[mcav]

From that article:

> Blinded clinical trials show that people with MCS react as often and as strongly to placebos as they do to chemical stimuli; the existence and severity of symptoms is seemingly related to perception that a chemical stimulus is present.

[SilverRed]

This reminds me of the people moving out to the middle of no where because they claim to be sensitive to wifi.

[judge2020]

While not a physical thing, it can be ""real"": https://youtu.be/O2hO4_UEe-4

[forgotmypw17]

I don't believe this study for a second based on personal experience. It sounds about as trustworthy as tobacco-is-harmless and fat-not-sugar studies of the past.

[fingerlocks]

This is why people don’t take your claims seriously. If you aren’t even willing to consider an opposing viewpoint, why should anyone consider yours? What’s the point in having a discussion?

Clearly you have some kind of hypersensitivity to indoor environments. I’m not convinced it’s VOCs. They’ve been with us for a long time now, spanning a few generations, and life expectancy is only increasing. Maybe I’m wrong; I’m open to that possibility.

On the hand, the only other people I’ve met with issues similar to yours have allergic histamine reactions to particulates that are benign to everyone else. Like dust and grass. I have a friend that gets a shot every few months for it, and doesn’t have a problem when treated. Have you considered speaking with a doctor?

[sizzle]

Yep antigen shots worked for my grass pollen allergy

[forgotmypw17]

I don't have allergies, and I am not sensitive to indoor envornments by themselves. I just get very tired and a migraine-like reaction when exposed to synthetic cleaning products and new furniture, as far as recently.

I don't need scientific consensus to prove it to me, I live it myself.

People I am close with do take me seriously, and the problem is fixed when the VOCs are taken away.

[foerbert]

You aren't receiving pushback from people who are attempting to deny your experience. I don't think anybody here doubts the experiences you have mentioned.

Instead people are questioning your analysis of the root cause. You can be meaningfully and honestly impacted and also be wrong about why you are having trouble. Even in the most extreme case where somebody wants to claim you effectively experiencing the placebo effect, that does not detract from the realness of your issue.

I think many people have trouble really groking this separation. Questioning the root cause can often feel like questioning the problem. Additionally it is easy to become attached to an explanation that may be faulty. Humans are not well-evolved to be perfectly rational and completely detached observers of their own lives. And faulty explanations don't necessarily cause faulty solutions, which can make things even harder to disentangle.

However I think it's important to try to keep in mind that all of these aspects are distinct in important ways despite being related. It is possible to question or even refute these aspects individually without casting aspersions on the other aspects. You can have a real problem, and a working solution, and still be completely wrong about why. That's fine, and actually pretty normal.

[sojournerc]

VOC's aren't all man-made. You'd need to live in a vacuum to avoid them altogether.

The nice smell after a rain storm? VOC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound#Biol...

[forgotmypw17]

What are you saying, that because some VOCs are found in nature, any man-made VOC is OK too, just because it is part of the same chemical compound family?

[bawolff]

I think the appropriate conclusion would be your sensitive to something more specific than just the very broad class of VOCs in general.

[civilized]

The study may be true on average but not in every particular case. The way we do most medical studies today, with relatively small samples and coarse aggregate statistics, isn't well-suited to detecting rare but genuine issues with a high false positive rate.

[AnthonyMouse]

There are also two major issues with science today.

The first is that a lot of studies are simply careless. They use a "placebo" which has a scent to give the indication that there is something there, but then the "placebo" unintentionally contains VOCs. Or the lab's janitor uses them to clean the lab, things like that.

The second is that a lot of studies are funded by people with agendas. It's all too easy to get an invalid result by accident, much less on purpose.

See also replication crisis.

So then you either have to know and trust the authors of the study or spend the time to go through it with a fine toothed comb and find replications from independent scientists before you can trust it. Which nobody really has the time to do, so the default position becomes to dismiss anything the reader disagrees with.

It's a problem.

[urda]

> I don't believe this study for a second

You don't get to throw away opposing evidence because it does not agree with the point you're attempting to sell. You don't actually want to have a conversation, you just want to push an agenda.