I do not dismiss your criticism... its not clear to me what it is (other than suggesting I read 30 years of feminist research). In my responses to you I point out many times what what my points are and what reasoning I offer to defend them.
> i don't have a problem with you. yes, i think you are snide and
> construct straw people of your opponents when you've smarted from
> getting jumped on for your pacificism for instance. i understand the
> sentiment. i dont' understand the continual engagement in it because it
> gets everyone nowhere.but when that happens, you have tended to lump us
> all into one big leftist boat and failed to give anyone the dignity of
> individual thought.
You are right about being smarted from getting jumped on (for pacifism, for my animal issues posts, my anti-scientism, my affection for Heidegger, etc) but I do not wish to create strawmen in response: see my responses on one of the early animal rights threads (first to Bill Bartlett and later to you -- perhaps may have been off-list), on the Heidegger thread, etc. For instance, in my post on Single-issues and Solidarity, I expressed my idea of what the orthodox Western Left believes and what problems I had with it. I made it clear that this is only my understanding of that segment. I did not lump you in with it. I also offered my own notion of a sort of moralistic humanism. This is not to imply that it is my creation or does not coincide with the positions of others who use different (perhaps more appropriate) terms. In fact, it is a position that I learned from a varied set of thinkers ranging from Erasmus to Paul Feyerabend.
> And yes, ravi, i continue to think you snark at your opponents who
> you've decided have nothing but poorly thought out reasons for not being
> big fans of homeopathic remedies.
You are missing me entirely. I am not a fan of homoeopathic remedies and I do not even believe in them. I have never used them and I am not sure I ever will (at least not as the first resort). So, I would be as suspicious of fans of homoeopathic medicine as I would be of fans of allopathic medicine.
But, you see, my leftism compels me to support giving homoeopathy and its users their space to exist, free from ridicule and unfair analysis and comparison. And on a leftist list I believe (perhaps wrongly) that the argument for the underdog deserves special license.
> i'd say that wether you wrote the term
> hippie medicine or not. you snarked at the guy's article the whole time,
> denying the very things he said at all. it isn't putting his words in
> the best light possible. it is setting fire to straw. the guy doesn't
> denounce all "natural" medicines. he doesn't hold wester med on a pedastal.
> he ever told people not to get all smug about the results!
> and yet, the article was treated as if it were all smug about the results!
It is not an issue of what he is willing to concede (or give its due to) for "alternate" or "natural" medicine. It is the sort of stuff that he writes such as this:
> Dr. Straus is neither a
> naysayer nor a believer, but rather a scientist, meaning that he is
> agnostic about any particular therapy. Dr. Straus explained that the
> same rigorous metrics used to evaluate normal medicine are applied to
> the numerous unproven alternative treatments -- "the NIH way."
But despite the author's implication this is not any more fair than saying that XYZ Alternative Research will apply the same metrics to evaluate "normal" medicine as they do for "alternative medicine". There are levels and levels where there is smugness in opinions such as the above. That each of these words "normal", "unproven", "alternative" is loaded in itself, and tilts the argument in favour of his position, should be of particular interest if you are interested in parsing and excavating motives and attitudes!
The author conflates a lot of things in making his argument, including appeals to the authority of science and association of medical practices (and research) to it. But by dropping the "on the other hand" bits without clearly defining why they do not apply (all we get w.r.t the difference between the errors of the past and now is this: The difference is that these companies rely on biological mechanisms to select candidate drugs for testing, rather than unsubstantiated testimonials and anecdotes), he is making a leap of logic, to give us this:
> A billion Chinese cannot be wrong, goes the old saw, but
> in fact they can and often are.
Ah yes, and equivalently, a few thousand scientists can and often are wrong too, however "agnostic" they claim (or are characterized) to be.
Also, my initial point in response to Doug's forward was that unless we throw the sort of money at "alternative" medicine as we do for establishment medicine, their results will not be as reliable, etc, and I wouldn't be surprised by an NIH finding that says so.
Dwayne:
Your response was excellent and I think you fairly and correctly identify my buttons and gut reactions. I offer this:
Indeed it raises my hackles when I detect the faintest bit of scientism (perhaps in my own sense of that term). This is because I consider that attitude one of the greatest challenges to human dignity (interestingly what B|L seems to want too).
But you do not misread me on the "scientific method". The debate is quite alive (as long as you read more than just Sokal) on what that is, especially in a "demarcatable" sense. I love science. I am not much for science (or more importantly for scientists) for [having a public medium and power for] telling people what they should be doing (ignored at the peril of ridicule).
WRT the original article: some tests disprove the efficacy of certain medications. When that happens with establishment medication, we may *choose* to throw out that particular medication, rather than the entire establishment.
But all that said, you are quite correct in sensing this to be a hot button issue. I will appreciate and try to incorporate all scolding of my excesses.
Finally, if anyone has read down this far: rather than rebuke me on my excessive posting, Doug has kind words to say about my general style. I am glad to see that he perceives my challenges in the way I would like them to be seen.
This will be my last post for today.
--ravi
-- Support something better than yourself: ;-) PeTA: http://www.peta.org/ GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/ If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/