This is a whole class of problem - I wonder if there's a name for it. More examples include: talking about welfare being unnecessary because no one is starving. Or people on medications stopping because they feel better (while still on them).
This makes me think of a hypothetical scenario proposed in one of Nassim Nicolas Taleb's books where-in some senator gets a bill passed in the weeks before 9/11 requiring reinforced doors on all commercial airplane cockpits.
No parade would be thrown for this senator for having prevented 9/11 and likely he'd be castigated for having given airlines an excuse to raise prices due to restrictive government regulations.
that example (while i was reading the book) kind of stuck out with me - I think of it almost as preventative maintenance or good software dev practices - you'll get crap from others for 'wasting' time on it, but they don't realise it might just save your ass when you need it most.
That's a very definitive bias we always hold. Praising a player who falls behind and achieves something while not paying much attention to one who does something normally. Chaos gets attention!
This reminds me of an essential but overlooked truth examined in this paper: "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened". It builds a simple system dynamics model and shows the long-term effects of working smarter versus working harder: http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.p...
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
Dandruff is generally caused by fungi living on the scalp. The fungi eat up your skin and make it dry. The dry skin flakes off.
Dandruff shampoos work by killing the fungi. There are three main types of anti-fungals, zinc pyrithione is used in Head and Shoulders, selenium disulfide in Selson Blue. There is a third one not commonly used called ketoconazole that you may want to try.
There is also coal tar shampoo, which is not an anti-fungal, instead it slows skin cell growth and sloughs off the dead skin.
Selson Blue works well for me, I use it daily. If I go off of it for a few days the dandruff kicks into high gear.
The thing about dandruff shampoos is you have to use them with a certain regularity because even if you kill the fungi, the condition takes a few days to clear up, the damage to your scalp is done. You need to create a hostile environment for the microorganisms, and that takes time.
Your dandruff is probably caused by only one type of organism that thrives in particular climates. Next time you're there, you might get ahold of two or three shampoos and try them for a week each and see if it clears up. Then you know which is 'your' anti-fungal.
Not merely an insightful repository of analysis and explanations around the more profound aspects of our world, John Ralston Saul's exquisite Doubter's Companion includes some answers - acerbic accusations bundled free - to the more pedestrian issues:
"DANDRUFF: The ANSWER is usually vinegar. To some problems there are solutions.
"What we call dandruff is often the result of a PH imbalance on the skin, which shampoo exacerbates. Wash your hair with a simple non-detergent shampoo, soap, olive oil, beer, almost anything. Rinse. Then close your eyes and pour on some vinegar. The extremely cheap but natural sort—apple cider, for example—is probably best. The smell will stimulate interesting conversations in changing-room showers and your explanation will win you friends. Wait thirty to sixty seconds. Rinse it off. The smell will go away. So will your dandruff.
"All dermatologists, pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies know this simple secret. They don’t tell you because they make money by converting dandruff into a complex medical and social problem. By most professional standards this would amount to legally defined incompetence or misrepresentation.
"Dandruff shampoos that promise to keep your shoulders and even your head clean are harsh detergents and may promote baldness, which ought to constitute malpractice."
Actually, I think I'm mostly annoyed by your use of three pejoratives to try to make one point, and the fact you spelled pseudo wrong just irritates some other part of my brain. :)
Sure, dandruff and 'dry skin flakes' are separate things entirely.
Dandruff is generally regarded to be caused by the fungus Malassezia. This fungus does not enjoy an acidic environment.
(Healthy) human skin tends towards pH 4-5 (there seems to be some debate). Malassezia likes 5-8 (again, some debate). Reducing the pH / increasing the acidity would appear to have some non-psuedo, non-alternative-medicine, non-falsehood foundation.
Wikipedia says one cause of dandruff is yeast-like fungus. Perhaps PH plays a role in that. Also vinegar has cleansing properties and may be less drying than detergent, and dry skin is another cause of dandruff.
The word "vinegar" is notably absent from that link. That solely shows that harsh soaps are harsh (which as you may have noticed is axiomatic), not that vinegar isn't.
When I typed the word "may" I meant it. If it's medically established that properly diluted vinegar dries the skin I'd be interested in knowing that. Otherwise, it seems like reasonable speculation to me rather than pseudo-scientific BS.
I suffer from dandruff, tried a bunch of shampoos but they didn't work well. I saw this tip about vinegar, which I tried a single day then I gave up thinking this could be popular saying. I'll try again and report.
When you say 'this could be popular saying' are you meaning that it may be wrong because it's popular?
I'd be curious to know your results, in any case. I've had mixed outcomes from conventional (commercial shampoos) and have also been trying to identify causal factors (worse in winter, especially after a few days of wearing a beanie, worse when I'm staying near a high-pollution area, etc). It's all anecdata, but OTOH not beyond our abilities to thoughtfully analyse.
This unconscious bias went unnoticed to me (as expected, per definition). Thanks for pointing it :)
So far, my experiments with other shampoos where conducted a bit ad hoc. They're all anecdata. When I try with vinegar, I should try to rule out other causal factors first. I probably haven't done that in my first try. Otherwise, we can never be sure.
To be honest, I only went to see a single dermatologist, but my experience was bad. The dermatologist kinda overlooked and shrugged. I received a shampoo recommendation, but the dermatologist didn't say we should monitor the treatment or anything. From what I saw, she would keep recommending shampoos and I would try until I found one that worked. so I decided to try by myself.
Not my wisest moment. I should probably have seen another dermatologist.
Great book and great advice. Must be about 20 years since I tried this approach. Count me as a data point strongly supporting the use of vinegar to deal with dandruff.
I think this is actually a version of confirmation bias since
> Confirmation bias, also known as Observational selection or The enumeration of
> favorable circumstances is the tendency for people to (consciously or
> unconsciously) seek out information that conforms to their pre-existing view
> points, and subsequently ignore information that goes against them, both
> positive and negative [0]
I think it's selection bias because you sample from the set of perceived problems which are the ones that actually occurred relative to the ones that could have happened.
The opposite of that is frustrating too.. I see it a lot in SF. Something like "We spend $100M/year on homelessness and we have 3,500 homeless. Why don't we just give them the money and do away with the social services!" As if the $100M isn't keeping many thousands more from living on the streets..
Yes, Daniel Kahneman describes this kind of cognitive bias as "what you see is all there is". A simple example given in his book* is to ask the members of any couple (or roommates) which percentage of the home duties he/she performs. The sum is always above 100÷
*"Thinking fast and slow", best good recommendation I got from the HN crowd
It's a form of (inverse) Survivorship Bias. "None survived, therefore none started out" is an (inverse) extension of "The ones that survived were the ones that started out".
