Article: Is Testosterone Replacement Therapy Safe?
- Thread starter The Press
- Start date
compudog
Well-known member
Meta analysis is an entirely bogus method of "research". I put research in quotes because meta analysis isn't reasearch. It's the ground work you might do to see if something is interesting enough to warrant some real research, but it's not research because it doesn't involve any actual experimentation; no testing, no data gathering. IMO the only people trying to pass off meta analysis as research are broke ass phd's with miniscule research budgets, desperately trying to hang on to their tenured positions. No-one would look at such studies as serious, except perhaps a bunch of greedy lawyers and backwards judges.
JD261985
Banned
Ok now let's see how many guys on this board are using steroids to get testosterone within the normal range. I would say maybe 1 percent. This article talks about TRT to get test levels normal. Not above and beyond, were not talking about people using superdrol and all other tupes if steroids. So I don't even see how this article is relevant to most people on this forum. May a gram of test plus god knows what amount of steroids put strain on the heart. You bet your ****ing ass they will
JD261985
Banned
Dude a meta analysis is just collected data and research being expanded on. How is that bogus? A meta analysis is crucial in creating and recreating experiments and studies that can be repeated or confounded upon with new information based on prior, recent and new research.
compudog
Well-known member
I'm glad you asked that. When you conduct an experiment, you design the test in order to reveal the data that will either support or refute your hypothesis. So for example if I wanted to study the health of smokers past 40 I might design a test to track the health of 2 groups of 40+ people, smokers and non-smokers. Now, in order to conduct my experiment I might track several variables: heart health, sex life, diet and so on, and I might gather data on my test groups for a long time, perhaps years. Studies like that are expensive, difficult, fraught with potential error points, and unfortunately, the best that can be done in many instances.
So now, later on, some broke ass phd who needs to publish research in order to keep their tenured position but has 0 research budget comes along, and wants to use my data to create a study regarding the sex life of people past 40. Seems fair enough right? Except maybe, most likely even, the data I gathered in regards to people's sex lives only has a bearing w.r.t. smoking, and doesn't apply well to people's sex lives in general. So maybe there's some significant information missing. At least, the data will be skewed, and it's fundamentally impossible to say exactly *how* it's skewed without conducting original research to answer the question at hand.
Which demonstrates the problem, but I think in practice it's actually worse, because these meta analysis' typically draw from more than one data set. So the skew gets worse, or even larger chunks of important information is missing. At the end of the day, the usefulness of the data is so diluted the whole meta-study amounts to nothing more than a bunch of hand waving, which is what we've got here. Essentially, the data becomes so meaningless any conclusion can be supported, or not. In other words, total crap science.
Type O Hero
Banned
Try shutting some radioactive zinc up your ass and tell me if that doesn't put some hair on your balls (all three of them).
fueledpassion
Well-known member
I think if u have a means of doing full studies, u ought to. But honestly, meta analysis is trying to close in on the standard deviation of ur statistics, not POOLING participants, as it appears these knuckleheads did. Pooling participants from different studies up under one study should only be done if all controls and variables were exactly the same.
It was irresponsible and obviously the group had ulterior motives since they didnt look at the details and decided to use Viagra patients as the control group in a heart health study!
Meta analysis done right reveals more info, patterns or even truth.
But I see ur point clearly and it is valid.
kisaj
Legend
Compared to half the articles posted here, this is quite relevant. This is addressing the recent study that tried to play on the fears of people seeking hormone therapy. TRT is a huge topic today and the number of people on this forum on TRT and looking towards TRT has grown a lot in the few years I've been here. Since this is a board where we'll find people more apt to not be fearful of something so beneficial, it is good to at least have studies brought to light to help educate one direction or the other.
Yolked
Active Member
I see a good percentage of posts about hrt for high end of normal levels of course. Because if you're going to do it you may as well get the most of it. But there's even more guys trying to boost that between labs and run "blast" cycles. When I see 30 yr olds on hrt from their doc I'm not surprised. Still too young to be having issues I feel but they are probably low from the get go. Now they try to work the system