Confidence Intervals

  In choosing to read this, you are expected to do the following: ·        Read this slowly. This is a story of my experience, but it is also educational for a lot of you. You are going to read some things that you will immediately disagree with, and that is okay. However, some of the things you will disagree with are a matter of perception or a misunderstanding of information. You will need to realize this, because you are not going to change my mind by arguing the point, and I’m not going to change yours (at least on the perception point – I dare you to consider the factual information). In order to go forward, we will need to have a mutual respect of our differences of perception, because this is my *reality* and the reality for many like me. Your disagreeing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist for me, and your believing it “shouldn’t” doesn’t mean that it does not, and will not continue to, exist. ·        Realize that ...

Ibuprofen reduces inflammation, fevers, and pain. Anti-depressants relieve symptoms of depression. Lithium stabilizes manic symptoms back to baseline. Statements like these are easy to make. Often, they are  made, without a forethought about the implications. Most of the time, statements like these are true. But the sucky thing about humanity is that we can't say, with absolute certainty, that these things are always  true. They're not fact. Enough research and evidence has pretty well convinced us that we can make statements like these with at least a little bit of confidence, but humans are so vast, and so imperfect, that sometimes ibuprofen doesn't do what we've been told it does. Sometimes anti-depressants don't relieve as many of the symptoms of depression as we want, or think it should . Lithium works as well as the dosage and the person's physiology match up. Moral of the story: science is only as strong as the research that supports it.  Whe...