OK so even though literally it is my own writing being debunked as flawed (which it is) I do think this is just a really fantastic example of critical science studies and exactly what I meant in that first part of like, I don't know how to reconcile the fact that I believe in the scientific method and the fact that academic institutions are flawed.
One big example being all those XML errors; which were links that worked perfectly fine the day I wrote that essay, I even tested them all in incognito windows, and then they stopped working because all these journals using the world's worst website design in order to ensure they can paywall their shit. It's likely that those links had some sort of temporary token in their long URLs telling the website that I was accessing the page via Google Scholar from [library I work for] and should be given temporary institutional access. As a librarian, I really should know better and should have just gotten the fixed DOI instead but I knew that using the DOI that probably nobody would be able to actually read any of those articles at all; and I was hoping those long URLs would remain working (which they didn't.) I could have used Certain Illegal Websites but, using my work wi-fi on my lunch-break, alas those Certain Websites are blocked.
I do think for a few of those examples of the articles not corresponding to what I used them to back up, I think I might have just literally copy-pasted the wrong article link, which is a pretty major error to make. When you're writing in markdown, all those super-long journal links are like a paragraph long and you get like three actual words between each link. I definitely could and should have done a better job trying to keep it all organized.
There's also some really good points made above around superseded data. One of the major focuses of critical science studies is that, when you're reading an article, it doesn't show you like, "this article has been superseded by a newer study" you only see the article removed from context. It's the job of librarians and researchers to place those articles back within context, which I didn't attempt to do at all. I'm not an academic librarian; so my work usually focuses on checking books for superseded editions and writing by other authors; but not the big web of articles and academic discourse. There's a lot fewer books in the world, especially when I limit myself to ones published by companies we have preexisting vendor relationships with.
Here is my embarrassing admission: The way that I found a lot of those articles is that I went on the Wikipedia page for "cannabis use disorder" and "long-term effects of cannabis use#mental health" and found claims I wanted to cite; then checked the Wikipedia citation, found those articles on Google Scholar, gave them a once-over to confirm it actually mentioned the claim at some point, and sometimes I tried to follow those citations to a more primary source for the claim, which always meant going backwards to even older articles. There were a few times I found articles from the 90s that I deemed too old to use, but I didn't make any attempt to check the ones cited on Wikipedia for newer studies superseding their findings. I did do some searches on Google Scholar for terms like "cannabis dependence" and "cannabis, anxiety" but, of course, many were pay-walled and I could only read abstracts, so generally I went for the ones that I could gain access to which weren't often the newest articles since publishers want you to pay for those.
So a lot of the time, I saw a sentence either on Wikipedia or in another article said "Here is a claim (citation goes here)" Checked that citation, went "wow, this is kinda over my head, but it does seem to relate to this?" Then copied the sentence from the secondary source and cited the primary source they used for that claim.
Which is, of course, a major issue in academia; people citing secondary sources without checking primary sources. I made some attempts, but clearly not well enough.
Also, background-checking authors is something I didn't bother with at all and clearly I should have because holy crap what the fuck that one author is a horrible person and not someone I should be citing.
What I will say is that, yeah, this kinda thing is what you have to do when you're uncertain of claims made by scientific papers and it is exhausting and difficult. I think, typically, you'd be doing it for just the one article at a time; but yes I made it quite difficult by linking so many papers in one paragraph.
The reason I wrote it that way is because I just really wanted to get through that part of the essay as quickly as possible. You can tell from the heading I used that it's a topic I hate talking about. I firmly believe it is possible for individuals to have unhealthy relationships to cannabis, and that it's possible for someone to have a traumatic experience with cannabis. As some of the comments on my essay from people who know me alluded to, I have a very traumatic personal experience that involved someone who had a very destructive relationship with it. Any time I try to talk about this, I get attacked by people who insist it's a harmless panacea and that nobody who is high could ever hurt anyone nor could it ever exacerbate any harmful behaviors in anyone and it's always very frustrating for me. I wanted to, very quickly, just establish someone can have a weed problem, and then get back to my essay that I wanted to have be primarily about drinking culture.
In trying to rush that section and make it as short a possible, I did a pretty botched job of it. Charles did a pretty great job illustrating that and yeah, despite it being me who was debunked, I loved reading it. It's demonstrative of good research skills and the kind of engagement with science and the scientific method I wish was more common; even though, yes, it's exhausting. The fact that we can do this is still something I think is good about including science in the conversation; even when I use it and am demonstrably wrong.
Perhaps, in the future, it would be better for me to just say "It's possible for someone to have a weed problem, even though it's far less common than with other substances, and it can be harmful; and nobody is going to change my mind on this so don't bother arguing with me about it." But I hate that. Like, that makes me feel terrible and it's not very compelling. I also don't want to spill my guts about why I hold this belief. So I attempted to work off of medical evidence, but I think it would have been better if I'd just chosen one good paper to cite instead of trying to hit people over the head with a hyperlink hammer so they'd leave me alone and not argue with me about a very touchy subject. Which is to say, I let my emotions get in the way of proper research and writing skills; which is embarrassing given that I have a masters degree in library and information science.
Anyway, good job Charles. I concede on this front. That paragraph is bad writing and I should know better.