I do this stuff for a living. Come at me bro/hoe.

It’s very clear that among both red and blue pillers, most of them don’t have the slightest idea in the world how to use studies, cite them correctly or even know what a damn ‘scientific study’ is. So I’ll try and keep this as simple and concise as I can.

Firstly

If you knew what you were talking about, you would know that scientific facts don’t rest on single studies—homeboy.

The reason you can find single studies out there to prove and disprove almost any proposition you like, is because a large percentage of scientific results out there are false. Nearly two thirds of all papers in psychology for instance, fail to be reproduced. And where the methodology of reliability is concerned, domains like psychology perform almost equally or even better among other domains and large scale social studies.

What is actually relevant in any comprehensive study performed is (A) what data gets reproduced in a study, (B) what data/conclusions the majority and consensus of studies converge upon, if any, and (C) what is based upon a sufficiently large and not just large, but reliable set of data (which is furthermore peer reviewed by legitimate sources and has survived repeated and sufficient scrutiny. If you’re citing pseudoscientific sources, you’ve got another problem at hand)

Secondly

Among people that do professional studies, it’s widely known that people even within our own discipline can’t do math.

Among mathematicians who know what they’re doing, many of them have begun predicting that published papers which pass peer reviewed sources can have an expected rate of false positives of approximately 30%, which means 1-in-3 results that people ‘claim’ to have been confirmed by the paper’s data, won’t actually have been substantiated. (And worse still, once you have added in more causes of error in addition to being ignorant of how math and statistics work, that rate goes up even further)

That has also been substantiated and supported by the work of the Reproducibility Project, which found that only 36% of peer reviewed studies and research could actually be reproduced (and that isn’t even the predicted 1-in-3 failure rate already mentioned, but almost 2-in-3 which makes it even worse than originally anticipated). Even of papers that could actually reproduced, on average the effect size of the phenomenon that’s being reported was 1/2 that claimed by the original paper. Overall, original papers are more likely to produce false results when the effect size reported was small, which demonstrates a known correlation you’ll see repeated, the more studies you read: strong effect sizes correlate with stronger rates of reproduction.

Thirdly

“BUH, MUH CORRELASHUN DUN EKWUL KAWZASHUN!”

Anyone who posts this shit whether on this sub or anywhere else you can almost instantly check off an idiot box right by their name, because they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. This phrase is most frequently used by people who do not understand statistical analysis.

All that science does is create correlations between things.

Correlation being causation is literally the entire root of all forms of predictive statistics. If someone wanted me to hire them to perform regression analysis, and you pulled this line in my research group, I would fire your ass on the spot. Serial correlation for example is frequently, very frequently used in research circles and is a standard practice in trend analysis.

Studies frequently break data in cohorts over a specified time period (week 1, week 2, week 3, etc.), and once your data has been aggregated, each set can be analyzed for week to week serial correlations. This is your dataset. So if given deltaX in weekN with respect to some projected mean (using least squares reg), what is the projected range of week N+1? This is serial correlation 101.

Correlation can be fallacious in establishing causation, where your analysis is performed incorrectly. It is not a catchall term that allows you to sidestep criticism to the contrary. Just like ‘ad hominem’ is not Latin for “he insulted me.” In place of an argument, you are wrong because you are an asshole—is a fallacy. You being wrong and, “oh, you are also an asshole,” is not a fallacy.

Lastly

You don’t need scientific studies to be right.

Believe it or not, flawed as they are, people tend to fare pretty well for themselves without making hard use to complicated analytical reasoning everyday. Mathematics is cool and great and useful, but if those were the only statements I’d be willing to act on, I would be such a nerd. You would never be able to communicate with another human being. Most of us don't live our lives this way, science is ultimately just confirmation after the fact. We didn't arrive at our positions on the basis of this, stop pretending like it is.

(The pp is what ultimately vindicates everything)