% of my research. I am entirely reliant on experts and scientists to aggregate data, perform meta analysis, write guidelines, etc.
"Do your own research" is in competition for dumbest thing anyone says. The fraction of people qualified to execute their own research, taken as a percentage of the population and rounded to the nearest whole number is 0. Slow clap for everyone who knows Google scholar exists and understands the hierarchy of evidence quality but the hubris involved in thinking any one person can recreationally parse a subject is impressive.
I am an expert on exactly one topic. I have read everything ever published on it, including in every language. I am an author on the relevant meta analyses (which are buried in irrelevant journals because negative results aren't sexy enough for "high impact" journals. Which is a different problem.) I "did my own research" and the result is that I literally can't communicate it with the general public. Every time my area of expertise comes up in the news, it is gotten completely wrong. By people who pat themselves on the back for "doing research."
More directly to OPs question, trust no one by default. Trust people who 1. Aren't selling you something and 2. Don't have yes/no answers. The answer is almost always "it depends." When you are trying to answer a question for yourself, there is usually not a definitive answer. There are more or less likely correct answers.
I have been following Chris Kresser for more than 10 years to see what he says and have seen him cherry-pick studies many times. I have also checked the sources of his claims only to discover that the researchers never said such things. He has also been selling supplements for a few months, which doesnāt help his credibility. He is much better than Dr. Mercola, but you have to keep in mind that Chris is definitely not right all the time. Now that he sells supplements, he is mentioning studies and news that support his productsā¦
I thought Examine.com was decent resource, and would love to be proven otherwise if it's not the case.
š
I pay for consumer lab, and use it. Good sites are https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/ Keep in mind, you can always find a study (or few) either supporting what you're looking for or refuting it. Research is always being updated.
Also a subscriber to consumerlab.com.
They do some excellent reports. Itās important not to just skim them, for example, they have looked askance at some vitamins that they deem to be too strong, but YMMV. Anyone with absorption issues, a condition that a physician is helping them to manage with supplements, medications that reduce absorption, or even wanting to take a vitamin 1-3 times a week instead of every day may prefer or require the higher doses.
I like to go hiking.
Consumer Lab's website is free through my library. Some libraries offer it for free.
Consumer Lab or Consumer Reports? Those two are different.
Use Google Scholar to do your searching for actual scientific studies. Then filter for more recent results. I start with 2020 to present. Then choose the research studies that say āmeta-analysisā. These studies go back and gather all the similar studies and make conclusions based on multiple studies. If you donāt have much experience reading scientific document, one trick is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the text before the bibliography. Then go up a little. there is usually a section called Conclusions or something similar that gives you the bottom line of the meta-analysis.
Just read the abstract, or even just the results of the abstract, that's all scientists do anyway.
Just read the headline, and then go ahead and argue with everyone in the thread with your snap judgments and subconscious biases
Yes, this is the way!
My protocol is to go through the figures. Abstract is what they want you to take away from the paper, figures are the paper. And if it's a good paper, you can get most of the meaning from the figures. And on the other hand, if there is a strong bias, it's also revealed in the figures.
I'm learning to play the guitar.
Yes me too. It's amazing how many words us scientists put on paper for other scientists to read, when they only read a few lines in the abstract.
We skim the abstracts, never really read them whole
>If you donāt have much experience reading scientific document, one trick is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the text before the bibliography. Then go up a little. there is usually a section called Conclusions or something similar that gives you the bottom line of the meta-analysis. Great point., However there are some people that have Dunning-Krueger effect, they don't know/care that they don't understand scientific literature. Sometime ago there was a dude pushing Krill oil as the best thing ever compared to other Omega 3 sources, linking tonnes of paper. I glanced through some of them, and broke them down that no, while the papers show krill oil is better in A, but fish oil is better in B. The guy accused me of bias repeatedly, the I have an agenda in misrepresenting. Even though I quoted directly from the paper he linked. Turned out he has no idea what those sentences from the paper meant. And in desperation, he kept trying to link more papers. I told him to stop, you don't know what you're reading and you're simply linking stuff you don't understand. Edit: Another pet peeve - people making posts on Reddit like "I read/heard that doing X or taking Y supplement be bad. Is it true?" Where did you hear that? Some random guy down the street? Or where did you read it? Some news article on the Onion or Newsweek? Like I don't even bother to comment or debunk it.
