Quote:
Quote by: Marilyn Monroe  What kind of study would prove to you that smoking causes cancer and heart disease? Life expectanxy shortens when you smoke and increases when you don't. Sure there are a gazillion variables in everyone's life, but the smoking was a constant.
Types of studies: How Medical Facts Are Developed |
All kinds of studies are useful.
The link you provided was a little bias because it spent most of it's page space promoting one one kind of "science" used for medical research.
The labortory test can show us how one chemical can inter-react another chemical and what the outcome would be. Which is like testing to see if a hot stove will burn your finger. The evidence is pretty clear.
That is the only research that can produce factural data about something.
However, the human body is like an eco-system, a lot of activity is going on. And so non-chemical causes could effect the operaton of that system, called the human mind/body.
The human body (also animals) has a built-in system for self-testing and for self-healing, which involves the immune system. With a built in alarm system (pain). But the self-testing / self-healing system that operates internally can get messed up when we are over stemulated by un-natural amounts of emotional stress. And sometimes if we subsitute medical drugs for what our immune system would produce for us.
The next method is observation. If you observed that 5 people drank water out of a pond and 3 of them got very sick, then we naturally would fear drinking from that pond of water. That kind of fear-based prevention is useful even if you conducted no test to prove that the water was unsafe. But you are not doing so based on facts or proof, unless you tested the water in a lab to find out what (if anything) is in the water.
Early primates ( that is, human beings ) became nomadic and as we moved from one place to another we had to test new kinds of foods to eat. They would run a test on their self, they would eat a tiny bit and wait to see what would happen, watching their body with keen awareness. Then they might sample a larger amount (dose) and via awarness they would watch to see what effect that had. Thus we were able to select what is good to eat and what is not good, the evil fruit from the good fruit. Through that process we also found cures or treatments for illnesses, and even what things would get us high.
Cooking food together, a task women were mostly involved in, was the beginning of all our modern science. She became the tribe's "mid-wife".
AKA - witchdoctor. That early kitchen science was greatly improved upon as we moved into our modern age.
The idea that chicken soup is good for a cold is still a popular opinon in spite of all our modern drugs. Of course they clean chicken with food grade Hydrogen Peroxide solution, which helps to cure the cold.
Modern science has replaced some of that self-testing by testing animals. A less trustworthy way of finding proof but safer for us humans, and they cannot get sued for legal reasons.
1 - lab testing of chemicals by someone with knowledge of biology.
2 - our internal and automatic system that involves our immune system.
3 - Physical observations that might include maintaining stats or logical deductions.
4 - A combination of #1 and #3.
5- A more primitive version called Witchcraft.
The testing process listed as #4 is broken down into what is called
(A) a short term study, and (B) a long term study.