HACKER Q&A
📣 ludovicianul

What are your sources for reliable Health and Medical information


I find it harder and harder to find reliable health-related information. Covid just polarised people: you were either pro-vaccines (i.e. pro-science) or against (therefore anti-science). As we see now things are a bit more nuanced and you can start having conversations around the topic without the labelling. But this might be an extreme case. I'm also talking about everyday health and medical info.

So, what are your news or personal site/blogs (maybe Twitter accounts?) you rely on?

  👤 znpy Accepted Answer ✓
I rely on my brother that has been studying medicine for 11 years and is an actual doctor of medicine and surgeon.
👤 verdverm
Huberman Lab podcast seems pretty trustworthy, he does his homework and has excellent guests

One guest made an interesting point, you should use medical papers more as a guide what not to do than what to do, negative effects are more reliable due to the constraints in studies

👤 Terretta
If your example of pro/anti vax being "nuance" was just an example, and you don't actually think being "against vax" is supported by current evidence, then the answer to your question is to go with sources that tend to align with meta surveys. This will filter out fringe and anti-science, generally being more reliable.

. . .

How do you know whether it's reliable or not? Or do you mean that reliably supports a non-medical worldview one way or another?

Interesting framing, as if looking for nuance in "reliable" health info that -- implied by your example -- would include info "against vaccines" when being against vax tends to suggest either anti-science or perhaps a preference to go back to survival of the fittest, when measels, mumps, rubella, helped cull weak kids in challenged communities. Where's the nuance in that?

Maybe you meant against boosting immunity with mRNA tech to smooth SARS-COV pandemic spread? Sure, that's nuanced. But you wrote pro or against vaccines in general.

If you're unhappy that anti-vax material isn't as widely published, consider that could be because it's not as widely valid, so doesn't withstand peer review or other scrutiny. Perhaps given the facts scientifically in evidence, an absence of such nuance suggests the publisher may not be more political but simply more "reliable".