On the one hand, "Pseudo-science" embraces more than just fakery that is being passed off as medicine. Other examples of subjects that I think would be fairly categorized as pseudo-science would include Ley lines, the teleological theory of cultural evolution, the theories of Immanuel Velekovsky, & as someone mentioned upthread ghosts. I guess you could say that it is any hypothesis that cannot be proven experimentally, but the least controversial examples are the ones that _have_ been disproven -- yet still have their true believers.
I fully agree.
On the other hand, "quackery" is more properly applied to medicine that either does not work, or is harmful.
I fully agree.
One can graduate from a mainstream, accredited medical school, receive a medical degree, & even be board-certified -- & yet still be a quack.
I fully agree.
Some doctors with education in scientific medicine are quacks. The discipline itself, however, isn't quackery. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is pseudo-medicine. Everyone who practices homeopathy is a quack while she's doing it, in the sense that she is providing medicine that doesn't work.
I keep coming back to homeopathy because it is probably the pseudo-medicine discipline with the greatest mainstream popularity. It even has some degree of official recognition in some countries. And yet it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt not to work.
But if it really doesn't hurt anything if we call it "Alternative medicine", & creates a bit of WikiLove to do so, then shouldn't we accept the term & move on to other things?
I am arguing that the term is misleading for the articles that category currently holds (I won't repeat my argument here, see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so myself if objections are not raised.
I see that we have 5 candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation who are all well qualified, but we can only elect two: isn't that problem worth at least as many posts as this one?
Certainly. I wish them the best of luck.
If this discussion is overly burdening the mailing list I suggest we continue it on the talk page of Category:Alternative medicine.
Regards, Haukur
Haukur Þorgeirsson (haukurth@hi.is) [050629 21:47]:
I am arguing that the term is misleading for the articles that category currently holds (I won't repeat my argument here, see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so myself if objections are not raised.
I raise an objection: that's not what it's called in English (my overriding objection), and "pseudo-medicine" is an invented term hence original research.
The current article on [[Alternative medicine]] has suffered a bad case of Gohde and could do with a lot of cleaning up, but the Category links to Pseudoscience and Protoscience get the point across IMO (having as it does both).
- d.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 11:47:08AM -0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
Some doctors with education in scientific medicine are quacks. The discipline itself, however, isn't quackery. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is pseudo-medicine. Everyone who practices homeopathy is a quack while she's doing it, in the sense that she is providing medicine that doesn't work.
I think we should avoid calling any person a quack. We can and should refer to acts of quackery, or to particular disproven treatments as quack treatments, but it seems unnecessarily inflammatory to label persons like that. (Likewise, we should say that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were found to have told lies -- not that they "are liars". The former comes across as a flat statement of fact; the latter is a character smear.)
(A little [[E-Prime]] can go a long way.)
I keep coming back to homeopathy because it is probably the pseudo-medicine discipline with the greatest mainstream popularity. It even has some degree of official recognition in some countries. And yet it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt not to work.
The aspect of it that I really find interesting is how water is only supposed to "remember" the substances the homeopath wishes it to -- even though all the water in the world could be considered to contain a homeopathic dilution of dinosaur pee. :)
But if it really doesn't hurt anything if we call it "Alternative medicine", & creates a bit of WikiLove to do so, then shouldn't we accept the term & move on to other things?
I am arguing that the term is misleading for the articles that category currently holds (I won't repeat my argument here, see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so myself if objections are not raised.
If we're taking "quackery" (or "pseudo-medicine") to mean remedies that have been demonstrated to _not_ work, then we still need a place to put remedies that are unproven either way, and ones which are too broad to categorize clearly as working or not-working as a whole.
Take herbal medicine, for instance. It's pretty well established that some herbs do have pharmacologically active ingredients which are effective for the purposes those herbs are traditionally recommended. However, there's also an awful lot of sheer nonsense about herbs. Large portions of the practice can't accurately be classed as "pseudoscience" since practitioners don't imitate science.
