Comment by bmicraft
3 days ago
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm against unnecessary additives too. But you surely agree that anecdotes are bad source to inform your understanding on a subject where countless actual experts are available.
3 days ago
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm against unnecessary additives too. But you surely agree that anecdotes are bad source to inform your understanding on a subject where countless actual experts are available.
What can the actual experts tell me about my child's reaction to the food dye? One of my children has an adverse reaction to the dyes, my other children do not. What is the expert going to tell me? How does one get access to one of these experts? What about the studies that do show a link between behavior issues and artificial dyes? Are those studies not to be trusted?
Edit: curious about your first sentence: what makes you against unnecessary food additives? Is it a double blind study? If so, can you name it or an expert opinion on the matter that you trust?
I'm not telling you to personally change your belief. What I was trying to say is that you're propping up the value of your individual opinion as if it should rival experts to the reader.
> [...] claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.
I'm saying that you making a mountain out of a belief does directly translate to a distrust in experts, in a way that telling somebody they might just be wrong/it was a coincidence/whatever couldn't do.
At the end of the day most people just see what the want or expect to see, when there isn't a strong enough correlation in another direction. That's why, a reader, one should not value any anecdote too highly.
> curious about your first sentence: what makes you against unnecessary food additives? Is it a double blind study?
The question reads like a gotcha, but I'll answer anyway: The fact that there aren't enough studies about many such ingredients, and that I don't have time to check which are definitely vs. lack data.
Lots of parents probably follow similar lines of thinking about the effect of sugar on their kids' behaviour, and I think it's worth deferring to experts on that.
> What can the actual experts tell me about my child
That's the exact sort of distrust in authorities you purport yourself to be against.