Despite no scientific consensus of sunscreen, have you ever seen someone who forgot to apply sunscreen to a certain part of their body and its the only area that gets burned? That is one hell of a placebo.

Alternatively the same is true of aloe, you can witness people who already have a burn and apply aloe to certain areas and not others and the burn will clear up quicker and even potentially the skin will not peel where aloe was used and may peel where it was not utilized.

Now whether there is scientific consensus or not, if that is what you bring to the table, I will go out on a limb like I did with the parent post and say you have no personal experience using aloe plant for sunburn.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_...

The scientific consensus is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and that it is extremely likely (meaning 95% probability or higher) that this warming is predominantly caused by humans. It is likely that this mainly arises from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, partially offset by human caused increases in aerosols; natural changes had little effect

This seems trivially easy to test.

And it's harder to be sure about aloe from anecdotes. The question is not whether aloe does anything, the question at hand is whether it's better than any other kind of thickened water. Most people are not doing this comparison.

It would seem to me without scientific consensus and only the existence of promising claims, all we are left with is anecdotal evidence, and it is no coincidence to me, not a single person denying the benefits of aloe in the thread has any personal experience with aloe and sunburns. To be honest if I didn't have 30+ years living in tropical climate (e.g. getting sunburns) and experimenting with a number of after sun skin care products I wouldn't take a side one way or the other, but that doesn't seem to stop any ones else from apparently siding with their gut in the face of a lack of scientific consensus. Yet when I ask a simple question to be denying aloe benefits (have you used it?) I am bombarded with studies citing no scientific consensus.

>And it's harder to be sure about aloe from anecdotes.

Harder than what? If I told you sunscreen works and you called it anecdotal evidence and claimed sunscreen might do something but no more than thickened water (whatever that may be) it would be very easy to test correct? Rub sunscreen on half your body and the water solution on the other half and lay out in the sun. Well aloe is no different, lay out in the sun a little to long and get a burn, then rub aloe on one side of your body and water on the other half.

No, the thickened water comment was in reference to aloe, not sunscreen. As for what "thickened water" is, it's what it sounds like: water that has been thickened. Aloe gel is thickened water. Lotions are basically thickened water (often with some oil added).

There's no scientific debate about whether sunscreen prevents or reduces sunburn. It clearly does and it's not hard to find many studies demonstrating this. Wikipedia has several citations and you can find more without looking very far. e.g. There are piles of citations here: https://www.aad.org/media/stats/prevention-and-care/sunscree...

The question about sunblock is whether it actually prevents skin cancer, which is a much harder thing to test or prove. From what I can tell, the general consensus is still that sunblock use reduces the incidence of certain cancers.