I agree that peer-reviewed science is a good thing, as @Katiekate said. Though it would sure be nice if I had more faith in the current state of it – many editors of the most prestigious journals are more cynical about that than we could ever be and have said so publicly.
But there is “armchair theory” and there is “life.”
Take John, some dude who would really like to be healthier, stronger, leaner. Maybe even deal with some worse health issue. John doesn’t have 40 years to sit around waiting to see if corporate money and government decide to, eventually, do experiments to find out X_. John would actually like to do something constructive about his situation NOW. And the official party lines of corporate money and government are what nearly killed him already, and are efficiently, if lucratively-slowly, killing off much of the rest of the population as well.
So John will have to take matters into his own hands, as I assume any proactive, decently intelligent person would want to do, and try to find whatever ideas he can, and experiment on himself. He’s an N=1, in an internet world of other N=1’s, it’s a whole sea of “anecdotal” – because if there were enough decent funded research on it already, then there wouldn’t be a boatload of people all over the world doing their own N=1 experiments to try and better understand this.
The good news is, they’re “crowd-sourcing” that N=1 experimentation. And sometimes, some of the most legit researchers in the field actually hear or read about it, and are able to give their input, or even structure something they experiment with in the future improved by that idea.
In order for N=1 to join the community of humans with similar interests, people have to write it down and/or talk about it or both. Many of them are not scientists, and even if they were, their situations are not remotely ‘controlled’ the way an experiment would be. Obviously there are limits in every area as a result, depending on the person. But the more people working on it, sharing information, the more chance all those N=1’s have of finding new ideas to try, or new warning advisories from someone else’s experience.
There are many sports, and even musical genres, which began solely with a bunch of people doing N=1 experiments, then getting together to share the interest and info, and eventually developing it into something much greater than it began. Much of early medicine and science was exactly this – we have changed greatly on how we go about things, and while some of it has improved, a lot of it is not improved by the changes.
I think it’s easy to armchair it all and say well, if it’s not ALREADY got someone official with official funding and official publication then it’s not “real” – sure, it’s not peer reviewed.
But you don’t need a PhD to try eating more protein and see if it works for you.
It’s sort of patronizing because it ignores that most people really pursuing health are doing it – well, for their HEALTH – but often literally to save their lives. Modern ‘medicine’ and ‘official nutrition’ is more harm than help at this point.
It should be a given that anybody who wants to live, and thinks independently, is going to pursue other sources of ideas, N=1 experiments, and so on.
This is a feature of the internet and its community, not a bug.
I don’t think people should be dissed for sharing their efforts or explorations, nor for taking seriously those who do.
My wallet appreciate that at least.