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We'll crowdsource the solution to tinnitus faster if everyone helps each other understand things better. Better than this system where researchers have to pay for research papers
The future is bright with information!
I think crowdsourcing is as apt find a solution to tinnitus as medical research. I am 100% for it. It's a bit of a shame that researchers don't tap into crowdsourcing more often. Hopefully they will someday recognize the value of it, and learn to harness it.
I know this is a bit off-topic for the title of this thread, but this thread has taken a turn towards the issue of reliability of information found on forums like this, so I would like to state my 2 cents worth (well, maybe 2 dollars worth since its a long post).
I find it pretty easy to sort out what is valid and what isn't when I am reading postings in internet forums. TT is a great site with little dis/misinformation in my opinion; that's why I come here . What I find difficult to sort out at times is the dis/misinformation that I've gotten from supposed experts in the medical community. (I'm not referring to any particular such posts on this site; I am referring by and large to information I have gotten from practitioners that I have paid money to).
My experience with such people goes beyond tinnitus, and in general I believe the professional medical community, as a whole, should be ashamed of itself. Clearly I don't mean to accuse everyone in that community of being a bad practitioner. Their are good practitioners, but they are far and few between. My unscientific guess based on my experience is that the bad practitioners outnumber the good ones 8:1.
In general, I find it much easier to get reliable medical information, and, for lack of a better way to express it, serious effort, from internet based sources than I do from talking to medical specialists. I find that few are as well informed about my medical problems as me. That is a bit of a frightening thing for me especially when I run across a medical professional who tells me something that I know with great confidence is flat out wrong. It's not an infrequent occurrence, and I have learned there is no point to even try to educate them, or provide counter arguments. No amount of fact based information from a mere patient ever gets through to them. Its an odd scenario when you run across a person whose profession is supposed to be science based who ignores scientific evidence. They are typically the ones who want to remind you that medicine is more art than science. I say "poppycock". If you believe it is an art, then you are not doing it right. What makes the difference between a good medical professional and a bad one is skill, innate talent, experience, craftsmanship, knowledge, perseverance, curiosity, great attention to detail, and most importantly, paying attention to the patient. None of those characteristics fall into the category of art in my opinion.
The other part of the problem when it comes to figuring out what is reality in the medical health world is, as someone else posted here, that many studies simply are not done well. Often times the professionals latch on conclusions from poor studies and put them to use without ever informing the patient of tenuousness of those conclusions. What is more often the case is when for financial gain tenuous study outcomes are foisted onto consumers as providing safe solutions when in fact they are not. You may think I'm referring to fly by night operations. In fact what I am talking about is a great number of prescription medications foisted on us by supposedly reputable sources. Never forget that these companies, despite all their corporate slogans are after money, not your health. There is some synergism there - i.e., if their product solves your problem they can make money. But that is not always the reality. They can also make money by selling you stuff that can hurt you as long as no one ever finds out about it. We've seen many times the selected data collection, and even falsified data scenarios that happen in the name of money. We've seen many times the cover-ups and selective ignorance of facts when these companies are called on the carpet. I'm not saying that when these these sort of things happen they are the result of diabolical plans to deceive. they are not. They are the result of laxness that sets in when the goals of the patient and the goals of the provider (whether it be a researcher, drug company, doctor, or hospital) are not perfectly aligned. The patient's goal is perfect health. The provider's goals are not as pure. Money, pride, status, prestige, laws, convenience, etc. all come before the customer's health, and clouds things even when the intention is to not let those things interfere.
There are also honest mistakes in the medical world as well. You don't have to do much research to find medical information that was once universally thought to be true to only later find it wasn't.
My point: the medical community is not pure, is not perfect, and is not that much less likely to steer you wrong as crowdsourcing or the internet. It's caveat emptor (buyer beware) at all times. You've got to be a critical and well informed consumer of all things, including medicine. It's sad that you have to do this while you're also dealing with being sick. At this point in time, we as consumers of healthcare have little control over the quality of care we get. In the US, we are at the mercy and ethical standards of healthcare providers, the government, and the insurance companies. Except in the most egregious cases where we can resort to law suits, there is little we can do to address the "imperfections" (to put it mildly), other than complaining and being selective.
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