Comments for The Wall Street Journal Debunks the Myth of Alternative Medicine at http://www.randi.org/site , comment 1 to 33 out of 20 comments http://www.randi.org/site Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:34:53 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-3804 If I collapse my personal wave function, won't I then become a bunch of particles? Wouldn't I end up in different places than I normally would, like with the double-slit experiment? And didn't John Denver have an alternative airplane? I'm sorry, that was cruel. - feralboy Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:22:31 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-2961 Follow up to my comment earlier in this blog post: Here's part of a response I received from the AARP to my email protesting their cavalier publishing of CAM claims in their AARP Magazine: "On behalf of President Jennie Chin Hansen, thank you again for sharing your concerns with AARP regarding a recent AARP Magazine article about Complementary and Alternative Medicines. We appreciate hearing from you and have taken note of your comments. Views like yours represent a critical resource for shaping the legislative policies of AARP." This response email was written to me by a person in their Member Communications department. Well, I guess it's better than no response, although it's vague and does not promise any retractions of what they published, nor does it promise any other actions on their part. I can only hope that I've helped them decide to take a closer, skeptical look at CAM claims in the future. Notes: AARP used to be known as the American Association of Retired Persons. They're an advocacy organization, based in the USA, for older Americans. The article in their magazine, some of which I objected to in my emails to them, is here: www.aarpmagazine.org/health/drug_free_remedies_chronic_pain.html A copy of my email objecting to CAM claims in their article is here: www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/355-hands-licensed-to-kill.html#comment-1243 - MDeaver Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:24:17 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-2565 [quote]I've heard that the pills are sugar, but I don't know that for sure. [/quote] Yes, it is "milk sugar" or [i]lactose[/i] Another sugar is "fruit sugar" or [i]fructose[/i] And "table sugar" is [i]sucrose[/i] BJ - BillyJoe Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:50:30 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1746 Plantfood, it may not be correct that those little black balls your mother sticks under her tongue have no water involved. It's a misconception that all homeopathic remedies are water-based. Accepted diluents for homeopathic remedies are water, alcohol, and sugar. In some cases, the homeopathic solution is prepared in water or alcohol to the proper dilution, and then dropped onto tiny round pills. I've heard that the pills are sugar, but I don't know that for sure. - sfdyoung Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:48:25 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1536 Skepdoc, If it's any consolation, one of the reasons that I renewed my subscription to Skeptic magazine is that your articles appear there. :) Plantfood, Science Based Medicine = Plausibility + Evidence Homeopathy, acupuncture, and chiropractic have zero plausibility. There is no qi or chi. There are no meridians. No subluxations. And "like cures like" is a nonsense. The only reason to conduct proper sceintific (double blind placebo controlled) trials on claims that have zero plausibility is because the science ignorant public use these treatments despite their zero plausibility. SBM is the way to go if you want to separate the wheat from the chaff. Good luck! [quote]"Let's be more tolerant of believers" [/quote] Let's show respect to others as fellow human beings - provided they show similar respect to [i]their[/i] fellow human beings (ie I'm excluding charlatans here). Let's not, however, give their ideas the same respect (or tolerance) unless and untill they can provide evidence that their ideas are correct. BTW: It's neither here nor there, but Einstein [i]was [/i]an atheist. regards, BJ - BillyJoe Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:34:21 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1513 plantfood, You remind me of the person who cancelled his subscription to Skeptic when they started publishing my SkepDoc column - he said it was OK to be skeptical about some things, but if we were going to be skeptical about alternative medicine that was going too far! I won't get into an argument here. The arguments you offer have all been proffered and demolished on http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ For instance, I addressed home births at http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=64 I would strongly urge you to read Trick or Treatment - it is a book by the world's first professor of alternative medicine a former homeopath who wanted to believe alterative medicine worked and who has looked at the science behind alternative medicine and concluded: "While there is tentative evidence that acupuncture might be effective for some forms of pain relief and nausea, it fails to deliver any medical benefit in any other situations and its underlying concepts are meaningless. With respect to homeopathy, the evidence points towards a bogus industry that offers patients nothing more than a fantasy. Chiropractors, on the other hand, might compete with physiotherapists in terms of treating some back problems, but all their other claims are beyond belief and can carry a range of significant risks. Herbal medicine undoubtedly offers some interesting remedies, but they are significantly outnumbered by the unproven, disproven and downright dangerous herbal medicines on the market." As for naturopathy, he says, "Many lifestyle recommendations of naturopaths are valuable, but a general judgement about the wide variety of naturoopathic treatments is not possible. Each naturopathic treatment must be critically assessed on its own merits, and it is likely to be coveed elsewhere in this appendix. For any serious condition, naturopathy should not be seen as an alternatibe to vonventional medicine." If