>
>In other words, there *are* "alternatives", they can have positive
>contributions, and they need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and
>done so using a wide range of criteria. That history of human
>knowledge-seeking is continuous. And I would add: every alternative need
>to be kept under consideration (or record), for our very criteria for
>testing, and our very theoretical foundations upon which such tests are
>based, may change in the future.
>
>
>
A pragmatic question: with such vague standards for evaluation ("case by
case", "wide range of criteria"), how is any health care provider or
client supposed to decide what therapies to use? --"Well, there's no
systematic research now that supports the use of treatment X, but
scientific theories and methods change, so you shouldn't rule out
treatment X". By this logic, if I claim that eating skinny vegetables
like green beans will make me skinny, I should consider green beans an
"alternative" treatment for weight loss, and even if there's no clear
research that supports my claim--hey! science is fallible, so we need
to keep my "alternative" treatment on record!
The practical problem that ravi keeps dodging is this: there are numerous potential therapies to treat a particular ailment, so we can't just say "keep everything under consideration". To provide people with access to effective therapies, we need some systematic process for identifying effective therapies and recommending those therapies over others. In my view, the scientific process accomplishes this pretty effectively. Informal "trial and error" or isolated case studies are not scientific research, and it is a gross misrepresentation of both "traditional" cultures and the current culture of science to say that people in hunting and gathering tribes used the "scientific method" to discover the analgesic effects of (say) willow bark. Sure, they used trial and error, but they were not doing science, because science is a complex product of organized social relations in certain types of societies.
Now, I'm no dogmatic fan of the scientific process; if ravi could identify some specific, nonscientific means of identifying truly effective treatments, I'm happy to jettison medical research. The appeals to tradition, though, are not adequate, because some traditional medicines are effective and others are not (tradition or custom alone do not reliably identify effective cures). So once again: if we don't use scientific methods, how do we decide what therapies to recommend and administer?
Miles