> Is it even realistic for an average joe to look into it in their free time, and come to a useful conslusion in a realistic timeframe, or is everything so complicated nowadays that it's not worth it?
In my personal opinion, no it isn’t. I would say that it would be useful to look into how scientific and medical research is conducted, how peer review works, etc. and you will see the incredible complexity and difficulty of building up a medical theory. I’d also look at skeptic explanations of how pseudoscience uses that complexity to push things that just aren’t true. Without a deep understanding of topic, and all the underlying scientific method, you are far more likely to come to a wrong conclusion than a correct one. Finding good scientific communicators, I’ve found, is the best way to get good information. People that do have the requisite knowledge and that will contextualize the sensational and just bad reporting of science and medicine. I would suggest Science Based Medicine [1] and Heathcare Triage [2] as a start.
In my personal opinion, no it isn’t. I would say that it would be useful to look into how scientific and medical research is conducted, how peer review works, etc. and you will see the incredible complexity and difficulty of building up a medical theory. I’d also look at skeptic explanations of how pseudoscience uses that complexity to push things that just aren’t true. Without a deep understanding of topic, and all the underlying scientific method, you are far more likely to come to a wrong conclusion than a correct one. Finding good scientific communicators, I’ve found, is the best way to get good information. People that do have the requisite knowledge and that will contextualize the sensational and just bad reporting of science and medicine. I would suggest Science Based Medicine [1] and Heathcare Triage [2] as a start.
[1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage