> This hacker news thread is full of positive reports,
Hacker news always has the most insane takes when it comes to medical/biological things.
replies(4):
> And you do not want to mess with the 5-HTP and alcohol at the same time
so I googled it
> Internet forums are full of horror stories of people vomiting, blacking out or having seizures after drinking while on 5-HTP. It’s impossible to know if the stories are reliable, but there is little other evidence of known interactions between 5-HTP and alcohol.
https://www.drugrehab.com/addiction/alcohol/risks-of-mixing-...
The link you provided goes on to say:
> Antidepressants also affect the balance of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Popular antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increase levels of serotonin in the brain. The labels of SSRIs such as Celexa and Prozac warn patients not to drink alcohol while on the drugs. If you shouldn’t drink with antidepressants, you probably shouldn’t drink with 5-HTP.
> The effects of mixing 5-HTP and alcohol on serotonin levels are not fully understood. However, both substances alter serotonin levels, which may increase the risk of developing serotonin syndrome. This life-threatening condition is caused by the accumulation of too much serotonin in the body. Serotonin syndrome can cause confusion, agitation, sweating, coordination loss, fever and seizure.
Of course data can also give you confirmation bias, maybe that's the point, maybe that's why people defend anecdotes. What you have to do to find out if something is really happening is reason about it, then test your theories by doing your best to knock them over. Often though we just end up testing for statistical correlation without any better theory than "these two things go together". In that case, the plural of anecdote is bad methodology. The best thing I can say about anecdotes is that they might give you ideas.
Edit: found it, it's due to one Ray Wolfinger, behavioral political scientist: When a student once categorized one of Wolfinger’s claims as “just anecdotal,” he paused for an expectant second, dropping a copy of Robert Dahl’s “Who Governs” onto his seminar table as he replied, “The plural of anecdote is data.” His quip, emphasizing that statistics represent human stories, would become a well-known aphorism throughout the field. Well this probably shouldn't be taken literally and I suspect the criticism of his claim was fair.
It is standard Bayesian reasoning[1]. But it requires independence between observations, which many people forget!
Besides, even if several people independently assert "tying a ribbon to a wishing tree cured my warts", that's not an explanation of what actually took place. If repeated observations with unbiased instruments confirm this, then there's something wrong with the instruments (or something), until you have an explanation.
(But saying things like that usually prompts people to bring up cosmology or particle physics or other fields where we really do have to resort to saying "the measurements say it's happening, we'll have to assume it's happening" without understanding much.)
Oftentimes we (humans) use imperfect, but well-known, figures of speech to convey common ideas.