User talk:Milehisailor

Hello, I noticed that you have made all of one edit to the Wikipedia, in Talk:Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous, to assert that “There is too much emphasis on "flaws" in studies that conclude a lower efficacy rate. There is also a repeated emphasis on the frequency of attendance correlating to successful outcomes, without noting self-selection as a factor except to say that these outcomes can't possibly all be due to self-selection. This is disingenuous at best, though I wouldnt”

These assertions have a number of flaws.

The first being the old myth that the old (and false) low efficacy rates for AA come from peer reviewed research. There actually aren’t any published peer-reviewed “studies that conclude a lower efficacy rate” (i.e. the 5% number anti-AA critics come up with never came from a study, but from some flawed reasoning, as the article details).

The second flaw is the contention that the Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous article ignores self-selection (“without noting self-selection as a factor”). We do not; self-selection is discussed in the lead after we quote longitudinal studies which show a high (67-75%) success rate for AA meeting attenders.

This comment then implies that we’re making up the notion that AA success does not come from self selection (“these outcomes can't possibly all be due to self-selection”). We are not: The conclusion that there is evidence of AA efficacy that does not come from self-selection has been shown in peer-reviewed research.

(There were older studies which show AA is about as effective as other treatments/as effective as no treatment, but there are also peer-reviewed articles which criticizes those studies. The main issue being that the control is contaminated: If someone went to AA and got sober, even if the doctor/judge did not tell them to go to AA, old studies did not consider that a success for AA; and, likewise, if someone was told by a doctor/judge to go to AA but the subject never went to a meeting, old studies considered that a failure for AA. Newer studies with treatment methodologies which actually get people in the rooms of AA show that people who go to AA more drink less.)

I welcome criticism, but the criticism should be based on what the Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous article actually says, not just be false assertions from a user who has only ever made one edit to the Wikipedia. Defendingaa (talk) 13:39, 11 May 2019 (UTC)