Is “its only anecdotal evidence” a sufficient reason in itself to dismiss stories of cancer cures?
The answer, surely, is definitely not. A great many important medical advances originated with a few anecdotal observations. You only have to think of milkmaids rumoured to be immune to smallpox, or the old woman apparently curing oedema with the foxglove (digitalis). Why, then, is anecdotal evidence generally looked down upon? Well, frankly, a lot of it is of little value, lying at the lowest possible extreme of evidence worthiness. Many cancer cures turn out to have no more substance than “I heard somewhere —-“. Most personal testimonials don’t hold water even on the information supplied (See a deceptive breast cancer testimonial with further examples in How to Read a Cancer Testimonial. Such evidence is deservedly not given much weight, not because it belongs to an ill-defined category of evidence called “anecdotal”, but because it is obviously not reliable. We should, however, be prepared to explain why that is so. Dismissing evidence that others find highly significant without o
