What is anecdotal evidence, and how reliable is it?
What kinds of scientific evidence are available, and how do we evaluate it? Clinical research Clinical research is an experiment done with people, rather than animals or in a test tube. It says nothing about whether the experimenters followed careful standards and research guidelines. (Ways of evaluating clinical research are described in the next article.) Anecdotal evidence Anecdotal evidence is informal evidence that has not been subjected to rigorous scientific analysis. It runs the gamut from a friend telling you, “This supplement worked for me,” to the accumulated wisdom of a culture that has been using local plants for centuries both for healing diseases and enhancing well-being. Critics of dietary supplements often dismiss this accumulated wisdom as “just anecdotal evidence,” but the fact that this knowledge has not been scrutinized with modern statistical techniques does not mean it has no value. Many of our modern drugs have come from this kind of cultural knowledge of medici
