[lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

Andy F andy274 at gmail.com
Sat Aug 12 07:10:50 PDT 2006


On 8/12/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> Not exactly a bad guess more like if leeches are good for X, then they're
> good for Y. Modern medicine does this too, for example, using antibiotics as
> a cure-all. From what I remember about the New Yorker article the modern use
> was also the ancient use; the older use just kind of went overboard.

I'm trying to think of something that is considered a cure-all now in mainstream medicine (on the alternative side you've got your vitamin C, magnets, chealation therapy, homeopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy...) because the use of antibiotics looks like a terrible example of something used *by the profession* as a panacea. I've heard mostly of doctors complaining about patients coming in and demanding antibiotics for viral infections and whatnot. So they prescribe the antibiotics for ailments that they're no good for out of pressure, fear of lawsuits, etc. not because the research supports it!

Perhaps they should be excercizing their authority more. There are similar complaints about all the recent antibacterial products. This is a totally mainstream, establishment viewpoint.


> I really am NOT (and neither is ravi) arguing that one form is good and the
> other is invalid. We're BOTH responding to an article that dismissed
> "alternative" medicine and we've argued that the modern medicine also has
> its failures -- some of them quite spectacular.

As did the article. Moreover the article did not say "alternative medicine is bogus". Unless of course you want to argue too that we should not consider anything beyond the title, in which case I give up. It noted that a couple of therapies (both, incidentally, from longstanding Asian practice) passed NIH tests, and that most therapies *both alternative and from the pharma industry* did not. It noted that some therapies labeled natural turned out to be toxic (no contradiction there, and something many herbal enthusiasts will acknowledge). It suggested the dangers in using anecdotes for research, and used an example from establishment western medicine! The most smug thing in there is the confidence that accumulated evidence from future scientific studies would remove interest in palmetto. And, I suppose, that such testing would make a whit of difference of how the public views them.


> Sometimes "scientists" reject perfect valid hypothesis because of their
> association with an older science. For example, Galileo rejected the moon's
> influence on tides because of all the various powers the moon had been
> previously assigned, many of which were bogus.

I'm not sure who would deny that there is tendency for overcorrection and faddism. But why are you saying that Galileo's notions of tides are bogus? How did you determine this?


> However to say that older forms of science were affected by ideology while
> modern science is not is, well, completely false.

We seem to have a moving target here.

-- Andy



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