17th May 2005, 9:21 PM
This is funny. I don't know the scientific method ? I think you're being pretty radically bold in accusing someone who uses it on a daily basis as part of his job. So I'm curious what standing you have to criticize my lack of understanding of the scientific method. Unless you're a phD or post doc and I don't know about it, I don't think you have that standing. At this point, I'm the one in the position to cast doubt that you have a poor understanding of the scientific method, not the other way around. I'm still wondering after I read what you wrote if you even understand what rational design is ? But since it doesn't look like it, I'll explain. Rational design means that you design a treatment based off of a mechanism known to be true. For example, by rational design, the simplest example I can quote is that antibiotics kills bacteria. So when you get infected, you treat X infection with X drug that can kill that bacteria. The problem is if you were to base your medicine off of evidence, many of the antibiotic treatments such as pre and post surgical antibiotic treatment is all based off of rational design, ie you assume that you can prevent surgical infections by giving patients doses of antibiotics before and after you go to the OR. The problem is that real evidence shows that this is not particularly helpful at preventing OR infections any better than clean technique does. Surgeons still do it anyways because its based of rational design as opposed to evidence. Yet it is proven to scientifically not work. This is just one simple example. Theres plenty of other examples of medical voodoo that is widely in practice. Again, you'd probably probably never trust an MD again if you really knew about this and embrace your idea of not putting any faith in non scientifically proven medicine.
Your limited scope of understanding makes you have a skewed view on how science works. Rational design is what propels ideas and creations forward in engineering, and medical technology for example. Scientific process is only there to evaluate if it works, or if a hypothesized discovery you stumbled upon or a rational design idea you created works or not. And even then, alot of rational designs are not, or cannot evaluated scientifically. As I said, you CANNOT go around shooting people in the stomach so you can test a new technology for surgical extraction of the bullet. You can only test it in the limited situation where someone got shot in the field and you'd like to try to test your new technique. Its not entirely scientific since you can't control for everything, but its reasonable. The best you could do in the long run is go back into history and check to see where are the limited cases where a you can take X cases and compare them to Y cases in such a manner that is "virtually" controlled and draw a conclusion. That too was not scientific, and all the while, this new technique is being used with only the rational concept that it works well, as opposed to scientifically proven data that it works well.
Here you are claiming rationality, while quickly embracing the stance that accupuncture doesn't work, saying there needs to be evidence. First, are you being rational by ignoring all the evidence that has been generated in research in East Asia. 2nd, by doing that you imply that if it was not studied in the west, that science doesn't count as valid. Finally, you're also discounting the validity of several thousand years of systematic research done by the Chinese. This probably simply stems from a lack of understanding of the history surrounding Chinese science. Most people don't think of Chinese as "scientific" because you live in a Eurocentric world, but the reality is the Chinese until 300 years ago, were way ahead of the West, and the equivalent of scientific methods have been used in Chinese research LONG before Francis Bacon even thought of the name for it. Basically what you're saying is that despite the fact that the Chinese have proven it to themselved scientifically, that doesn't matter to you because when Chinese do science, its all fake, and that if its not developed and tested by the west, it doesn't count as being real science - even if it used the same rationale.
So what is the rational design behind accupuncture ? Over 5000 years back, it was observed by physicians on the battlefield that soldiers who received stab, or arrow wounds in certain points consistently showed less pain compared to other wounds. What those wounds were, its not entirely shown in history, but slowly and gradually, this concept developed into the systematic placement of needles in these same places for pain control. What was the immediately apparent application was its use to control the pain, aches, and moans of soldiers on the battlefield. Since it was observed to be effective, its use was further developed. While this technique was still rudimentary, it was noticed that soldiers receiving these pain control methods also experienced metabolic effects not to be expected in otherwise healthy individuals. While yin yang theory had already existed in China, this discovery merged it with accupuncture. Its well recorded that the use of accupuncture provides analgesia enough to perform minor surgeries on the battlefield such as stitching, extracting arrow heads, etc. In China, this method is still used today without having to elevate to the use of numbing medications for pain control during minor procedures. During the 3 Kingdoms period, the use of opiates were added for additional pain control that allowed for more major surgeries on the battlefield. While surgery never really went any further than battlefield repairs in China, the use of low does anesthetics combined with accupuncture is used in China for major surgery. While it keeps the patient partially awake, it definitely is effective for pain control, and lowers the risk of complications associated with complete anesthesia. This is all based on a rational design that was experimented on systematically to confirm that the rationale worked. And this is how Imperial Chinese academies did their research in medicine.
