First off, please stop using ad homenim attack-words like "scientism"; this is grossly offensive to those of us who use science to separate claims from facts. If you want to discuss a specific issue, please discuss the issue without the words that show anger and fear of scientists.
Viajero writes:
I realize that double-blind trials are the gold standard in Western science, and I don't want to argue with that;
Indeed; they are the gold standard in all forms of science. Asians, Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, Blacks, and Whites all use this method to verify claims. These peer-reviewed methods are used in Eastern, near-Eastern and in Western countries. In fact, there is nothing "western" about so-called "western" medicine at all.
Sadly, the term "western" is often used as a perjorative term by people who are advocating alternative health-care techniques for profit, and who do not have proof that their techniques work. "Alternative medicine" is no more "eastern" than peer-reviewed medicine is "western". The only useful categories are these:
(A) There exists peer-reviewed data, duplicated by many reseachers, that a claimed technique actually works.
(B) No such data exists, and we are expected to take someone's word, or believe in anecdotes.
This isn't western or eastern. It is about facts versus a charlatan taking your money.
however, there vast realms of human knowledge which have not yet been verified by these means, and to dismiss such empirical knowledge out of hand is both foolish and not our job.
I totally agree; yet I have no idea why you believe such a thing is happening here. Only among certain advocates of alternative medicine do we find such closed minded attitudes, with people dogmatically asserting that certain things (i.e. western medicine) are bad and should not be used. In stark contrast, "western" doctors have always been open to investigating new techniques and drugs.
Every day scientists from western countries scour nations all across the globe to learn about traditional fold-remedies, drugs and treatments. They constantly test them in peer-reviewed studes to see if they actually work. In fact, this is big business. I am totally flabbergasted that you somehow have been led to believe the opposite.
The only problem is that some unhinged people like Mr-Natural-Health get angry when their favored forms of alternative quackery are proven to be fraudulent, if not dangerous. Then they start ranting about "western" medicine in a nearly racist fashion.
So, sorry man, I can't agree with anything you said.
Robert (RK)
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RK wrote in part:
First off, please stop using ad homenim attack-words like "scientism"; this is grossly offensive to those of us who use science to separate claims from facts. If you want to discuss a specific issue, please discuss the issue without the words that show anger and fear of scientists.
Of course, many people use the term "scientism" that are not angry or fearful of scientists. Even some people that *are* scientists! Of course, this is to be expected.
The only useful categories are these:
(A) There exists peer-reviewed data, duplicated by many reseachers, that a claimed technique actually works.
(B) No such data exists, and we are expected to take someone's word, or believe in anecdotes.
This isn't western or eastern. It is about facts versus a charlatan taking your money.
So if data doesn't exist, then it's from a charlatan? Or is the dichotomy in the last sentence different from the A/B dichotomy? If the latter, then you might elaborate.
Viajero wrote:
however, there vast realms of human knowledge which have not yet been verified by these means, and to dismiss such empirical knowledge out of hand is both foolish and not our job.
I totally agree; yet I have no idea why you believe such a thing is happening here.
Perhaps Viajero believes it because you say things like A/B above. This (false) dichotomy suggests that if a practice is not yet verified, that then we are expected to believe it without verification.
It's a darned good thing that other people noticed MNH before you did, RK, or it might have been EoT all over again -- where the regular Wikipedians ignore your charges because you back them up with exaggerations and biased rhetoric. Next time leave it to people like Viajero.
-- Toby
On 12/07/03 at 04:12 PM, Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com said:
Indeed; they are the gold standard in all forms of science. Asians, Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, Blacks, and Whites all use this method to verify claims. These peer-reviewed methods are used in Eastern, near-Eastern and in Western countries. In fact, there is nothing "western" about so-called "western" medicine at all.
First, please, Robert, use your intelligence: "western" as I used it here isn't a geographical designation; it is abstraction synonymous with "modern". One could also say "modern medicine" or "conventional medicine", but these terms also have their disadvantages. In political economy, when people use the term "the North" instead of "the First World", they are not talking about Greenland!
Second, a traditional Chinese doctor would laugh at your ignorance and your presumption. Acupuncture goes back four thousand years; the first books on acupuncture appeared in BC 2500. You think these people were doing double-blind tests and publishing in the BJM all these years? You really think the you guys have a monopoly on the knowledge of human physiology just because you have been doing so for the last seventy-five years?
Third, western scientific protocols, as elegant as they may be in theory, are implemented in the *real world*; all your double-blind, peer-reviewed studies are only as good as the data and the scientists who perform and review them. If you look at the real history of modern medicine, you see that the system has not exactly been infallible, most notoriously with regard to side effects. Amalgam fillings (already known in the 1920s to be toxic but still used by dentists up to the 1970s), thalamide, X-ray, hormone replacement therapy, birth control pills, antidepressants, thimerosa, which was added to vaccines and recently determined to have caused widespread autism in children, -- all these have various side effects which you noble scientists have taken an awful long time see. And what about the grotesque practices of the mid 20th century? Lobotomy, electroshock, plutonium poisoning? Primum non nocere? Ok, these aberrations are hardly representative of the work of many decent people in the health sciences but show how far the system is capable of going.
And indeed precisely one of the attractions of alternative medicine is that absence of such pernicious side-effects. Maybe St Johnswort won't cure your depression, but at least you won't jump out of a window. Perhaps valerian root won't cure your insomnia but it isn't addictive. But please note: I am not trying to convert you to homeopathy; I am not "promoting" anything. All I would like to see is decent coverage of alternative medicine in Wikipedia as befits any serious human endeavor. I am trying to demonstrate to you and the other technocrats here your ideological blinders with the hope that you will show slightly more humility with regard to the limits of Western science and slightly more openness to non-Western medical experience. Mr Natural Health was a problematic user when he first appeared, and you could have helped us incorporate his material in a constructive way, but your hostility and rabid scientism only aggravated the situation. The ultimate victim is the encyclopedia.
V.