All science starts with observation of anecdotes.

For myself, getting a grip on my health was entirely the province of going out online and finding what other people did and what worked for them. Some of it worked for me and some of it didn't, but it was help I was emphatically not getting from the established scientific authorities. Inevitably, they would find out I was not on their fave combo of Prozac/Lipitor/Ambien and then their goal became giving that to me.

I get a lot of flak when I share my healing journey. Mostly from people who are "I don't do a thing unless it's been published X times in peer-revived papers and has a consensus of support from real scientists. Until then it's a fad-diet/quack-treatment/nothing-but-woo."

I can only imagine they are on the Prozac/Lipitor/Ambien prescription trifecta (which takes an effort not to be on these days) and it's only a matter of time until they go insane and succumb to heart failure while hallucinating that they are sensible.

My favorite rebuttal story is that Semmelweis was committed to a lunatic asylum for his insane insistence that doctors wash their hands. Every ground-breaking scientific theory "sounds like woo" to the people who are used to the current one.