[lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

ravi gadfly at exitleft.org
Wed Aug 9 16:02:39 PDT 2006


--------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message includes replies to: Carrol Cox, Miles Jackson, Andy F, Doug Henwood ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Messages in this group:

* Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

* Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

* Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

* Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

=========== Message 1 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

At around 9/8/06 3:35 pm, Andy F wrote:
> On 8/9/06, ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
>> Doug writes:
>> > On Aug 8, 2006, at 12:50 PM, Andy F wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Vaccines and germ theory have nothing to do with Western medicine?
>> >
>> > Evidently epidemiology & public health don't either.
>>
>> But this reasoning flips the consideration. The question is not whether
>> "western" medicine contributed to public health, but whether it has
>> unique claims (over "alternative" methods) for doing so. Hence, your
>> showing that 'western' medicine contributed to vaccines, germ theory,
>> epidemiology, public health does not make the case against 'alternative'
>> medicine. What you need to show is that 'western' medicine is the sole
>> contributor to these issues, or equivalently, that 'alternative'
>> medicine did not. For unless you can demonstrate such uselessness of
>> 'alternative' medicine, how else can you write "NO ALTERNATIVE"?
>
> Could you identify who is arguing that western medicine is the sole
> contributor to public or any other kind of health?
>

My claim is not that someone made that exact statement. My claim is: you cannot rule out alternative medication unless you can demonstrate that it has not contributed to any progress in health. (well I gave two other ways you can attempt to eliminate it, if not on empirical grounds, but I pointed out or hinted at the problems with each such approach).

IIRC "No Alternative" was the very title of the original article.


>
>> I wrote: "alternative" remedies are stolen by establishment medicine and
>> claimed as one of its successes. The last bit above does not say that at
>> all. For instance, it does not address my underlying point that some of
>> the successes offered in favour of establishment medicine are ideas that
>> were discovered and appropriated from "alternatives" **AND** therefore
>> these successes demonstrate the usefulness of alternatives, and IN FACT
>> not that of establishment medicine.
>
> I don't think I understand the bit about establishment medicine
> stealing alternative remedies. Should establishment medicine ignore
> remedies that might work? Not even examine and test them?
>

In fact, they definitely should. Opportunism and diversity are the best approaches to expanding human knowledge.


> If you are
> talking about pharaceutical companies scooping up traditional
> knowledge of, say, turmeric, patenting it, and preventing the people

Thank you, thank you, thank you -- for spelling turmeric right! ;-) ;-)


> Would you
> object to Cuban (or any other nominally or otherwise socialistic)
> researchers -- who I would guess are pretty mainstream in practice --
> devloping something from ayurveda and releasing it into the public
> domain? Would you consider this theft?

No, not at all. I wouldn't object to any establishment (western if you like) researcher borrowing the results, findings and methods of other approaches. I do mind their bad-mouthing them while doing so.

=========== Message 2 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

At around 9/8/06 6:09 pm, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, ravi wrote:
>>
>>> To address your argument: there are two points that can be offered to
>>> counter it. The trivial counter-argument: the problem of induction
>>> should give pause to any sort of absolutism. The substantive argument:
>>> the softer the science the less autonomous the units under consideration
>>> and less rigid the behavioural variance.
>
> It's this rhetoric, "give pause to any sort of absolutism," that
> justifies Kelley's critique -- you are now arguing against a position
> that simply doesn't exist, and this kind of strawman argument pushes
> _my_ buttons.
>

What part of "No Alternative" is non-absolute to you? But, in my response, I note that it is two part, and what I am aiming for is completeness. I am dealing with the idea that empirical evidence can be used to (a) validate a theory and (b) eliminate an alternative. It is the elimination part that I am referring to by saying "absolutism" i.e., you cannot throw out any theory because of the problem of induction. No empirical data can ever fully establish a theory and therefore you cannot be certain about its accuracy. Without such certainty, it is advisable to keep alternatives alive. In fact, the situation is worse than that, as I mention in my second point. for many theories or practices in which there is evidence for high confidence, there are also outliers (findings) that are inconsistent with the theory.

This is not a strawman argument but one that covers all possible scenarios for the sake of completeness.

