
Which supplements really work? An interactive guide to evidence. - fiaz
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/25/which-supplements-re.html
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Zak
Direct link: [http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-
supplem...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/)

Interesting, but not very comprehensive. A number of supplements that I've
found relevant to recommend to friends, including GABA, 5-HTP and levodopa are
absent from the graphic (or did I miss them?).

It's also problematic that some of the conditions indicated are very general.
There are many possible biochemical causes for depression or insomnia, and a
treatment that works for one might have no effect on another.

~~~
warfangle
It also doesn't list Citocoline (one of the ingredients in that 5-hour energy
stuff), which according to WebMD* is actually used a bit in medicine in
regards to stroke victims and alzheimers sufferers.

[*] Not necessarily an authoritave source, I'm aware.

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mhb
It is confusing that "Evidence", which is the label of the y axis, is
graphically presented in the same way as the values on the y axis ("Strong",
"Good", "Promising", "Conflicting").

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rjshade
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1150604>

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retro
Don't care much about the data itself but the use of Google Docs as a data
source in combination with whatever flash library they're using for the
visualization is an interesting approach. Too bad there aren't more details on
how they're reading from Google Docs. My guess is it's a Flex graphing
library. Anyone recognize it?

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brg
It would be more interesting to me to see this with a bar for "none" and
"aboslutely not". But there indeed does seem to be some correlation to the
number of search results and effectiveness.