you are going to seriously advocate for alternative medicine, you owe it to yourself to read that book, as well as Snake Oil Science. Spending some time on the Science-Based Medicine website will help you understand my reasoning (which is identical to that of most skeptical doctors). Scientists don't claim to always be right or to know anything, but science is the only way to find out whether a belief is right. You seem to be arguing for untested beliefs. I am surprised to see such an argument on the JREF site. By the way, I have no objection to people using irrational or belief-based treatments: I only object to the misrepresentation of those beliefs as based on good science when they are not. You call SBM a "biased source" - yes, it's biased in favor of rigorous science, reason, and critical thinking. So is JREF. - The SkepDoc Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:15:57 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1500 (I forgot to mention that I do not go nor have I ever been to a naturopath. I don't agree with everything they do and prefer mainstream medicine myself. I have worked for a hospital, though, in a new innovative, dare I say "alternative" program focussing on preventative medicine for chronically ill patients and really hated the rigid mindset of the rest of the hospital.) I believe in rational, critical, logical thinking. But there are things we take as fact today that would have seemed fantasy a few hundred years ago. Things we see as fantasy and absurd now will be proven facts another hundred years from now. If we close our minds to the possible, without even accepting that maybe, just maybe, our experiences are not all there is, then advancement is not possible. Science begins with "what if?" If you close those doors tight, do not allow people to ask "what if" and instead say, "no, it can't be" then you are dooming our world to the dark ages. You cannot know everything. You cannot possibly have all the facts. The universe is infinite as is what is knowable. Just because something is not true in your experience does not make it never true. My only point, which you have missed entirely is simply that as skeptics we should be questioning ourselves as well as everyone else. "Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers." 4."Let's be more tolerant of believers" - no let's not. Let's encourage everyone to use their critical faculties and to go by evidence rather than by belief. There is a huge difference between agreeing with and tolerating. You can tolerate someone's beliefs while still questioning them. You can tolerate them while still avowing your own beliefs and exposing those people to new ideas. Intolerance is one of the biggest problems in the world today and you can't expect people who differ in beliefs from you to tolerate you without you tolerating them back. (Freedom of religion and freedom from religion go hand in hand and both ways.) I actually agree with almost everything you all and Randi say (which is why I posted on this thread. It actually shocked me.) I just think some here are too adamant, too black and white, and as self-righteous as the people we condemn. People won't listen to what you have to say if you go out there to change their minds with that attitude. Some of the most amazing change in the world has come from religious leaders who believe things I do not: Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Dalai Lama, Jesus. But I do agree with nonviolence and peace. Do you condemn them because they do not think "rationally?" Or do you take what they say that matters and tolerate their religious beliefs? Even Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest scientist of our times, was not an athiest. "Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers." We are not always right. Maybe most of the time but not always. ;) - plantfood Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:13:12 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1499 Trish, I completely agree that the homeopathic remedies you describe are ridiculous. I was just saying that the word homeopathic is as vague as alternative medicine. My mother takes these weird little black balls she sticks under her tongue. No water involved. I still don't believe they work but they don't fit under the description of homeopathy mentioned above. Steel Rat, that's funny. Skepdoc, I am not misinformed about naturopathy. You are getting your definition from a biased source. Have you ever been to a naturopath? Have you ever looked at the curriculum at a naturopathic college? I live in Seattle, home of Bastyr, one of the best naturopathic medical schools in the world. There are definitely some quacks out there, but not all. And I never said they had a monopoly on holistic healing. However, they focus on it whereas it has only recently become a focus in mainstream medicine. Echinacea has been tested and found not to work and to work by different scientific communities. Take a look at who is funding the research to determine the bias. Besides, the original statement above validated herbal remedies. The efficacy of them was not the issue. Alternative medicine is a new term. Psychiatry was mainstream before the term was invented. It was definitely NOT mainstream for a VERY long time and is still considered "soft" by many. Now you're just getting into semantics. I did not compare vaccines to homeopathy. I was simply saying the definitely of homeopathy is vague as well and does not include just water essences. However I do NOT believe homeopathy works. You clearly did not even try to understand what I was saying because you are as narrow minded as the people you are judging which is my point. As to number 8, that just shows how little you know about alternative medicine. There are so many different types and different practitioners who believe different things that to say that they all agree and never change their minds is absurd. Chiropractic, Chinese medicine including accupuncture, homeopathy and naturopathy are all types of alternative medicine. Most people I know who go to naturopaths have regular physicians as well and don't believe in homeopathy either. They have discarded it. How long have insurance companies been funding midwives? It's a controversial