9th September 2004, 7:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 9th September 2004, 10:55 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
I didn't use that many caps. The cap to lower case ratio is about where it would be :D. Actually, in some of those cases I used caps to emphesize, not yell.
Here's the thing. Finding out HOW it works comes AFTER finding out IF it works. (Those caps for example were to emphasise parts of that sentence so you can see what parts of it were important.)
What I mean is this. If it's unknown if fish oil even treats a disease, finding out how it treats the disease becomes a logical nightmare. There's just no way to do it, because to say "how does it work?" presupposes that it does in fact work. It must be confirmed that it actually works first. Only then can a study be done to find out what mechanism allows it to work.
The thing about folk remedies is a large number of them don't work at all. Sadly, the fact that something has been practised for centuries in no way supports how well it works. This goes into my whole "personal experience is irrelevent" thing.
I suppose I should give an extreme example.
On the stereotypical farm, ya got that rooster that crows when the sun comes up. What if someone came along and claimed that it was the rooster that actually CAUSED the sun to rise each day? In this imaginary extreme scenario, the people do not submit this claim to the scientific method. Instead, this person is seen as a great thinker, as the "proof" comes in the form of "well, every single time it crows in the morning, the sun is rising, what mornings DIDN'T the sun rise, smart guy?". Anyway, this belief is held as fact for several centuries. As a result, a new bit of evidence is presented when anyone questions it. "This is a well established fact that has been known for centuries!". Well, as you can see, this is a belief that was easy to hold for a long time, and there really was no way anyone would have questioned it outside logic.
Now, the thing is, there are a good number of "natural" medicines that really are valuable and valid. Some are actually being rediscovered. However, and this is important, they were tested scientificially and passed the test. Old world medicines like mercury mixes however do not pass the test, and are in fact things that harm.
Now, I know a lot of people think there's no harm in holistic medicines even if they are a scam. I mean, some people do think they feel better even (something called placebo). However, I should point out a few things. First off, placebo only affects the way you see pain. It doesn't actually cure any real disease, but it can make symptoms, very often imagined symptoms, disappear in the mental sense. One cannot "will" a bullet shot away, but they can will away a minor headache problem. By the same token, you can't will away cancer, since placebo is merely psychological. One may not feel sick any more (if the symptoms manifest themselves in a minor way), but the cancer is still there, and the body is having just as tough a job fighting it. Well, actually cancer is PART of your body, so your body doesn't fight it at all, and in fact heals it when it gets infected just like anything else, but you get what I mean.
Anyway, therein lies the harm. Those taking homeopathy are being given false treatments and hocus pocus diagnosis. This means that the real disease might not even be detected, and certainly isn't being treated. I'm sure you can see how this sort of thing can have a terrible end. Someone being "treated" by one of these con-artists* may have a genuine serious problem that is going untreated until it is too late. Sad but true, this does happen...
*Now, I should point something out. A large number of chyropractics (in all that medical practise, it's only the allignment stuff that real medicine considers legit, and even then not in the way chiros would have you believe, no "blocked energy" nonsense) really DO believe in what they do. These people are not con-artists, or idiots, but are just really mislead. Unfortunatly, someone who has dedicated their life to something like this is someone who will almost never be capable of accepting it no matter the evidence. They can't accept it because of what that would make them. It's a sad thing, but too many continue to practise, totally unwilling to face the truth when it is presented to them. Honestly, can you blame them that much? I know I certainly wouldn't want to realize everything I lived for was a total lie. and all the people I thought I helped were actually being hurt.
In the end, dealing with medicine means that the patient needs to do practical research before getting any treatment. Don't go for that shark cartilidge on the "off chance" it'll work. For all you know you could make it worse, and might waste money that could be better spent on a legitimate treatment.
Edit: Oh yes, I just read something on randi's site that I think I should explain here too. A lot of people might assume when a skeptic says something like this that they are "closed minded" and "think they are totally right". Not so. The skeptic's viewpoint isn't that "anything that isn't proven by science is automatically not true". It's that "anything that isn't proven by science... isn't proven by science". Not believing in certain exotic creatures, like let's say a new kind of monkey is different from disbelief. That is to say, it's not that the skeptic actually thinks "it does not exist". Their position is that it "hasn't been proven to exist". It may very well exist, but it has to be proven before any skeptic can believe it. It may seem as a sort of control, a limitation, but that's the way it works. Some skeptics might actually be inclined to believe in certain unproven things, but don't actually believe in it yet. They don't disbelieve, they actually have a state of nonbelief. It's hard for me to explain, but well, it's just that they don't have enough proof to consider it a fact.
