Science vs. Ideology (was Re: foucault? relativist? ROTFL!)

[Jim heartfield]

In message <19991102151620.96843.qmail at hotmail.com>, Carl Remick
<carlremick at hotmail.com> writes
>
>Jim, I think this concept of "ever more refined" is misleading.  You give 
>the impression that scientific understanding advances in pretty much a 
>straight line, with successive theories tugging this way and that but 
>following the same general trajectory.  That sure isn't the way science 
>seems to proceed in, e.g., the health sciences -- whose contrary findings 
>the public is pummelled with constantly.  It's a rare day that people aren't 
>counselled to take some nutritional precaution that is the *precise 
>opposite* of what people were advised to do the day before.

Carl,

you are joking, aren't you? 

Are you really suggesting that there is not a cumulative improvement in
medical science? 

Is packing the womb in ice as good a treatment for hysteria as a
sedative? 

Is bloodletting with leeches as good a treatment for high blood pressure
as the current rest and low fat diets?

You don't think that the discovery of the circulatory system was an
advance over the view that the blood was forced out into the body and
them flowed back again?

Or that the identification of air-borne bacteria as the source of
infection was an advance?

Or the development of anaesthetics? Or vaccinations? Or the matching of
transplant tissue? Or the identification of viruses?

Medical science does present one interesting paradox in that by far the
greatest number of advances are concentrated in the last two hundred
years, but there is not a shadow of a doubt that the cumulative store of
medical science has developed immeasurably (except I suppose in the
minds of faith healers and other nuts).

It is pointed that the one example you identify, that of public health
advice, is the area that is most governed by political rather than
simply medical considerations. It is true that there have been some
erratic fluctuations in health advice, mostly because of the excessive
desire on the part of government authorities to be seen to be doing
something.

But even there I think you will find a pretty stark unanimity on the
health risks of smoking (since the fifties in Britain and America, in
the 1930s in Germany), or the superiority of low fat diets, or the
advisability of regular exercise.

-- 
Jim heartfield