https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor?wprov=sfla1 This is part of how the scientific conversation works, it’s not perfect but good for generalising and mostly reliable. Things that become mainstream parts of the conversation will get more citations, especially as funding will flow those ways, so a lot of the criticisms smooth over. I’m trying to explain how this all works because it’s complicated and valuable to know and very political. Just because someone published something doesn’t make it infallible. There’s really a range of grey because it is a conversation. Having a good journal backing you carries a lot of weight as they rest their reputation on you, multiplying your voice in a way. I like to picture it like a video game multiplier.
PubMed is a search engine for many journals. It’s not one journal.
When you write a paper, you’re not trying to prove something. You’re trying to attack your hypothesis from all angles and disprove it. You want to be wrong because what’s the fun in knowing everything.
I apologize for my outbursts, but I have ran into so many dude Bros over the years… the kind of people who think science is agreeing with their favorite YouTube Skeptic and yelling “FAKE” at anything they don’t understand or contradictis their preferred skeptic…
I run into this kind of person a lot on science forums, so knowing if a forum has those kinds of people let’s me know if actual science is going to be discussed here or if it’s going to devolve into a circle jerk.
It’s easy for me to lose my temper. I should be better than this, and I will thank you for teaching me about two new things. One impact factor and two that PubMed is not by itself a journal, I don’t publish things because I’m not a doctor myself. I merely someone who tries to stay educated. I apologize if I ever gave the impression that I was trained in The Sciences as opposed to someone who merely has an interest in them.
Hypnotism is a card I typically have, and the more negative someone reacts to it, the easier it is for me to test the water.
I apologize for my deception, but as far as I am aware, it isn’t a question whether or not hypnosis exists and actually works, it’s a question of what the practical application sport are. One thing we know for sure is that memory recovery is not one of these applications, as the hypnotic state will cause someone to create a memory not actually remember one. Which is a shame. This is why one needs to be very wary of any past life memories that have resurfaced thanks to meditation, I’d be wary of any past life memories at all to be honest, given how easy self deception is when it comes to just things involving this life.
That’s ok. It’s good to question things. I realise this stuff is hard. I added an important caveat to how we approach hypotheses. There is actually a lot of writing about how there is too much information to filter these days, even for academics. This is why we rely on things like impact factor. Additionally, anyone can technically publish in a journal but it is hard to get into because of these kinds of politics.
I’m glad there are no hard feelings, and I apologize I guess I am a bit naive on the nature of these journals, I figured that just getting one published and recognized was already an incredibly difficult process subject to much scrutiny.
If this is not the case, then that is news to me and wish to be better informed.
I will try to get you those peer reviewed papers on the smoking and irritable bowel syndrome claims, but for the future is there a good way to know the impact score of a paper? There are a lot of papers on meditation and even some claiming to make statements on the subject of life after death that I would love to see further scrutinized, while the former is pretty much accepted by everyone at this point, the latter is very much a question and a question that many neurologists and physicists believe is answered by no.
When you find a paper, Google the name of the journal + “impact factor”, and you should find something. Some journals display their metrics with different scores due to complications with the IF system, so you’ll need to judge those accordingly but they should come up with the same search keywords. There should be a body of literature with higher scores, not just single papers too. Also, look up your authors and see if this is actually something they’re qualified for. This all shows the idea has been established and accepted as part of the mainstream conversation. This is the academic “sniff test.”
The problem with hypnosis isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the lack of significant effects (efficacy), notably as a standalone treatment. Most sciences measure this with a variant of a p-value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value?wprov=sfla1 Note that interpretations of p-values are susceptible to placebo effects.
It’s also kind of important that the research is relatively newer because of some metascience trends have changed our understanding of things and we have different standards now.
If there is no absence of evidence, then we can’t disregard it as bullshit now can we? It sounds more like we haven’t found the right applications or we need to develop better methods of using it.