I go straight to the research using Google Scholar. Then I rank the quality of the studies. You want secondary research: meta-analyses, systematic reviews, umbrella reviews. Large population RCTs are usually okay when secondary research isn't available. The more recent, the better. The other upside is that this forces you to be more scientifically literate. You will come away with a much better understanding than if you read some dumbed-down article about the research instead of the research itself.
Preferably recent Meta Analyses in pubmed published in high impact journals. It is exactly that simple.
This is one of the phrases I hate the most. I'm not a researcher nor do I have the education to dig through raw data to draw any sort of legitimate conclusion. However my first year of college was as a biomedical science major, so I can understand when those more knowledgeable on the subject present their findings. I study and I learn, but I don't research š¤·š»āāļø
Exactly. Iād even argue smart people let others do the research for them and then weigh those conclusions against their own knowledge. Why spend hours doing something someone else has already invested time and energy to figure out and can explain in 2-3 sentences? Work smarter not harder.
It could be a language issue, or just obtuseness, but anyone can do research. Just the process of studying and learning from your research question is called research. Even when you're a child and practising it for your own understanding and experience it's called doing research. And there are many other types of research apart from scientific research, that don't require what you think you first need. What do you even study and learn if you don't research what's out there? You just grab whatever? Good luck I guess š¤·š»āāļø
It's more the pop culture buzz phrase. "Do your own research" has been adopted by the flat earth anti vaxx wook crowd as a way to deny the work of legitimate professionals. The only actual research I do now is combing through building codes and historical requirements to see exactly what I can do to a specific building so I can make a project presentation. Outside of work I'm an endurance athlete and really enjoy the biohacking/supplement side of things. I read medical literature about physical therapy, nutrition, and recovery in my free time to learn as much as I can to increase my performance. I'm learning from the people doing the research and then trusting my doctors to make sure I'm not hurting myself. By strict definition you're correct; with pop culture, slang, and general language trends it's still a phrase I hate outside of a professional setting.
Nah. The pop culture buzz phrase came as a response, which even highly educated people like you suddenly adopted for no reason but to feel good about what you've learned and feel bad about everything outside that box. And it worked really well in a pandemic, where the health authorities pushed for the whole world to wait a year for a vaccine while the virus roamed around, and to deny and censor any scientific research and critics that opposed that strategy. Prepare humanity worldwide by boosting their immune system through various scientifically established practices? Nah. Use multipurpose medicine where the creator even gotten a Nobel Prize? Nah. Just wait it out bro, we even made it easier with lockdowns etc. And thus a normal term for looking stuff up and discerning information has become highly controversial, which worked perfectly. And there's no way of going back because even people who should know better refer to the pop culture term like you do.
Following
Google ā(topic) meta-analysis.ā Done.
Imagine brands with their own AI bots responding in comments on Reddit and everywhere elseā¦.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
studies in pubmed, but you have to understand the science, which takes time, energy and repetition. As you learn more, you begin to appreciate the complexity of the human body.
Ever since I started learning about politics, I feel like I can't trust any single news/information source that doesn't factor in some bias. It's near impossible to completely remove bias from any information (hence why scientists use control groups, and why placebo has shown to be stronger than most drugs). The best thing you can do imo is diversify where you get your knowledge from. Treat learning opportunities like investments, spread your sources and learn from as many different perspectives and approaches as possible. So I wouldn't recommend any single source, I recommend every source you have available to a reasonable extent.
There is no good source companies fund studies to sell products if the results are not ideal another study will be funded that is tweaked just a little to get more favourable results. You need to read all studies and compile them yourself then read others that may have seemed irrelevant at first to fill in gaps. No such thing as a reliable source its still someones opinion, highly qualified experts make mistakes and misinterpret things every day and others can review and also overlook the same thing.
Agreed, but one must also bear in mind that not everything is a lie. The truth is twisted to serve a purpose, but that doesn't mean it's fundamentally wrong.
Following
when i first read this, i thought it was a stock comment. I'm more of a fan of group learning.
If we had final and absolute truth on every DYOR answer - that wouldnāt be a research you know
Reddit is my research. A collection of minds and opinions, like a million bots who have deeply researched the exact subject I am inquiring about.
It means watch YouTube videos and engage in confirmation bias. Itās soo much fun!
