| I didn't say that all positive evidence is low quality, and I definitely didn't say that all negative evidence is high quality. My logic works like this: 1. Cannabis has a number of plausibly pharmacologically active chemicals. 2. The effects these pharmacologically active chemicals have may help some things, and make other things worse. Both are almost certainly true, depending on which things we are talking about. 3. Many of the sources of information on this topic are biased, either by the anti-drug movement, which cannot abide any positive findings, and the pro-drug movement driven both by the counter-culture and more recently commercial interests. 4. In the face of both of these biases, US federal regulations has made study of therapeutic use next to impossible. Studies of those using voluntarily in the community, however, is still possible. 5. Of the studies that have been done, most focus on the negative impacts. Not all of these studies are good, but many of them are. In fact, a good number of them are excellent. I'm not saying it's a fair fight, but that is the state of the science in 2015. 6. Perhaps, in time, as the playing field is leveled and good randomized controlled trials with strong blinding can be conducted, high-quality evidence for cannabis as a legitimate therapy can happen. That has not yet happened. 7. Despite the absence of evidence, many people are making lots of money off of cannabis, and have a strong incentive to promote this message regardless of the evidence (or lack thereof). 8. As the benefits are mostly unknown, and the risks are quite well known (based on lots of poor research but also quite a bit of high quality research), I cannot recommend medical marijuana at this time. 9. This is a moving target. I will need to continue to follow research trends, and my recommendations will change based on available data. I hope that is more explicit. Also, I know it's ad hominem, but I would be remiss not to point out that linking to reddit and wikipedia is not nearly as strong as pointing to well-conducted primary literature sources. Also, take a look at the reddit link you posted. The ratio of negative outcomes of use to positive is very high. |
> but no amount of enthusiasm changes the fact that high-quality research hasn't happened yet.
> I didn't say that all positive evidence is low quality
You are now conceding that there is high-quality research, but have since made more claims which are completely dismissive of that evidence. So, while I wouldn't argue with most of the points you just made, I still feel that your basis for dismissing positive research is flawed, at best.
The purpose of linking to Reddit was to provide an encompassing list of the published papers. It isn't a list of comments from random people on the internet, it's a list of scientific journals and websites which you, yourself, would recognize as being respectable sources. Likewise, the purpose of linking to Wikipedia entries was to give an overview or example. You are more than welcome to scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the actual sources for that information. It is unreasonable to insist that someone provide hundreds of sources at the bottom of a comment, when they are already consolidated elsewhere.
As to your point about negative results being more likely or common than positive ones, I don't see how that has anything to do with the topic at hand, which is that you seem to be convinced that positive claims are either flawed or tainted to the point of being illegitimate. Even if 99 out of 100 research efforts resulted in negative outcomes, that is not a reason to dismiss the one. Just as it is not a reason to dismiss positive research based on some (or even a majority) of it being supported or influenced by third parties.