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Old 06-08-2009, 07:53 PM   #269
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136


We are trained to disregard anecdotal evidence.

A mother, saying that feeding her kid different food caused a change in behavior in that kid, is NOT anecdotal evidence.

A responsible mother is a researcher performing a 24x7x365 study on that kid. The MD who sees that kid once a month, he cannot offer intelligent opinions on the daily happenings in that house.

The difference might be that a university researcher etc. is bound by legal/professional/ethical constraints to adhere to the scientific method, peer review etc. and that is as it should be. And we don't know what kind of crackpot this kid's mother might be--it could be one of those people who think the Bible will heal your terminal illness or whatever.

But I can tell you that in my household, I trust my childcare researcher (Pooka). When the doctors said our baby was "collicky" we were like "WTF is collicky?! That isn't even a medical concept, it just means they don't know or care to look into it." So Pooka journaled everything baby ate, and every event in baby's life, until we had the DATA to form a conclusion: baby had acid reflux. We had to tell the doctor what the problem was. The medication caused an IMMEDIATE and obvious difference in baby's whole outlook on life. A total PERSONALITY change, as she wasn't IN PAIN constantly anymore.

A doctor wouldn't know that. A doctor isn't with your kid 24/7 to see that.

Here is something else I know: Clodfobble has never done anything that suggests in the slightest that she isn't a supremely logic-driven individual. I know that. And if Clodfobble reports observations made in the laboratory of her domicile, then I have to accept that as legitimate research. In fact, I am bound by my belief in a logic-driven universe to do so--to NOT do so would require me to make an exception to some set of facts that I have already verified as accurate.

Earlier I was thinking about how when my brother was severely hyperactive as a kid, the doctor told my mom "Stop feeding him sugar." That helped. Would any doctor tell you that, today?
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There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
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