POTUS:
I noticed your thanks to the Hemp Goddess on the above post. - Is it safe to conclude, then, that you will in fact accept non double-blind results, as long as they support your theory?
In clinical research, the term 'double-blind' indicates an environment wherein the person recording the results, in addition to the subject of the study, is unaware of which treatment (molasses or no molasses, in this case) has been administered. As we're not asking the plants to fill out questionnaires subsequent to our study, we can conclude that they are effectively 'blinded', in this sense.
This leaves us with the person recording the results. In order to satisfy the remaining double-blind criterion, this would mean that the person reporting the results would need to be someone OTHER than the person administering the treatment/no treatment.
Which would be hypothetically manifest here in one of two ways:
1. The person who is posting to this message board was NOT the person who administered the treatment and had no knowledge of which plants received what, or
2. The person who is posting to this message board had another person interpret their results without any knowledge of which plants received what.
Unfortunately, the actuality of either of these is no more conclusive:
1a. "I was looking at my buddy's plants and some of his buds were HUGE! When I asked him what he did differently, he told me he'd added molasses to them...", or
1b. "My girl has been watering my plants for me for the past month and trying the molasses in half of them (without telling me which ones). Sure enough, I could tell by the second week...", or
2. "So I've been watering half my crop for the last X weeks with molasses. Today I asked so-and-so which were the biggest. Sure enough..."
As you can see, none of these is in any way more conclusive than open, objective research. In an uncontrolled environment (results reported anonymously in an online message board dedicated to growing), there is no less potential for exaggeration or bias in such cases. Homeboy 1a wants to tell everyone his dude's plants were nice just as much as the next guy. I can tell you personally that 1b is simply impractical to the point of being unrealistic. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any growers are going to both have access to someone who can conveniently take over the watering of their crops for any significant length of time
and let them. Given the context, this aspect of a double-blind trial borders on the absurd, and I think you recognize that. Finally, in the case of number 2, there's even greater cause and potential for exaggeration than there is in the case of 1a. Demand for instances of this nature do nothing to increase the standard of reliability, particularly in a context such as this.
What it does do, however, is allow for the out-of-hand dismissal of other people's firsthand results in one fell swoop without possessing (or claiming to possess) any knowledge of equal credibility to the contrary.
[See also: ad hominem attack.]
What's unfortunate about that is how it served to quip what was until that point a fairly decent discussion, which, in an online discussion board dedicated to the furthering of communal knowledge, ought to amount to a G.D. travesty. Open trials are more than adequate to prove or disprove a theory, provided you have enough of them.
Would it have been more or less efficient, when people started using fertilizer, to run open trials and gauge the results, or to demand double-blind trials involving entirely unnecessary protocols? Which do you think the chemical companies used? Which do you think the amateur growers out there in the trenches who perfect the science for our particular species use?
Put another way, no one is setting out to prove that molasses works. They were setting out to measure the difference, when you came in and got so far up their yahoos that it killed the entire conversation. I can't see how anyone would have a vested interest in skewing the results unless they were in molasses sales; there really is little cause to suspect bias. Without question, there is insufficient potential for bias to require a
double-blind standard. ****, the plants can't even talk.
This isn't rocket science, and we're not attempting to prove the existence of dark matter, cure cancer or otherwise risk life and limb. I think that, not only is it safe to accept word of mouth here - particularly on a larger scale, but we also have no other realistic choice. And it bears mentioning again that this is exactly what the site is for.
POTUS said:
Yours,
Juan
PS - Try to relax.
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
- Niels Bohr
