A big thanks to Personalized Medicine for putting this on and subsidizing my learning about things I should have been motivated to learn anyway. Thanks also to User: TCB for proofreading my entry and catching several hilarious but unacceptable mistakes, which was very helpful. And of course to gwern, wedifrid, and several other people who knew much more about minerals than I did for not participating; that was helpful too.
Although I did the best I could with the time I had available and I stick to what I said, I absolutely agree with everyone who says the field is confused and I have relatively low confidence some of my recommendations. I agree with Zvi and Michael that there’s plausible evidence that lowering sodium below 4g/day might not be beneficial and may even be harmful (though it’s still better too low than too high), but there’s also plausible evidence (some of which I cited) that lowering sodium is great and you should lower it as much as possible; I still think the balance of evidence is for the latter, but take the whole field with a grain of salt (pun intended). Calcium—I do stick to my position that it’s more likely to harm than help in groups without elevated osteoporosis risk, but I could still totally be convinced of the opposite if there’s some good study I missed or if I misinterpreted some statistic. As for lithium and iodine, I went into the research hoping I could avoid any weird recommendations that went against the general medical consensus, and clearly that plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy; I feel a little awkward recommending them, but the whole “Bayesians can’t privilege the null hypothesis” thing has forced my hand. Still, be really careful with those.
Also, Kevin’s entry especially was really really good, and I recommend taking a look at it. It’s very speculative, but it’s interesting and well-founded speculation and I hope some of his theories get the research attention they deserve.
And I publicly precommit to donating at least half of the prize to charity, probably split between SIAI (got to remember to wait for their matching drive this time) and some warm fuzzy causes (is it weird that I think of malaria eradication as a warm fuzzy cause these days?)
And I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance of the lithium section to my own summary… :)
Kevin said the same thing, but I didn’t read either of your writings until after the contest. I’m going to classify this one under “independent confirmation”.
A big thanks to Personalized Medicine for putting this on and subsidizing my learning about things I should have been motivated to learn anyway. Thanks also to User: TCB for proofreading my entry and catching several hilarious but unacceptable mistakes, which was very helpful. And of course to gwern, wedifrid, and several other people who knew much more about minerals than I did for not participating; that was helpful too.
Although I did the best I could with the time I had available and I stick to what I said, I absolutely agree with everyone who says the field is confused and I have relatively low confidence some of my recommendations. I agree with Zvi and Michael that there’s plausible evidence that lowering sodium below 4g/day might not be beneficial and may even be harmful (though it’s still better too low than too high), but there’s also plausible evidence (some of which I cited) that lowering sodium is great and you should lower it as much as possible; I still think the balance of evidence is for the latter, but take the whole field with a grain of salt (pun intended). Calcium—I do stick to my position that it’s more likely to harm than help in groups without elevated osteoporosis risk, but I could still totally be convinced of the opposite if there’s some good study I missed or if I misinterpreted some statistic. As for lithium and iodine, I went into the research hoping I could avoid any weird recommendations that went against the general medical consensus, and clearly that plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy; I feel a little awkward recommending them, but the whole “Bayesians can’t privilege the null hypothesis” thing has forced my hand. Still, be really careful with those.
Also, Kevin’s entry especially was really really good, and I recommend taking a look at it. It’s very speculative, but it’s interesting and well-founded speculation and I hope some of his theories get the research attention they deserve.
And I publicly precommit to donating at least half of the prize to charity, probably split between SIAI (got to remember to wait for their matching drive this time) and some warm fuzzy causes (is it weird that I think of malaria eradication as a warm fuzzy cause these days?)
Kitten malaria, right?
Indeed. You can be sure that this contest has been entered into my personal mistakes file.
And I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance of the lithium section to my own summary… :)
Kevin said the same thing, but I didn’t read either of your writings until after the contest. I’m going to classify this one under “independent confirmation”.
My file has been likewise expanded!
For my part I do concur with all of Yvain’s findings while I had a few disagreements with Kevin’s ideas.