NEQUALSMANY

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN…….

An  N=1 experiment goes viral when thousands come together with the shared goal of finding out what if……?

Is it possible to turn anecdotes into data?

When does it become “science”?

What happens when people get tired of just getting sicker?

What’s happens when N equals Many???

Why NEQUALSMANY?

Social media has irrevocably changed the way information is shared.  We are living in a time of unprecedented interconnectivity.  At the same time, the numbers of people engaging in N=1 studies continues to rise.  A clear lack of progress in combatting diseases of lifestyle, the specter of bias and frequently confusion in the literature has led many to take matters into their own hands, often with excellent result and often being at odds with traditional recommendations.  These anecdotes are generally dismissed as just that, an interesting story but generally not applicable to anyone else.   That criticism is largely fair, but it does not diminish the importance of that information for generating or disproving hypotheses.  We at Nequalsmany.com feel that the level of frustration with often ineffective traditional recommendations and the tremendous potential data resources available through the interconnectedness of social media represent a unique opportunity to share this information. The value of bringing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of like-minded individuals willing to join together using similar tools and answering the same questions in a standardized fashion, is staggering!  Imagine if, for example, one thought that diet significantly impacted arthritic joint pain. What if we could use social media to get 10,000 people with knee arthritis to all go on a single well-documented diet and then see what happens.  This type of large group effort could arguably quickly answer questions that traditional methods might take years to answers or be reluctant to even undertake due to lack of funding interest.  It is recognized that getting funded to do nutritional intervention studies is often impossible, as no likely financial benefit could result from the study.  The fact that it could be a huge boon to millions of afflicted persons is beside the point when looked through the lens of profitability.  One of our goals is to try and eliminate that type of bias, and as our tag line reads, for the people, by the people.  It is our hope that nequalsmany.com can be a platform to drive that sort of population initiated, population funded and population administered knowledge.  Certainly there will be missteps along the way, certainly, there will be criticism, but we believe the will exists and that there are some incredibly intelligent people with the excellent capacity for both scientific observation and method that can come together and eventually make this a place of truly revolutionary discovery.  Let’s run with this and see where it goes!
Shawn and Matt

Nequalsmany.com