I had some trepidation over this when deciding whether or not to post my own anecdotes. In the end I decided that while it's not useful as a criticism of the study it's absolutely useful to curb the conclusion, that ADHD drugs are broadly ineffective, which this presentation of the study might suggest.

Edit: As an example the caption of Dr. Farah's photo reads "Dr. Martha Farah and colleagues found no cognitive benefit from Adderall taken by students." Finding no correlation to grade improvement is very, very far from finding "no cognitive benefit."

Okay, pick some other metric – the lack of grade improvement starts to cut away at the possible claims for cognitive improvement, on the whole, assuming the science is good.

On the other hand, if they were sloppy, it could potentially argue for a multimodal distribution that when forced into being viewed as an average (or with other tools that assume a unimodal distribution) then the effect gets washed out. One possible case for this is the idea that ADD/ADHD is wildly over diagnosed and, thus the incorrectly diagnosed children might show no improvement while masking the improvement of those who actually have it.

Another anecdote but a very applicable one: a fellow nerd in high school had terrible grades, before and after starting Vyvanse (re-patented version of Adderall) around the end of sophomore year. However, he was able to focus in the biochemistry class and despite the fact that he still received bad grades for lack of caring, his medication helped him discover that he loved chemistry. A year later he was accepted to an Ivy League on a 3.0 unweighted GPA because he was able to throw a never before possessed focus at an internship at Caltech where he became a published scientist within a year.

Grade improvements (along with the possibility that over prescribing is skewing the data) are a terrible metric, and a better one would be interpersonal relationships and how they behave in the classroom, which is much harder to measure. If a child is diagnosed pretty late (late elementary or middle school) they might also have a LOT to really catch up on. Just because they can focus doesn't mean they are prepared to deal with the material given to them.

If so, I would suggest saying "In assessing this study, it's important to keep in mind the huge difference between grade improvement and general cognitive effects." Then, maybe you could quote a different study that found cognitive effects (which undoubtedly exist). And then, if you really thought it useful, you could say "my anecdotal experience conflicts with this" and leave it at that. But the problem with these human-interest stories is they grab people's hearts and keeping them from thinking clearly about this stuff.

Here's an exercise: try translating your anecdotal experience into boring clinical language, e.g. "one 27 year-old male subject had a small statistically insignificant increase in grades, and self-reported feeling more focused."

Anecdotes are real information. I have enough anecdata and knowledge of neuroscience to believe speed/adderall/caffeine/nicotine are really effective in increasing focus and other dimensions of work quality for some. This study suggests teachers and parents want kids on adderall because it makes them more compliant, easier to deal with. This is not really surprising if you ever went to normal schools.

It's not even clear what the actual study says, since it doesn't link to it, and characterizes it in very different ways. Typical science press.

The parent seems more like a comment on the reaction to the study rather than on the validity of the study.

Sure, but the problem is that it's upvoted on HN. Maybe if it had some sort of other key insight, but it doesn't. It only says "here is my anecdotal experience which contradicts the data, I feel really strongly about it." I have no problem with X-Istence or his comment per se, I just wish this thread wasn't filled with these stories.