Digest №13- Separating the Chaff from the Wheat in Understanding and Treating Cancer

Bless!

Today I want to take a bit of time to discuss how you can determine if someone promoting any given treatment for cancer is performing quackery or genuinely attempting to help. The most straightforward answer way to determine this would of course be technical knowhow and the ability to simply read up on the matter in technical documents and academic publications.

This to me isn't a very satisfying strategy to give you as it would amount to simply saying: 'Get good.' So, instead of doing something as useless, I'll give you a much more feasible set of strategies – strategies both I and Cedric use to determine veracity of information and claims despite our technical knowhow.

Let's give these strategies a name and describe how to use them one by one.

Strategy 1: Doubt Categorical Claims

One of the biggest red flags, when it comes to information of any kind, is grandiosity.

Such claims as – 'Do this one thing and it shall fix all your problems.' – or – 'This discovery will change how we do X completely.' – or – 'We just found the cure to all the world's diseases.' – should always elicit a frown and raised eyebrow.

The reason for this is simple. Scientific progress is a process of incremental improvements in understanding and application of that understanding. On top of this, translating improvements in understanding into improvements of application is far from trivial.

For example, we've 'known' how we could construct a warp drive to allow for 'faster-than-light' travel for some time, but only in theory.^1–2 Our actual practical application of engineering lags so far behind implementing this, that we can't even test, whether constructing such a warp drive is even physically possible. 

This makes it exceedingly difficult to make large leaps in actually technological implementation. Most technologies begin small and mature over decades. That's simply how it works.

This obviously doesn't mean, that categorical claims are automatically false. Miracles may be true indeed, but they should elicit at least a bit of scepticism.

Strategy 2: Doubt the Mammon

If someone makes a claim, which has the potential to benefit them financially, you should automatically be sceptical of that claim. 

Again, it doesn't mean, the claim is fraudulent, but if the manufacturers of immunising gene-therapeutics (such as the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines) claim, that they are safe and effective, it would make a lot of sense to verify their claim independently and to not simply take them by their word. After all, they stand a lot to gain financially by selling such a gene-therapeutic in the climate of fear and panic, which predominated political, social, and academic debate of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In such situations, where someone stands to gain a lot of money by getting you to believe their claims, it can be very beneficial to be sceptical of their claims. This may seem a little counter-intuitive coming from me, a cancer care advisor, but I would much prefer you doubt my claims and ask me to clarify them, than simply following along at both our peril.

I want to help you. You doubting me can only make me better at helping you, which I see as a win-win for the both of us. If someone is allergic to your doubting them, chances are they are trying to trick you into something beneficial to them, but detrimental to you.

I'd be careful in such situations.

Strategy 3: Doubt Claims from Authority

I don't know how many times I've been exposed to someone claiming the veracity of their position in an argument or debate based on some ostensible authority agreeing with them on the matter. The problem with making arguments from authority is, that it's a simple logical fallacy.

Authorities are either people themselves or organisations run by people. They are exactly as fallible, arrogant, misled, silly, egomaniacal, confused, belligerent, and biased as the rest of us. They eat, drink, urinate, defecate, and sleep just like everyone else.

If you accept, that you yourself may sometimes be wrong, then you are accepting that authorities likewise may be wrong. Thus, any claim invoking an authority as its evidentiary basis is nonsensical on its face and must be discarded, if it can't independently be argued in its favour using factual evidence and logical reasoning.

If I told you, that chemotherapy is the only possible treatment for your cancer, because some body or board of experts said so, you should question it. Perhaps, I have other evidence to base that claim on, but most likely, I myself fell prey to the logical fallacy of arguments from authority and am now dragging you down with me.

Don't let yourself be drowned with the foolish. Doubt everyone, me especially.

Synopsis

Beyond technical knowhow there are three effective strategies to employ in order to ascertain the probability of veracity of information told to you. These are:

1. Doubt categorical claims: progress seldom happens in leaps and bounds, but slowly and gradually, with incremental improvements over time. It doesn't make these claims untrue, just unlikely.
2. Doubt the mammon: if someone profits from you believing their claims, be sceptical of them. It doesn't mean they're wrong or lying or manipulative, but it means they may be stretching truth for their own gain.
3. Doubt claims from authority: if the only argument someone can bring is 'X said so', it doesn't matter how authoritative X ostensibly is; their argument is nonsensical on its face, unless it can be argued independently from facts.

I hope this has given a small insight into how we try to estimate the veracity of information, which we come across or which is given to us.

God bless,
Merlin L. Marquard

P.S.: All three strategies also work on scientific literature, as such literature is written by humans and thus as fallible as the rest of us. Keep that in mind. Scientists, too, are only human.