=========== Message 3 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

At around 9/8/06 5:53 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Speaking of which, has any "alternative" practice ever been renounced as
> ineffective after rigorous testing? For all the many faults of orthodox
> medicine - functions of money, power, and ego - it is capable of
> substantial changes in practice. Can you say the same of the
> herb-dispensers?
>

I can. I know of herb-dispensers who have made changes to their practices based on theoretical shifts, contrary evidence, etc. Does that help you, though?

=========== Message 4 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

At around 9/8/06 5:34 pm, Miles Jackson wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, ravi wrote:
>
>> Pragmatism is a funny thing, since it takes us away from the world of
>> logical certainty into the messy world of rocks and emotions. It is
>> interesting what pragmatic actions you may take if someone you love is
>> suffering or dying and establishment medicine is willing to take as much
>> of your money as they possibly can, without any assurance of positive
>> outcomes. I hope that you (Miles) have not had to deal with such
>> situations. In those cases, you may to your surprise find that your
>> pragmatic self quite willing to even examine the entrails of chickens,
>> though that latter act has little to do with all possible alternative
>> remedies.
>
> You're not following my use of the term "pragmatic". I have in fact
> had to deal with medical decisions for a number of close relatives
> (my family medical history on both sides is pretty dismal).
>

Sorry to hear that!


> In no
> case did I in desperation turn to untested treatments, "just in
> case" the alternative therapy might work. My grounds were pragmatic
> through and through: (a) if there is no systematic research, we
> can't effectively assess the risk of side effects; and (b) trying
> untested therapies increases the likelihood of using an ineffective
> therapy, and this is a waste of time and resources. Trying anything
> in desperation to save your loved one is not pragmatic.

But wait... of course I was kidding with the bit about examining entrails. The alternatives are not tried "just in case" nor are they "untested". They too have, in many cases, developed systematically and theoretically over centuries, and modified and corrected on the basis of results, etc. So, when a person in India turns to Ayurveda after establishment medicine fails to cure their problem, they are not just doing a "Hail Mary", but trying an alternative that despite giving them lesser confidence than establishment medicine, might still provide a cure. (hence my paranthetical statement after the chicken entrails bit).


>> To address your argument: there are two points that can be offered to
>> counter it. The trivial counter-argument: the problem of induction
>> should give pause to any sort of absolutism. The substantive argument:
>> the softer the science the less autonomous the units under consideration
>> and less rigid the behavioural variance. Confidence factors gained from
>> limited studies and testing are less representative of individual
>> possibilities, I will submit (albeit without the data), without
>> knowledge of variance within, across individuals and populations,
>> histories, environmental factors (hence my questioning the ceteris
>> paribus claims of such studies), etc (there is also a third
>> methodological argument based on Bayesian vs other interpretations of
>> probability and statistical distributions, but I am nowhere near
>> competent to get into the details of that argument, though I am
>> convinced its a legitimate one from talking to those who know better. I
>> throw it in here in case someone more knowledgeable might wish to expand
>> on it).
>
> Science is messy and the results of scientific research are never
> absolute and definitive, as Woj pointed out in an earlier post. I don't
> see how this supports your position. --Do you really mean to argue
> that we can ignore the data from any scientific study that
> demonstrates the effectiveness of one therapy over another, because
> science doesn't produce absolute knowledge?

No, I am not arguing that. My bit about the problem of induction (as noted in my response to Carrol) is for completeness, and to mention that it should give us some pause. So, we should not ignore data from scientific studies. We should let them inform our decision. What we cannot do is let the results of scientific studies throw out entire bodies of alternatives, especially when those alternatives have a track record of producing solutions.


> Note that this does not entail dogmatic support for "western"
> medicine. For instance, clinical trials have clearly demonstrated
> the analgesic effects of acupuncture. In contrast, recent research
> on hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women has shown that
> the "pump em with estrogen" strategy has no positive therapeutic
> effects and actually increases a woman's risk of ovarian cancer.
> Thus the enthusiasm for systematically testing therapies is not
> necessarily enthusiasm for "western" medicine; it's enthusiasm
> for efficiently using resources to improve people's health and
> lengthen their lives.

But this is where you (and perhaps Wojtek, whom you refer to) seem to be ignoring the messiness of the real world, leave alone science. The scientific method did not prevent the estrogen remedy. On the other hand, women cannot wait around for the scientific process to iterate the necessary times over a solution until it reaches some threshold of certainty, before they try this or that alternative, such as, say acupuncture.

--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/



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