As for it’s not working as a standalone treatment, does anything these days? I’m on medication for bipolar and anxiety but I still need to regularly see my therapist. The medication by itself isn’t going to fix anything.
Efficacy. It needs to pass through this before it gets to effectiveness testing. Meta studies are important for examining this hence the wiki section mention earlier, which lists a bunch.
Note that just being in the conversation doesn’t mean it’s not being cannibalised. Papers or trends may arise that put other researchers in a tizzy. If it’s an accepted practice, you are likely to see a lot of papers fine tuning methods.
The placebo thing shuffles it under their umbrella. There’s a lot of issues there with those.
If I understand what you were saying, is that we have evidence that there is something there, but that’s about all we have, and anyone claiming to have anything more than that when it comes to hypnosis is a charlatan who is best ignored. And that those who practice meditation need to be careful to avoid making big claims with it, and not have high expectations.
Because we have evidence that it works, but nothing more than that, Placebo is the best official classification it can have even if that doesn’t completely perfectly fit, but it is the best label we can give it for now until we know more.
Am I understanding correctly, or if I completely lost the plot? Because I’m only telling you as I understand it. Which I admit considering you have already corrected me on some terms that I did not know, my understanding may be more limited then I realized it was prior to entering this conversation.
You generally got it. ;) The grey areas keep things interesting. Methodology is also important to consider and pick apart more and more considerations of appropriate applications and working contexts. It may be that this practice should be re-categorised rhetorically too, e.g. the language that we use to talk about this subject causes too much confusion as this thread exemplifies.
Lots of things have once been seen as mystical woo, but later had some of the phenomena established with good investigations. From what I have seen, and I’m by no means an expert, that body of literature one would expect for this just isn’t there yet.
Ps: Determining a good IF score will depend on the niche-ness and topic as well but that is why you try not to examine literature in a vacuum of one or two papers. Naturally, those that read more on these specific subjects are the best judges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor?wprov=sfla1 This is part of how the scientific conversation works, it’s not perfect but good for generalising and mostly reliable. Things that become mainstream parts of the conversation will get more citations, especially as funding will flow those ways, so a lot of the criticisms smooth over. I’m trying to explain how this all works because it’s complicated and valuable to know and very political. Just because someone published something doesn’t make it infallible. There’s really a range of grey because it is a conversation. Having a good journal backing you carries a lot of weight as they rest their reputation on you, multiplying your voice in a way. I like to picture it like a video game multiplier.
PubMed is a search engine for many journals. It’s not one journal.
When you write a paper, you’re not trying to prove something. You’re trying to attack your hypothesis from all angles and disprove it. You want to be wrong because what’s the fun in knowing everything.
I apologize for my outbursts, but I have ran into so many dude Bros over the years… the kind of people who think science is agreeing with their favorite YouTube Skeptic and yelling “FAKE” at anything they don’t understand or contradictis their preferred skeptic…
I run into this kind of person a lot on science forums, so knowing if a forum has those kinds of people let’s me know if actual science is going to be discussed here or if it’s going to devolve into a circle jerk.
It’s easy for me to lose my temper. I should be better than this, and I will thank you for teaching me about two new things. One impact factor and two that PubMed is not by itself a journal, I don’t publish things because I’m not a doctor myself. I merely someone who tries to stay educated. I apologize if I ever gave the impression that I was trained in The Sciences as opposed to someone who merely has an interest in them.
Hypnotism is a card I typically have, and the more negative someone reacts to it, the easier it is for me to test the water.
I apologize for my deception, but as far as I am aware, it isn’t a question whether or not hypnosis exists and actually works, it’s a question of what the practical application sport are. One thing we know for sure is that memory recovery is not one of these applications, as the hypnotic state will cause someone to create a memory not actually remember one. Which is a shame. This is why one needs to be very wary of any past life memories that have resurfaced thanks to meditation, I’d be wary of any past life memories at all to be honest, given how easy self deception is when it comes to just things involving this life.
