An article after DJ's own heart?

[A Black Falcon]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...doscience/

[Dark Jaguar]

Is that the first time you've read an article like that? There's plenty more, and written better. In fact this article comes across less as someone versed in science trying to educate and more as someone who is trying not to alienate a large portion of their target audience. I've read a lot, but never heard of something called "The demarcation problem", because generally there isn't such a problem. There's either evidence, or there isn't, and the volume of independently collected evidence is what ultimately determines what scientists can safely claim is effective. Anyone claiming, for example, that shark cartilage cures cancer has such a small understanding of the science that they shouldn't be making such a claim, as it has resulted in so much poaching. (Namely, there is no possible mechanism by which such a claim could even conceivably begin to work. Just as an example, there is no "cure for cancer", every cancer is unique, and anything that COULD "cure" it would need to be able to differentiate between all manner of cancer cells, and the difference between healthy and cancer tissue, and shark cartilage can't do that.)

That said, there are bigger issues. A lot of medical data is starting to become more and more compromised, and medical journals now have a large amount of published data that very well may not connect with reality. That's a huge issue that needs to be tackled.

[A Black Falcon]

I was mostly just interested that this was published on the New York Times website, not something more specialist... of course other articles like that exist. So yes, it'd make sense if it was written differently from something in a medical journal; it's not in one. But it's certainly more technical than most newspaper articles.