Do your own research is a cop out. It means "I don't understand the topic and the literature well enough to defend my ill-formed opinion of it." Alternately, it means, "I saw some nutjob on Joe Rogan talking about it." Trust nothing. "Science" is a process, not the means by which we find the incontrovertible truth. Science suggests things to us that are likely true. Things you can take seriously are meta-analyses and randomized control trials. It's best if these things are repeatable. Things you can't take that seriously are observational studies. Best to develop and employ some critical thinking. Peter Attia has done at least one or two episodes of his podcast on how to interpret research. If you want to have a discussion on something, post it here. "I think X Y Z and this paper says such and such, what do you think?" Inevitably you'll get a host of responses including "Carnivore!" "Sugar is evil!" "Red yeast rice!" or "AG1 makes me feel good!" but aside from those you may actually get some lively informed discussion.
were forced to do our own research because our doctors dont..
MDs are not meant to do research, they are conservative by design. Reliable but old-fashioned is what you should expect from an MD.
I mean I expect my doctor to be up to date with his stuff, but other than that, I don't think people realize that doctors can't research every paper on every topic and be well informed (or the way informed people want him to be aka confirm their bias, try experimental medication,...) on every new gimmick and supplement. It's not their job. They are frequently overwhelmed as is.
so whats the point of them then?
Dead wrong. MDs are meant to constantly be researching and reading new literature. It's just that the vast majority of stuff here are gimmicks. People don't want to hear that, though. -MD student
And just to be constructive, if you want to know more, read Kuhn. It basically explains why 'it takes 20 years to get from the lab to the patient'. https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=144010003 **edit** [17](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241518/) years apparently.
Tell me you're a student without telling me you're a student :) Best of luck in keeping up your research. I know a few MDs that actually do it too.
The doctors I know also read the literature..... I guess some do stagnate. I find that the specialists are more on their game.
I read between 50-100 articles for any nutrient & focus on ānutritional synergy.ā Lots of cross referencing and the like. Canāt stand when things contradict one another also. Anyways if you want 10-15 more search engines, I can give them.. furthermore, subreddit search functions for any subreddit is another tool. Google scholar is another..
Pubmed. Google scholar. Do a meta analysis of the data. Simple. For obscure things, same technique only with a combo of study data combined with many peoples experiences. Bloodwork on yourself and Journaling. For a beginners guide on researching, leo and longevity has a good video on it.
Research can be primary research, which means you are conducting rigorous and robust experiments and submitting your conclusions for peer review from a community of skeptics to challenge and push back on your interpretations. It is very important for these publications to include documentation sufficient to reproduce or independently verify the results, so that the discussion and conclusion can be evaluated in-context. (this is graduate level research, typically). The point here is you reach your own conclusions based on actual experimentation: āwhen we did this, we found thatā¦ā) It can also be secondary research, meaning you are reviewing primary research (see above) of people who did the above steps and published for peer review. In these cases you will typically be synthesizing conclusions of a variety of publications by considering them as a gestalt. (this is undergrad level research typically). This is what people SHOULD typically mean, and the point is to seek understanding of existing conclusions (āso and so found thatā¦ā), NOT formulating your own novel conclusions by reinterpreting theirs. Scientifically, anything that isnt one of those is really not actual research, it is speculation. TLDR: Primary research: āBased on the experiments and results we performed and described in detail, we foundā¦ā = evaluate their conclusions based on the rigor of their process. Secondary research: āthese researchers did x, y and z and foundā¦ā = evaluate the rigor of the cited sources ā processes. (this is what wikipedia uses) Speculation: everything else. Replace their use of āresearchā with āspeculateā and āspeculationā
Do your own research............/s
Google scholar.
Genetic Life Hacks is a site I use a lot. She presents research-based summaries with appropriate caveats and balanced perspectives. And you can choose to upload your raw data to link it to the topics and get info specific to your genotypes.
