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Let’s cure together and be alright!
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December 18th, 2010 • Filed under: Health
I came across CureTogether.com lately, a site that relies on its members in order to provide collaborative diagnosis, and potential treatments* -an instance of crowdsourcing as it’s called. In essence, visitors rely on a popularity contest to determine what their symptoms mean and what the most effective course of action might be. And this is so, so dangerous!
In the US alone, a very big percentage of the population promotes and uses unproven (or more commonly proven wrong) alternative and complimentary treatments.
Another good percentage (which, surprise surprise, typically overlaps with the first class of delusionals) believes in all sorts of government supported conspiracy theories and that the “BigPharma” wants us all constantly sick and miserable.
Finally, there are very active and strong groups of blindfolded idiots that propagandize against the use of vaccines, with the well known dire consequences.
With the above in mind, and also considering how bad humans are in rational, impartial thinking, the variety of cognitive errors, and the multitude of logical fallacies we are susceptible to, would you trust such a website**?
Some examples from the site: homeopathy in general and many of its watery substances appear a good number of times, and it is a potential treatment for Laryngitis and Swine Flu (among others). For Multiple Sclerosis patients, there may be hope in acupuncture, acupressure, and Chinese herbs -which ones we are not told. Acupuncture apparently may also be considered for Fibromyalgia, as is Reiki (!), reflexology (!), and chiropractice, all of which evidently ineffective against… anything, and pure magical thinking bullcrap.
Lots of control, potential regulation, or even better, some credential checking of the people allowed to post diagnostic and treatment opinions should be present, otherwise I would stay well clear of such sites. Questions arise though on how such control could be enforced, while one may also say that then you just lose the benefits of crowdsourcing. The jury is still out…
The above said, some of the concepts behind CureTogether are solid, and I can certainly see the benefit in a near-perfect world, were people were generally responsible and aware of their own limits. But in a world where 95% of the population thinks they are cleverer than average, and 50% have just too much time to waste this becomes tricky (of course I have just made up these numbers, but I would not be surprised if they were close to reality
).
Even with that in mind, CureTogether can still provide some very good value, e.g. for identifying candidates and sourcing for clinical trials; for collecting anecdotes for identifying research points; and for receiving early feedback on new treatments, and with some tweaking it may prove to be reformational. Or am I going too far?
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Footnotes:
In the US alone, a very big percentage of the population promotes and uses unproven (or more commonly proven wrong) alternative and complimentary treatments.
Another good percentage (which, surprise surprise, typically overlaps with the first class of delusionals) believes in all sorts of government supported conspiracy theories and that the “BigPharma” wants us all constantly sick and miserable.
Finally, there are very active and strong groups of blindfolded idiots that propagandize against the use of vaccines, with the well known dire consequences.
With the above in mind, and also considering how bad humans are in rational, impartial thinking, the variety of cognitive errors, and the multitude of logical fallacies we are susceptible to, would you trust such a website**?
Some examples from the site: homeopathy in general and many of its watery substances appear a good number of times, and it is a potential treatment for Laryngitis and Swine Flu (among others). For Multiple Sclerosis patients, there may be hope in acupuncture, acupressure, and Chinese herbs -which ones we are not told. Acupuncture apparently may also be considered for Fibromyalgia, as is Reiki (!), reflexology (!), and chiropractice, all of which evidently ineffective against… anything, and pure magical thinking bullcrap.
Lots of control, potential regulation, or even better, some credential checking of the people allowed to post diagnostic and treatment opinions should be present, otherwise I would stay well clear of such sites. Questions arise though on how such control could be enforced, while one may also say that then you just lose the benefits of crowdsourcing. The jury is still out…
The above said, some of the concepts behind CureTogether are solid, and I can certainly see the benefit in a near-perfect world, were people were generally responsible and aware of their own limits. But in a world where 95% of the population thinks they are cleverer than average, and 50% have just too much time to waste this becomes tricky (of course I have just made up these numbers, but I would not be surprised if they were close to reality
).
Even with that in mind, CureTogether can still provide some very good value, e.g. for identifying candidates and sourcing for clinical trials; for collecting anecdotes for identifying research points; and for receiving early feedback on new treatments, and with some tweaking it may prove to be reformational. Or am I going too far?
---
Footnotes:
- * I hope I am doing justice to the site’s objectives, but please correct me if this is not a fair representation [↩]
- ** I was alarmed to see the publicity and endorsements the site has received, maybe from only a superficial analysis of the potential benefits and risks, but still.. [↩]
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