Or take massage. There are certainly pseudoscientific and pseudomedical claims made about some forms of massage, such as reflexology -- which holds that massaging specific areas of your feet can cure afflictions of specific parts of the rest of your body. But massage is also recognized as part of physical therapy. As a whole subject, where does massage belong w.r.t. medicine? The category "complementary medicine" seems to me to fit perfectly.
Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
One can graduate from a mainstream, accredited medical school, receive a medical degree, & even be board-certified -- & yet still be a quack.
I fully agree.
Some doctors with education in scientific medicine are quacks. The discipline itself, however, isn't quackery. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is pseudo-medicine. Everyone who practices homeopathy is a quack while she's doing it, in the sense that she is providing medicine that doesn't work.
I have not had occasion to use them, but If I look at the prices of homeopathic medicines I find them rather modest. Compare that with the prices of heavily patented medicines sold by major pharmaceutical companies. The improved efficacy of some of these is often only incremental over that of the drug whose patent has expired. Some of these producers are quite happy to withhold medicines from those who can't pay. It isn't the homeopaths who are failing to send AIDS drugs to Africa, or are using their patent powers to restrict domestic African production of these drugs.
If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at least no recent claims of it doing direct harm. (Direct harm involves far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the victims to a "real" doctor.) The recent problems over Vioxx/Celebrex did not come from the homeopathic community
I keep coming back to homeopathy because it is probably the pseudo-medicine discipline with the greatest mainstream popularity. It even has some degree of official recognition in some countries. And yet it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt not to work.
I suspect that chiropractic is more popular, but that could vary from one place to the next. Your use of "beyond reasonable doubt" is too categorical. The popularity of homeopathy alone is not be enough to establish that the medicines work, but it is a clear expression of reasonable doubt.
Healing involves more than medicines that produce the desired chemical results. It can involve more than the syllogistic thinking that has become so commonplace in the Western World ever since Aristotle.
Attitude and hope are also factors in healing. I do not believe in God, but can still recognize the value of prayer to healing. Shamans had a vital role in their own societies, even if their medicine bags contained nothing but innocuous trinkets.
When you show a man the wonders of modern medicine you are showing him that hope exists. When you demonstrate that those wonders are beyond his means, you have turned modern medicine into the offerings of a latter-day Pandora. Maybe he was better off with his vials of sterile water.
But if it really doesn't hurt anything if we call it "Alternative medicine", & creates a bit of WikiLove to do so, then shouldn't we accept the term & move on to other things?
I am arguing that the term is misleading for the articles that category currently holds (I won't repeat my argument here, see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so myself if objections are not raised.
Such a move would be objectionable POV pushing.
Ec
If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at least no recent claims of it doing direct harm. (Direct harm involves far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the victims to a "real" doctor.)
Hmmm of course to make that stement you have to accept that agrivations are not due to any active effect of homeopathy.
you also have to ignore this
http://www.adrugrecall.com/zicam/zicam.html
(although of course not all homeopaths would accept that as homeoapthy.
geni wrote:
If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at least no recent claims of it doing direct harm. (Direct harm involves far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the victims to a "real" doctor.)
Hmmm of course to make that stement you have to accept that agrivations are not due to any active effect of homeopathy.
you also have to ignore this
http://www.adrugrecall.com/zicam/zicam.html
(although of course not all homeopaths would accept that as homeoapthy.
And even if we accept this product as homeopathic (a determination that I am in no position to make) it is still only one product. I suppose that the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. could be checked by someone with ready access to see if the product is included
The 2003 California appelate case of National Council against Health Fraud v. Botanical Laboratories, Inc. This is from the losers' own website. http://www.quackpotwatch.org/opinionpieces/filed_7.htm is instructive . The judges concluded "Appellant believes that no one should be allowed to market homeopathic remedies. Congress has decided otherwise, and officially recognizes the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. Appellant’s broad-brush approach of sweeping all homeopathic remedies into a single bag marked "undesirable" simply does not work in the courts, where each claimed instance of unfair advertising and unfair business practice must be closely scrutinized. Appellant failed to present any admissible evidence in this case that respondents are guilty of false advertising and unfair business practices with respect to any of their products.."
Ec