I have no skin in the game but I have worked professionally as both an academic scientist and a data scientist in the private sector and I can tell you that peer review is great but a lot of legitimate research is done outside the bounds of academic journals. It is entirely possible for amateurs to do real science.
If the effect size is large enough, you dont actually need to be that rigorous about it. No one needed to do a study on whether there was a direct correlation between adverse medical outcomes and gunshot wounds to the head.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 hours ago
Person: offers you an apple
You: “Personally, I prefer organic, homemade apple pie! Not APPLE SLOP!”
Donkter@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Sorry, but it’s more like a crab apple.
It looks like an apple, it’s presented like an apple, it’s advertised like an apple because that is what makes the YouTuber money. But scientific methods and standards exist for a reason. It’s very easy to produce bad data and especially easy to extract bad conclusions from data if you have an incentive to do so (such as a fan base who might engage with the video less if the conclusions were against their expectations)
There’s a chance that this guy’s conclusions reflect what a proper study might have found, but it’s just too hard to tell if it’s a crab apple or not it’s essentially probably a little better than chance.