That’s ok. It’s good to question things. I realise this stuff is hard. I added an important caveat to how we approach hypotheses. There is actually a lot of writing about how there is too much information to filter these days, even for academics. This is why we rely on things like impact factor. Additionally, anyone can technically publish in a journal but it is hard to get into because of these kinds of politics.
I’m glad there are no hard feelings, and I apologize I guess I am a bit naive on the nature of these journals, I figured that just getting one published and recognized was already an incredibly difficult process subject to much scrutiny.
If this is not the case, then that is news to me and wish to be better informed.
I will try to get you those peer reviewed papers on the smoking and irritable bowel syndrome claims, but for the future is there a good way to know the impact score of a paper? There are a lot of papers on meditation and even some claiming to make statements on the subject of life after death that I would love to see further scrutinized, while the former is pretty much accepted by everyone at this point, the latter is very much a question and a question that many neurologists and physicists believe is answered by no.
Which I will admit is rather depressing.
When you find a paper, Google the name of the journal + “impact factor”, and you should find something. Some journals display their metrics with different scores due to complications with the IF system, so you’ll need to judge those accordingly but they should come up with the same search keywords. There should be a body of literature with higher scores, not just single papers too. Also, look up your authors and see if this is actually something they’re qualified for. This all shows the idea has been established and accepted as part of the mainstream conversation. This is the academic “sniff test.”
The problem with hypnosis isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the lack of significant effects (efficacy), notably as a standalone treatment. Most sciences measure this with a variant of a p-value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value?wprov=sfla1 Note that interpretations of p-values are susceptible to placebo effects.
It’s also kind of important that the research is relatively newer because of some metascience trends have changed our understanding of things and we have different standards now.
If there is no absence of evidence, then we can’t disregard it as bullshit now can we? It sounds more like we haven’t found the right applications or we need to develop better methods of using it.
As for it’s not working as a standalone treatment, does anything these days? I’m on medication for bipolar and anxiety but I still need to regularly see my therapist. The medication by itself isn’t going to fix anything.
So tell me where exactly does the issue lie?
Efficacy. It needs to pass through this before it gets to effectiveness testing. Meta studies are important for examining this hence the wiki section mention earlier, which lists a bunch.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3726789/
Note that just being in the conversation doesn’t mean it’s not being cannibalised. Papers or trends may arise that put other researchers in a tizzy. If it’s an accepted practice, you are likely to see a lot of papers fine tuning methods.
The placebo thing shuffles it under their umbrella. There’s a lot of issues there with those.
If I understand what you were saying, is that we have evidence that there is something there, but that’s about all we have, and anyone claiming to have anything more than that when it comes to hypnosis is a charlatan who is best ignored. And that those who practice meditation need to be careful to avoid making big claims with it, and not have high expectations.
Because we have evidence that it works, but nothing more than that, Placebo is the best official classification it can have even if that doesn’t completely perfectly fit, but it is the best label we can give it for now until we know more.
Am I understanding correctly, or if I completely lost the plot? Because I’m only telling you as I understand it. Which I admit considering you have already corrected me on some terms that I did not know, my understanding may be more limited then I realized it was prior to entering this conversation.
You generally got it. ;) The grey areas keep things interesting. Methodology is also important to consider and pick apart more and more considerations of appropriate applications and working contexts. It may be that this practice should be re-categorised rhetorically too, e.g. the language that we use to talk about this subject causes too much confusion as this thread exemplifies.
Lots of things have once been seen as mystical woo, but later had some of the phenomena established with good investigations. From what I have seen, and I’m by no means an expert, that body of literature one would expect for this just isn’t there yet.
Ps: Determining a good IF score will depend on the niche-ness and topic as well but that is why you try not to examine literature in a vacuum of one or two papers. Naturally, those that read more on these specific subjects are the best judges.