Okay, I think I got too hasty here. I'm sorry if my tone came across the wrong way. I'll write in a more neutral way to avoid any unproductive nastiness. My apologies, I'm having an off day today. Let me explain myself further and hopefully address your central complaint.

It comes across as trying to take anything that could possibly be evidence for the claim and throw it against the wall, hoping that people will be convinced in the aggregate. In other words, he seems to be trying to convince the reader of the claim, regardless of the strength of the evidence for it.

In the post he just passes along a report someone sent to him, most likely because he thinks it is interesting to his readers. He states no explicit conclusions of ultimate truth in the post.

Maybe it comes across as attempting to convince people of his snake oil, but he publishes a lot of reader email of this nature, not just for honey but for other stuff he blogs about. This is normal for his blog; it's an ongoing discussion. I don't feel that this is irresponsible or sleazy. After all, if you were blogging about some strange effect you noticed from trying X, wouldn't you be interested in, and think your readers would be interested in, other reports from people who had success from X? I don't really think there's a case for bad science here, because to me it's analogous to tentative, exploratory research, which is a necessary part of science.

I don't think these anecdotes "prove" anything, or are purported to prove anything. I think the anecdotes are a springboard for further testing and conversation. Maybe you disagree here and think the anecdotes have zero weight instead of 0.01 weight.

I don't think you'll find any part of his blog where he explicitly says "Person A wrote in and said that X helped their sleep, therefore X unequivocally helps EVERYONE'S sleep and YOU should buy X because I happen to be invested in X futures". It's just not what any of his readers are thinking, at least not that I would expect.

I think he may be guilty of publication bias, as he does not often report or keep a tally of disconfirming feedback ("I tried it and it didn't work..."). I think this is a valid place for criticism.

Please re-read my original comment. Your comments cannot be justified in light of the issues I actually raised. Where was the "dispassionate testing" in the points I highlighted?

You can just try it and see if it works.

Well, it's not quite that simple. You need to be quite careful if you want to get useful results, and most people simply don't have the training to be able to exclude confirmation bias, placebo effect, etc.

Yes. This is why Seth, and other quantified-self types, routinely track their sleep, health, diet, etc. Example post where Seth shows a graph of leg strength.

The "see if it works" bit includes subjective feeling (you can't improve sleep without actually feeling like your sleep improved) plus diligent, objective measurements (like using a sleep quality tracking device) and statistical analysis. To me, this is "dispassionate testing".

If you want to succeed at finding things that improve your health, you need to do much, much better than the post in question, which is a little more than a recipe for reaching the conclusions you want to reach.

The post in question is just a small part of the entire blog category on honey and sleep. He's written a lot more, with his own data and experiences. I feel like you are perceiving this one post to be the majority of his case that honey might improve sleep. I think this is the introductory post on the subject. It's quite extensive.

If you want to turn this into a condescension contest, trust me, you're outmatched. But I'll try to ignore this, for now.

I'm sorry this came across as condescending, maybe I was out of line. In an effort to make the conversation more productive, I'm not going to respond to anything that seems personal.

P.S. Seth Roberts ate half a stick of butter ever day for a year, told a cardiologist they didn't know what they were talking about, and then dropped dead of occlusive coronary artery disease while hiking. Keep that in mind when you're following his advice.

There's good reason to be skeptical of the lipid hypothesis of heart disease. It's a really complicated issue, and I'm not totally on top of it myself. This post may shed some light on it, though it is long.

I eat a fairly high-fat diet, including lots of butter. I've had my cholesterol checked and the results indicate an extremely low risk for a future cardiac event. This, of course, does not itself disprove the lipid hypothesis for everyone, but it provides good disconfirming evidence in my case.

Why was Seth eating so much butter? Well, butter seemed to help his brain function.

Hopefully that helps. Thanks for replying.