Let's start with some good news: there have now been 60 replies to the survey. About half of these are due to Conductor71's promotion. I thank her for this and for her posts in defence of the survey.

Let's go on to find (I hope) some common ground with soccertese. I think everyone who has replied to this thread or completed the survey is a PwP. Probably most of us have declined to a state where we are not optimistic that "big science" will find a cure soon enough to save us.

Now let's try to discover the reasons for soccertese's disapproval.


soccertese,

Do you feel we could get more out of the some of the anecdotal based threads if we quantified effects? (I do, I wrote the online arm movement and tremor measurement tools.)

Do you agree we could get more out of the anecdotes if we aggregated the results?

Do you agree that the scientific method is wider than hypothesis then test?

Do you have a problem with the study of handedness and Parkinson's?

Do you have a problem with the fact it takes 60 seconds to complete the survey?

Do you have a problem with the implementation of the survey? (A couple of people gave me contructive criticism, which I accept totally.)

You ask "what exactly is your hypothesis"? I started in data mining mode with no hypothesis, just a hope that the data would include something interesting. As it is, with the data received so far I do make a hypothesis: regarding right handed people with onset under 60, men are less likely than women to have first symptoms on the left side.

You ask "what do you plan to do with the data when done?" The data is and will continue to be open to everyone, as are the data collection, analysis and measurement programs I've written.

You write "your're really not taking a random sample, just very motivated pd'ers". That's absolutely true. At first glance this is a problem, but in fact for many of us on the forum this is the sort of person we are most interested in.

Finally, you mention Darwin. He was born about 30 miles from where I write. When he set off in the Beagle he had not conceived of natural selection. He collected a huge number of specimens first and formulated his theory later. He was a data miner.

John