Comment by data_required | Hacker News Reader

Comment by data_required | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

"Not even not-terribly-convincing evidence, not even flimsy evidence, no evidence at all."

I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine being a high-quality supplements site deserving of getting high ranks in Google supplement search results. So have numerous other commenters in this comments section. The Examine employee, AhmedF, has as well.

So I'm curious- what would qualify as "evidence" for you? And why do none of the other points mentioned qualify as "evidence"?

I'm pretty baffled at this point as to what it would take. You ask for evidence, I think remarkably strong evidence has been provided by me and numerous others, and then you just seem to ignore it?

BTW, I think our discussion got mentioned on the Nootropics subreddit comments thread about this topic. (Examine's blog post is one of the top 10 posts of all time on that subreddit. People with a big interest in supplements consider this to be a BIG deal).

Our discussion was referenced here- https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/cpg1ha/over_the...

"God those comments represent the worst of hacker news. There is a giant argument about whether examine.com is the best website on supplements. With anyone who's ever looked at a supplement site arguing it's examine.com and people who've never looked at a supplement site in their life arguing that surely a better one must exist."

"I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine"

Charitably, maybe you've done so somewhere else on the internet. Taking a second to look at every post by you on this thread, however, the only thing you've listed are other sites that come up higher on searches. All of your posts have been demanding that other people prove wrong your flat assertions that Examine is awesome.

And I'm not feeling charitable at this point. I don't believe you're communicating in good faith. That you can dig up other woo-pushers on reddit (of course there's a nootropics subreddit...) doesn't impress me one bit. You said you were dropping it before, but I'm telling you I'm done with you now.

>Charitably, maybe you've done so somewhere else on the internet."

No, I mentioned things in this thread. And of course, so have many other people.

To copy and paste the simplest excerpt, and ignore a few minor additional bits:

>that they cite massive amounts of scientific papers, that they've been cited by the NYTimes and other media news outlets, the fact the post got hundreds of upvotes is its own evidence, the fact they don't sell supplements or make money from advertising, etc."

Examine, to the best of my knowledge, has:

The most social proof

Cites the most scientific papers

Has been cited by a number of neutral and relatively authoritative media outlets

Has the best incentive structure (just making money from selling guides)

Every competitor links to fewer scientific papers for the user to do their own digging, and appears to be less neutral in what they cite.

Every other competitor is ad-funded and assaults the user with ads. Examine does not.

Many other competitors also sell their own supplements. Examine does not.

Most of the competitors are backed by powerful corporations with a history of bad behavior in multiple domains (pharma companies, etc). Examine doesn't have this issue.

I'm also amazed that you have so far discounted the personal experiences of other people, involving a great deal of research and personal experimentation. That is normally considered valuable in most domains, especially something as personal as health.

I also consider it to be valuable that the company (via its employee AhmedF at least) is willing to participate in discussions. There is some degree of visibility and accountability there. I am not aware of any other informational websites which do this.

And previously before he left Examine, the redditor silverhydra was very active and accountable (and transparent, as far as I could see), on numerous subreddits, participating in ways which often had nothing to do with his business.

Anyway :). Hopefully this discussion ends up serving you in the long run, one way or another.

And if you're done, then have a wonderful time in this magical chemical world, however that works for you ~~.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com