They certainly know well enough that they aren't in a position that everything science currently thinks is true. In fact, most scientists are CONSTANTLY trying to find NEW information BECAUSE they don't think they know everything. If a new fact seems to throw everything they know about a certain field on it's head, they don't bury it in the sand, they look into it. Scientists are about as open minded as it gets. They WANT to find out amazing things that prove everything they know wrong. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world! When someone has discovered that mass simply can't be an inherent property of matter, so much as matter clinging to some heretofor unknown "god particle" (think of it this way, electrons don't really seem to have centrifugal force), it sends everyone into a "wow, let's check that out" mode, not a "we must silence the heretic" mode.
I've mentioned this on other boards. When someone makes a claim, the burden of proof is on them. Someone can't claim bigfoot exists and demand that others disprove it's existance. That's stupid. The burden of proof is on them to show it DOES exist. I won't begin to claim "You can't proove a negative", because that's only true some of the time (I can for instance prove I am not a giraffe, or even the mighty Gumbercules), but also because that argument shifts the burden of proof back to me :D. So, if someone claims that some strange medicine works wonders, scientists don't HAVE to proove it doesn't work (and they aren't even interested in "proving themselves right", they just want to find the TRUTH, as if it does work, who knows what else they could find out as a result?), it's the person making this claim who has to prove it.
Really, would you have it work any other way? Anyone is free to question the scientific community, they do it to themselves all the time. HOWEVER, fair is fair. If you can question them, they can also question you about anything you claim. If the burden of proof layed on the other person instead of the claimant, we could never be sure about anything. The entire scientific method would fail, and we would have no method for finding out how things work. Imagine if you will if scientists had to prove every single claim someone else made, including things like "the alligator always chirps twice when BURROWED INTO YOUR SOUL, and also it makes the sun rise every morning when it crows", they wouldn't ever get anywhere.
Well, that's all. I just wanted to make it clear that I have no problem with these methods actually working, but there's no PROOF, and THERE MUST BE PROOF, THAT IS A REQUIREMENT. :D
Here's the thing. Finding out HOW it works comes AFTER finding out IF it works. (Those caps for example were to emphasise parts of that sentence so you can see what parts of it were important.)
What I mean is this. If it's unknown if fish oil even treats a disease, finding out how it treats the disease becomes a logical nightmare. There's just no way to do it, because to say "how does it work?" presupposes that it does in fact work. It must be confirmed that it actually works first. Only then can a study be done to find out what mechanism allows it to work.
The thing about folk remedies is a large number of them don't work at all. Sadly, the fact that something has been practised for centuries in no way supports how well it works. This goes into my whole "personal experience is irrelevent" thing.
I suppose I should give an extreme example.
On the stereotypical farm, ya got that rooster that crows when the sun comes up. What if someone came along and claimed that it was the rooster that actually CAUSED the sun to rise each day? In this imaginary extreme scenario, the people do not submit this claim to the scientific method. Instead, this person is seen as a great thinker, as the "proof" comes in the form of "well, every single time it crows in the morning, the sun is rising, what mornings DIDN'T the sun rise, smart guy?". Anyway, this belief is held as fact for several centuries. As a result, a new bit of evidence is presented when anyone questions it. "This is a well established fact that has been known for centuries!". Well, as you can see, this is a belief that was easy to hold for a long time, and there really was no way anyone would have questioned it outside logic.
Now, the thing is, there are a good number of "natural" medicines that really are valuable and valid. Some are actually being rediscovered. However, and this is important, they were tested scientificially and passed the test. Old world medicines like mercury mixes however do not pass the test, and are in fact things that harm.
Now, I know a lot of people think there's no harm in holistic medicines even if they are a scam. I mean, some people do think they feel better even (something called placebo). However, I should point out a few things. First off, placebo only affects the way you see pain. It doesn't actually cure any real disease, but it can make symptoms, very often imagined symptoms, disappear in the mental sense. One cannot "will" a bullet shot away, but they can will away a minor headache problem. By the same token, you can't will away cancer, since placebo is merely psychological. One may not feel sick any more (if the symptoms manifest themselves in a minor way), but the cancer is still there, and the body is having just as tough a job fighting it. Well, actually cancer is PART of your body, so your body doesn't fight it at all, and in fact heals it when it gets infected just like anything else, but you get what I mean.