How many people believe it having a bearing on something's validity ? I must say you're also being bold and unreasonable by discounting the judgement of the scientific community who do this for a living. While there are many situations where people with potential ideas suffer the effect of being pounded down as the nail that sticks out, this is kind of the reverse situation, in which the nail that stuck out was actually surpassed cultural barriers to become accepted. Again, it is a result of a convincing body of evidence, which you were mostly likely not aware of until I spoke of it. And at this point you're probably still willing to put your judgement at higher value than that of professionals who evaluated this data.
Finally, if the only medicine you put in faith is medicine thats scientifically proven, well that means you don't believe in most of medicine anyways. Like I said, most of medicine was accidently discovered, developed rationally as opposed to scientifically. Keep on thinking your way, and you're in for a whole world of surprise and hurt when you go to the doctor and ask to know whats going on, and they tell you, "who the hell knows ?"
Your limited scope of understanding makes you have a skewed view on how science works. Rational design is what propels ideas and creations forward in engineering, and medical technology for example. Scientific process is only there to evaluate if it works, or if a hypothesized discovery you stumbled upon or a rational design idea you created works or not. And even then, alot of rational designs are not, or cannot evaluated scientifically. As I said, you CANNOT go around shooting people in the stomach so you can test a new technology for surgical extraction of the bullet. You can only test it in the limited situation where someone got shot in the field and you'd like to try to test your new technique. Its not entirely scientific since you can't control for everything, but its reasonable. The best you could do in the long run is go back into history and check to see where are the limited cases where a you can take X cases and compare them to Y cases in such a manner that is "virtually" controlled and draw a conclusion. That too was not scientific, and all the while, this new technique is being used with only the rational concept that it works well, as opposed to scientifically proven data that it works well.
Here you are claiming rationality, while quickly embracing the stance that accupuncture doesn't work, saying there needs to be evidence. First, are you being rational by ignoring all the evidence that has been generated in research in East Asia. 2nd, by doing that you imply that if it was not studied in the west, that science doesn't count as valid. Finally, you're also discounting the validity of several thousand years of systematic research done by the Chinese. This probably simply stems from a lack of understanding of the history surrounding Chinese science. Most people don't think of Chinese as "scientific" because you live in a Eurocentric world, but the reality is the Chinese until 300 years ago, were way ahead of the West, and the equivalent of scientific methods have been used in Chinese research LONG before Francis Bacon even thought of the name for it. Basically what you're saying is that despite the fact that the Chinese have proven it to themselved scientifically, that doesn't matter to you because when Chinese do science, its all fake, and that if its not developed and tested by the west, it doesn't count as being real science - even if it used the same rationale.
So what is the rational design behind accupuncture ? Over 5000 years back, it was observed by physicians on the battlefield that soldiers who received stab, or arrow wounds in certain points consistently showed less pain compared to other wounds. What those wounds were, its not entirely shown in history, but slowly and gradually, this concept developed into the systematic placement of needles in these same places for pain control. What was the immediately apparent application was its use to control the pain, aches, and moans of soldiers on the battlefield. Since it was observed to be effective, its use was further developed. While this technique was still rudimentary, it was noticed that soldiers receiving these pain control methods also experienced metabolic effects not to be expected in otherwise healthy individuals. While yin yang theory had already existed in China, this discovery merged it with accupuncture. Its well recorded that the use of accupuncture provides analgesia enough to perform minor surgeries on the battlefield such as stitching, extracting arrow heads, etc. In China, this method is still used today without having to elevate to the use of numbing medications for pain control during minor procedures. During the 3 Kingdoms period, the use of opiates were added for additional pain control that allowed for more major surgeries on the battlefield. While surgery never really went any further than battlefield repairs in China, the use of low does anesthetics combined with accupuncture is used in China for major surgery. While it keeps the patient partially awake, it definitely is effective for pain control, and lowers the risk of complications associated with complete anesthesia. This is all based on a rational design that was experimented on systematically to confirm that the rationale worked. And this is how Imperial Chinese academies did their research in medicine.
How many people believe it having a bearing on something's validity ? I must say you're also being bold and unreasonable by discounting the judgement of the scientific community who do this for a living. While there are many situations where people with potential ideas suffer the effect of being pounded down as the nail that sticks out, this is kind of the reverse situation, in which the nail that stuck out was actually surpassed cultural barriers to become accepted. Again, it is a result of a convincing body of evidence, which you were mostly likely not aware of until I spoke of it. And at this point you're probably still willing to put your judgement at higher value than that of professionals who evaluated this data.
Finally, if the only medicine you put in faith is medicine thats scientifically proven, well that means you don't believe in most of medicine anyways. Like I said, most of medicine was accidently discovered, developed rationally as opposed to scientifically. Keep on thinking your way, and you're in for a whole world of surprise and hurt when you go to the doctor and ask to know whats going on, and they tell you, "who the hell knows ?"