The unique requirement for Scientific Literacy, and its consequences
When challenged with any given malady, let alone a formal diagnosis of cancer, it is a rather natural to consider every option, pursuant to exhausting the inventory of interventions which could possibly offer a measurable disease management effect.
Of course, the relevant question is, by what method and manner would one go about evaluating and weighing the vast number of treatment options, and ultimately, arrive at a cogent and rational treatment strategy?
The great news here is, that conveniently, the last 100 years of clinical and laboratory inquiry and experimentation are freely available, in the published scientific record, just a Google search away.
That said, to the uninitiated, extracting actionable meaning from a scientific paper can constitute a not insignificant challenge.
Hence, one primary point of evaluation of any given intervention can be to ask:
“What does a specific therapy contribute to Overall Survivorship, within a given set of parameters?”
For clarity, Overall Survivorship refers to the length of time from either the date of diagnosis or the start of treatment for a disease, such as cancer, that patients diagnosed with the disease are still alive.
For example, we can learn that in this study, Glioblastoma patients who received the standard of care (Surgical Debulking, Temozolomide, Dexamethasone, Radiation) and controlled their glucose and ketone values well past the 6-month mark, almost tripled their Overall Survivorship in comparison to those patients who received the standard of care, only:
Relatedly, one can evaluate any claim or piece of evidence offered by a provider of any therapy in the same fashion. For example, should one be challenged by a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, data on Overall Survivorship in relation to standard of care therapeutics, is readily available:
https://www.sustainableinterventions.org/s/FOLFOX-A_for_Metastatic_Pancreatic_Cancer.pdf
Additionally, one can benefit immensely from evaluating any claim or evidence according to its falsifiability- ergo, under what conditions would a given piece of evidence not be true?
According to the philosopher and scientist Karl Popper, any claim, hypothesis or theory is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test. Hence, a scientific theory must produce predictions that can be tested by observable evidence or experimental results. Dr. Popper argued that the only way to validate a claim such as "All swans are white" would be if one could comprehensively observe all swans, which of course, is not possible. However, the falsifiability requirement for an anomalous instance, for example, the observation of even one black swan, is reasonable and sufficient to logically falsify the claim that “All swans are white.”