@carapace I do think science, especially as typified by “double blind studies” and in the realm of medical knowledge, can be a flawed methodology (the biggest cause of mental health is poverty, but that is too messy to causal stories about brain chemistry), however I don’t take much credence from someone saying they know something from personal experience (since people say this about astrology or other gibberish) - we are easily able to fool ourselves with fake causality and randomness (for instance, see all of the people telling you that CEOs wake up early so it must lead to success)
That said, I think it is also the case that some things are simply not easily subject to quantitative measure - how could we scientifically measure the impact of reading Dickens, perhaps one would do better on a reading comprehension exam, but one would hope what a person gets from it is far beyond that