Secondly, “some studies” can show a lot of things that aren’t true. IIRC the majority of peer-reviewed research shows that peer support groups like AA usually have a positive impact vs. no peer support. Anecdotally, my peer support networks saved my life, more than once.
Literally all of this. Distrust in studies, claim that number of studies beats quality and a statement without citation, and then it ends with an anecdote.
None of that is anti science. There’s no “distrust in studies”, unless you’re referring to the distrust in the “some studies” you cryptically referenced in your post. Not that you bothered even to cherry pick, but cherry-picked studies can show results that the preponderance of evidence does not support. Nor do I claim that quantity beats quality. Scientific communities are as capable of systemic bias just like any other. However, the preponderance of evidence does cut against your unsourced assertion that peer groups don’t aid in recovery. Lastly ancedotes: they aren’t anti-science, nor are they useless. They are statistically unsuitable for the purposes of drawing conclusions about large populations or general trends, and therefore shouldn’t be used as the basis for broad scientific claims, which is why I did no such thing. They are stories that humans share with one another in casual conversation, and I thought it was one worth sharing here.
And not that you deserve this, making your wild claims with no evidence, but as Exhibit A for the scientificness of my paragraph I’d like to enter into the record the first result when searching for AA meta analyses on pubmed. Relevant sections are presented below.
Main results: We included 27 studies containing 10,565 participants (21 RCTs/quasi-RCTs, 5 non-randomized, and 1 purely economic study). The average age of participants within studies ranged from 34.2 to 51.0 years. AA/TSF was compared with psychological clinical interventions, such as MET and CBT, and other 12-step program variants. … AA/TSF (manualized) compared to treatments with a different theoretical orientation (e.g. CBT) (randomized/quasi-randomized evidence) RCTs comparing manualized AA/TSF to other clinical interventions (e.g. CBT), showed AA/TSF improves rates of continuous abstinence at 12 months (risk ratio (RR) 1.21, 95% confidence interval (CI)
Thank you, this is very valuable data and discussion.
They didn’t control for AA-only versus AA+Real-Treatment, studies which do almost never show improvement.
The problem with religion is it is ever-pervasive and its followers will do anything to justify it.
There is also a long-running problem with the followup interviews where calling and asking the patient is accepted as evidence, studies which look at longterm recidivism show a darker trend and even then you’re not grasping the full picture.
Literally all of this. Distrust in studies, claim that number of studies beats quality and a statement without citation, and then it ends with an anecdote.
None of that is anti science. There’s no “distrust in studies”, unless you’re referring to the distrust in the “some studies” you cryptically referenced in your post. Not that you bothered even to cherry pick, but cherry-picked studies can show results that the preponderance of evidence does not support. Nor do I claim that quantity beats quality. Scientific communities are as capable of systemic bias just like any other. However, the preponderance of evidence does cut against your unsourced assertion that peer groups don’t aid in recovery. Lastly ancedotes: they aren’t anti-science, nor are they useless. They are statistically unsuitable for the purposes of drawing conclusions about large populations or general trends, and therefore shouldn’t be used as the basis for broad scientific claims, which is why I did no such thing. They are stories that humans share with one another in casual conversation, and I thought it was one worth sharing here.
And not that you deserve this, making your wild claims with no evidence, but as Exhibit A for the scientificness of my paragraph I’d like to enter into the record the first result when searching for AA meta analyses on pubmed. Relevant sections are presented below.
Thank you, this is very valuable data and discussion.
They didn’t control for AA-only versus AA+Real-Treatment, studies which do almost never show improvement.
The problem with religion is it is ever-pervasive and its followers will do anything to justify it.
There is also a long-running problem with the followup interviews where calling and asking the patient is accepted as evidence, studies which look at longterm recidivism show a darker trend and even then you’re not grasping the full picture.