Anyway, therein lies the harm. Those taking homeopathy are being given false treatments and hocus pocus diagnosis. This means that the real disease might not even be detected, and certainly isn't being treated. I'm sure you can see how this sort of thing can have a terrible end. Someone being "treated" by one of these con-artists* may have a genuine serious problem that is going untreated until it is too late. Sad but true, this does happen...
*Now, I should point something out. A large number of chyropractics (in all that medical practise, it's only the allignment stuff that real medicine considers legit, and even then not in the way chiros would have you believe, no "blocked energy" nonsense) really DO believe in what they do. These people are not con-artists, or idiots, but are just really mislead. Unfortunatly, someone who has dedicated their life to something like this is someone who will almost never be capable of accepting it no matter the evidence. They can't accept it because of what that would make them. It's a sad thing, but too many continue to practise, totally unwilling to face the truth when it is presented to them. Honestly, can you blame them that much? I know I certainly wouldn't want to realize everything I lived for was a total lie. and all the people I thought I helped were actually being hurt.
In the end, dealing with medicine means that the patient needs to do practical research before getting any treatment. Don't go for that shark cartilidge on the "off chance" it'll work. For all you know you could make it worse, and might waste money that could be better spent on a legitimate treatment.
Edit: Oh yes, I just read something on randi's site that I think I should explain here too. A lot of people might assume when a skeptic says something like this that they are "closed minded" and "think they are totally right". Not so. The skeptic's viewpoint isn't that "anything that isn't proven by science is automatically not true". It's that "anything that isn't proven by science... isn't proven by science". Not believing in certain exotic creatures, like let's say a new kind of monkey is different from disbelief. That is to say, it's not that the skeptic actually thinks "it does not exist". Their position is that it "hasn't been proven to exist". It may very well exist, but it has to be proven before any skeptic can believe it. It may seem as a sort of control, a limitation, but that's the way it works. Some skeptics might actually be inclined to believe in certain unproven things, but don't actually believe in it yet. They don't disbelieve, they actually have a state of nonbelief. It's hard for me to explain, but well, it's just that they don't have enough proof to consider it a fact.
They certainly know well enough that they aren't in a position that everything science currently thinks is true. In fact, most scientists are CONSTANTLY trying to find NEW information BECAUSE they don't think they know everything. If a new fact seems to throw everything they know about a certain field on it's head, they don't bury it in the sand, they look into it. Scientists are about as open minded as it gets. They WANT to find out amazing things that prove everything they know wrong. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world! When someone has discovered that mass simply can't be an inherent property of matter, so much as matter clinging to some heretofor unknown "god particle" (think of it this way, electrons don't really seem to have centrifugal force), it sends everyone into a "wow, let's check that out" mode, not a "we must silence the heretic" mode.
I've mentioned this on other boards. When someone makes a claim, the burden of proof is on them. Someone can't claim bigfoot exists and demand that others disprove it's existance. That's stupid. The burden of proof is on them to show it DOES exist. I won't begin to claim "You can't proove a negative", because that's only true some of the time (I can for instance prove I am not a giraffe, or even the mighty Gumbercules), but also because that argument shifts the burden of proof back to me :D. So, if someone claims that some strange medicine works wonders, scientists don't HAVE to proove it doesn't work (and they aren't even interested in "proving themselves right", they just want to find the TRUTH, as if it does work, who knows what else they could find out as a result?), it's the person making this claim who has to prove it.
Really, would you have it work any other way? Anyone is free to question the scientific community, they do it to themselves all the time. HOWEVER, fair is fair. If you can question them, they can also question you about anything you claim. If the burden of proof layed on the other person instead of the claimant, we could never be sure about anything. The entire scientific method would fail, and we would have no method for finding out how things work. Imagine if you will if scientists had to prove every single claim someone else made, including things like "the alligator always chirps twice when BURROWED INTO YOUR SOUL, and also it makes the sun rise every morning when it crows", they wouldn't ever get anywhere.
Well, that's all. I just wanted to make it clear that I have no problem with these methods actually working, but there's no PROOF, and THERE MUST BE PROOF, THAT IS A REQUIREMENT. :D
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)