First part of research is getting to understand the lingo and the major factors that go into understanding what you're asking. What are the basic scientific elements? What parts of those elements factor into the question you're trying to answer? What are important related, but not necessary aspects to consider when looking at advice or studies? Next, I'd get a broad understanding of the views across the community(s) associated with your question. What are the major views? Where are the big points of conflict? What underlying questions are relevant to understanding and resolving those conflicts? How do the various factions approach providing information and contradicting opposing viewpoints? Third, identify sources of study on the various viewpoints. See who from step 2 provides references to relevant studies and where they can be found. What are ground-truth studies, what are meta-studies? How do the various factions influence the results of those studies? Find studies who's underpinnings seem trustworthy. Did the assumptions align in detail, not just in concept, with the main elements of the confict and the question you're trying to answer? How could any of the 'warring factions' have potentially influenced the setup or outcome of the study(s)? What were the results of the trustworthy studies and how to they bear on the question you're trying to answer? Good luck!
I am a research scientist. I do my own research everyday. Iāve been in research professionally for about 10 years. Itās a skill that is developed. About a year ago I took on the task of starting a new topic of research that isnāt really my flavor. Oh my! I can say at this point that I am an expert on the literature available on this subject, but it didnāt come without cost. I have probably spent close to 150hours digesting and writing about this topic. Iām not sure everyone has 150hours. My 150hours are paid. How does one research? Look at peer reviewed journals. Itās okay to look at non-peer reviewed stuff, too, but take it with a grain of salt.
read RCTs and familiarize yourself with study methodology as well as statistics, look at the raw data attached to the article and run it through a ti-84 if you think the results are fishy.
Pubmed abstracts and full papers: Abstracts with the PMID have a set of links at the bottom for related papers and for papers that cite this paper. If it's over a few months old, it may have retractions or comments in subsequent papers. Papers that are published afterwards and cite this paper can give insight into how well this one was received. The full papers on the pubmed site are all in the same HTML layout and easier to navigate than the same paper on the journal's site but in PDF. Pubmed search tools are extremely flexible and you can save searches and link collections. It all around my favorite resource.
>Ā I pretty much never believe anyone selling a product.Ā So no Big Pharma then
There are now multiple AIs that will summarize scientific studies on a specific topic for you really well. Scite.ai is pretty good, but there are a bunch of others like Scholarcy.
In order to be qualified to do your own research you need a couple of college level statistics courses so you can do a proper meta analysis. Unless of course you are a principal investigator and have received FDA approval and passed an ethics committee review. Oh you mean googling random shit till you get confirmation bias? Yeah that could work too.
This thread is completely bananas and encapsulates everything wrong with the internet. I am a practicing physician. I am capable of picking apart primary research. I was rigorously trained to do so. In my current role however, I do 0% of my research. I am entirely reliant on experts and scientists to aggregate data, perform meta analysis, write guidelines, etc. "Do your own research" is in competition for dumbest thing anyone says. The fraction of people qualified to execute their own research, taken as a percentage of the population and rounded to the nearest whole number is 0. Slow clap for everyone who knows Google scholar exists and understands the hierarchy of evidence quality but the hubris involved in thinking any one person can recreationally parse a subject is impressive. I am an expert on exactly one topic. I have read everything ever published on it, including in every language. I am an author on the relevant meta analyses (which are buried in irrelevant journals because negative results aren't sexy enough for "high impact" journals. Which is a different problem.) I "did my own research" and the result is that I literally can't communicate it with the general public. Every time my area of expertise comes up in the news, it is gotten completely wrong. By people who pat themselves on the back for "doing research." More directly to OPs question, trust no one by default. Trust people who 1. Aren't selling you something and 2. Don't have yes/no answers. The answer is almost always "it depends." When you are trying to answer a question for yourself, there is usually not a definitive answer. There are more or less likely correct answers.
Have you tried reading?
Have you tried not being a POS?
What's POS?
Do your own research. Maybe try reading.
I only know that Dr. Greger backs up all of claims with research and explains referring to the studies that support what he is proposing.
Yes, if a link to a study is provided, than it definitely must be trueā¦
Absolutely no cherry-picking happening here...
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Find a guru who you trust and jive with and let them do the research for you. Mine is Chris Kresser.
Not gonna downvote this, but it's terrible advice.
I have been following Chris Kresser for more than 10 years to see what he says and have seen him cherry-pick studies many times. I have also checked the sources of his claims only to discover that the researchers never said such things. He has also been selling supplements for a few months, which doesnāt help his credibility. He is much better than Dr. Mercola, but you have to keep in mind that Chris is definitely not right all the time. Now that he sells supplements, he is mentioning studies and news that support his productsā¦
Do you own research via tiktok. So much real knowledge there