Assignment 1 Bpk140 - Evaluation Of Chris Deoudes Article Current Health Issues PDF

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BPK 140 Assignment 1
Imagine that you are looking for credible information about treatment for a type of hair loss called ‘male pattern baldness’, and you find the following Web page. What do you think about this? Apply the material in Chapter 2 of our textbook, ‘Evaluating Health Claims’.

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1 Running head: ASSIGNMENT 1 Assignment 1

Knowledge is a powerful tool, that anyone can claim. For hundreds of years, scientists have published articles in media and print, but as the media became more approachable, these articles were no more limited to scientists or experts. Not every information that is circulated nowadays is true. Thus, every day more untrue or under-researched articles are released, which results in false speculations. Google's former chairman Eric Schmidt also realized the growth of false news on the internet and said, "The internet is fast becoming a cesspool where false information thrives" (Eric Schmidt). In this assignment, I used the information provided in Chapter-2 of the book "Current Issues in Health" by Stephen Brown to evaluate the online article by Chris Deoudes.

1. A lot of an article's reliability depends on who wrote it. "Often you will have to do some digging to determine the author's experience or qualifications."[CITATION Ste181 \p 32 \l 4105 ]. Looking up for Chris Deoudes, I realize that he does not hold any certified qualifications to recommend new drugs. First few results of the google search show him as a dating guru with the popular name of "Good Looking Loser" (Good Looking Loser, 2019). He has been a fitness writer since 2006, with articles published at Bodybuilding.com and Avant Labs (Spiro for Hair Loss, 2017). These facts about him make Chris' claims about Spironolactone drug suspicious and not-reliable.

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2. Usually, academic articles are published in journals or websites that are associated with reliable sources, like post-secondary schools and government. "URLs ending in .gov, .edu, or .org, are sponsored by government, universities or medical schools and not-for-profit organizations, respectively" [CITATION Ste181 \p 34 \l 4105 ]. The article by Deoudes is retrieved from a website that ends with .com, and as per chapter-2, this kind of URLs are often selling something. This makes the reliability of the article questionable. There is a higher chance that Deoudes' article can be a promotional piece for Spironolactone drug.

3. In the article, the author refers to a website Minoxidil.com, to support his arguments. Similar to the point discussed above, we need to be cautious about the URLs ending with a .com. Commercial websites earn profit by advertisements and the content on these cannot be considered true and unbiased. After looking for this website on the internet, I found that the URL does not exist anymore. "broken links suggest the owners may not keep the website current" (Brown, 2018, p. 34). However, Minoxidil is a widely used treatment for hair loss (Minoxidil, 2019). The article becomes less convincing when Chris cites the website of the treatment because naturally, it will only be discussing the facts that favor it.

4. In the "History" section (Deoudes, 2017), Chris discusses some side-effects of Spironolactone as an oral medication, that can cause feminizing properties or formation of breast tissues in men. However, he does not mention any kind of evidence to support the claims. He refers to

3 ASSIGNMENT 1 minoxidil.com but does not include how the information was obtained by the source. Whether these are opinions or conclusions, the evidence is a necessary criterion for reliable claims.

5. Moving further, Chris provides logic for spironolactone being "an ideal treatment for male pattern baldness" (Deoudes, 2017). He concludes that because hair loss is caused by DHT attacking vulnerable hair follicles, then by inhibiting DHT hair loss can be stopped. But there are many other known reasons for hair loss (Staff, 2018). This is an instance of faulty reasoning.

6. To support the argument mentioned above, the author mentions an Italian study that was published in 1990, in a journal Panmineva Medica (Deoudes, 2017). Chris' article was retrieved in 2017, a time with much more stress in an average person's life than the 1990s. And Stress is one of the reasons for hair loss (Staff, 2018). "Knowledge changes over time" (Brown, 2018, p. 31), and supporting his claims by a 27-year-old knowledge makes Chris’ claims less convincing.

7. The article seems to make claims that are too good to be true. "If spironolactone is applied topically, it can inhibit DHT locally, thus preventing hair loss in the area it was applied without affecting overall hormone levels" (Deoudes, 2017). Treatment of hair loss depends greatly on the cause. Usually, taking the cause away, like stress or medications, can bring your natural hair growth back or by using medical treatments, but this won't work for everyone (Staff, 2018). It is less believable to think that your hair will grow back in a specific area if applied topically. I suspect the precise growth of hair in a particular area being claimed in this article to be untrue.

4 ASSIGNMENT 1 8. In the article (Deoudes, 2017), we see a blurb of advertisement at the end that promotes a hair loss treatment. In this age of the internet, we all are familiar with fake ads. These pop-ups take us to different pages and mostly end up in a scam or something non-reliable. Presence of such content indicates the commercial nature of the article and the website it is published on. Hence, the sole purpose of the claims cannot be just spreading knowledge but something more like selling or promoting a product.

9. In the concluding paragraph, the author cites a hair restoration physician and expert that considers the combination of minoxidil and topical spironolactone as the best defense against hair loss (Deoudes, 2017). Upon research, I found out that Dr. Lee has actually developed a product called Xandrox that helps prevent hair loss (Xandrox). Dr. Lee's connections make him a poor fit to support the claims made in this article. As suggested in Chapter 2, 6.5 section, unfair bias and the author's personal opinions can distort the evidence or encourage them to make unreliable claims.

10. Finally, neither does the author or the website distinguishes between the parts that are personal opinions and the parts that are based on proper evidence. In the article by Chris Deoudes, he fails to provide concrete studies or examples or evidence, that can prove his claims in numbers. There is no doubt that he links different article, websites, and experts to support the arguments. However, none of the supporting documents and people qualify being convincing. They were outdated, broken, and biased.

Overall, the results of the evaluation show that the article does not make true or reliable claims. People should read this article with proper cautiousness and should not make any medical decisions based on it.

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References

Brown, S. (2018). Chapter 2. In S. Brown, Current Issues in Health (Vol. Third Edition, pp. 19-35). Simon Fraser University. Deoudes, C. (2017, May 30). Spiro for Hair Loss. Retrieved from Livestrong.com: http://www.livestrong.com/article/184797-spiro-for-hair-loss/ Eric Schmidt. (n.d.). Retrieved from AZ Quotes: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/897636 Good Looking Loser. (2019, April 9). Retrieved from incel inside: https://incels.wiki/w/Good_Looking_Loser Minoxidil. (2019, April 26). Retrieved from From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoxidil Spiro for Hair Loss. (2017, August 14). Retrieved from healthfully: https://healthfully.com/184797-spirofor-hair-loss.html Staff, H. (2018, April 18). Hair loss. Retrieved from HealthLinkBC: https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/healthtopics/aa151672 Xandrox. (n.d.). Retrieved from Hair Loss Learning Centre: https://www.hairlosslearningcenter.org/topical-hair-loss-treatment/xandrox.asp

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