issue because mainstream medicine does not believe that a midwife is legitimate without a doctor standing next to her. The US has a much higher neonatal mortality rate than Europe despite the fact that more of our children are born in hospitals. Some quotes from a compilation of statistics by a woman who did not have a preference before doing her research: * A study in Australia found a perinatal mortality rate of 5.9/1,000 out of 3400 planned home births (Kitzinger 41). * Joseph C. Pearce states in his landmark book Evolution’s End that homebirthed babies have a six to one better chance of survival than a hospital-birthed child (117). * A study in the Netherlands done in 1986 on women who were having their first babies showed these results: out of 41,861 women who delivered in the hospital, the perinatal mortality rate was 20.2/1,000. Of 15,031 women who delivered at home with a trained midwife, the rate was 1.5/1,000 (Kitzinger 44). I know, I thought it must be a typo too. * Marsden Wagner, formerly of the World Health Organization, states that every country in the European Region that has infant mortality rates better than the US uses midwives as the principal and only attendant for at least 70% of the births (Jones 2). He also states that the countries with the lowest perinatal mortality rates in the world have cesarean section rates below 10% (Jones 13). How does this compare with the US rate? Miserably. Number 10, again, you are using very biased sources. I gave you a source from an accredited university, not a website who has an agenda. Your references are as unreliable as a fundamentalist christian referring me to Focus on the Family for their "facts." You didn't even understand my point because you just proved it again by only hearing what you want to hear. If someone goes to a doctor and does not get better by "accepted" medical practices and seeks alternative medicine which they feel relief from, it is not your business to tell them they are wrong. - plantfood Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:08:40 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1492 The WSJ also debunks the myth of Global Warming, but get soundly criticized for it. - Steel Rat Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:56:21 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1479 Plantfood, you are sadly misinformed. 1. Naturopathy does not have a monopoly on treating the whole body and treating the illness in context: that is exactly what good scientific medicine does. Naturopathy is a bizarre mixture of evidence-based and belief-based ideas. See: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Naturopathy/naturopathy.html which concludes "the average naturopath is a muddlehead who combines commonsense health and nutrition measures and rational use of a few herbs with a huge variety of unscientific practices and anti-medical double-talk." 2. Echinacea has been tested and has been found not to work. 3. Alternative mediciine certainly does have placebo effects. Of course, placebo effects work only on subjective symptoms, not on anything that can be objectively measured. You are using the "what's the harm as long as you think it makes you feel better?" argument. Check out the What's the Harm website. Fuzzy thinking kills. Placebos are unethical. The truth matters. 4."Let's be more tolerant of believers" - no let's not. Let's encourage everyone to use their critical faculties and to go by evidence rather than by belief. 5. Psychiatry was never classified as alternative medicine. 6. "Just because it isn't mainstream doesn't mean it's wrong." Very true. But unless it has been tested and proven to work, there is no reason to think it's right. 7. Anyone who thinks vaccines can be compared to homeopathy doesn't understand either. 8. "Modern medicine changes its mind." Yes, and that's the strength of the scientific method. When new evidence shows that something doesn't work, we give it up. Can you think of a single instance of alternative medicine ever changing its mind or giving up a treatment they have proved ineffective? 9. A woman having a baby at home with a midwife? Essentially the same as a woman having a baby in the hospital with a certified midwife. Not alternative, just more risky because of delays if emergency intervention is required. 10. Acupuncture has not been proven scientifically. Read Snake Oil Science, Trick or Treatment,and http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=252 [i][/i][i][/i] - The SkepDoc Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:13:42 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1448 Whether the vaccine is a live vaccine or a killed vaccine, it causes changes in immune system cells. Immune system cells, being alive, cna reproduce, and increase in number and, therefore, effectiveness. The inert substances used in homeopathic preparations cannot increase in number in the way that living cells can. When inert substances are diluted and the diluted liquid is divided into separate containers, the more-diluted are going to be less effective than the un-diluted. When the dilution is so great that it's impossible for there to be even a molecule of the original substance in most of the containers of diluted "preparations", it means there is nothing available to be active. Think of this, if water really had a memory of things that had once been dissolved in it, or in adjacent water, then all water would be salty, sulufrous, and otherwise poisonous and unpleasant to injest. - Trish Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:31:41 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1445 More observations: [i]ho·me·op·a·thy A system for treating disease based on the administration of minute doses of a drug that in massive amounts produces symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease itself. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.[/i] Any vaccine fits this definition. Randi asks "Is there any "alternative" treatment that was ever tested, found to be effective, and subsequently incorporated into standard medical practice? I don't think that has ever happened except for herbal remedies." Modern medicine changes its mind, too. (Should babies be put on their stomach or on their backs to sleep? Huge reversals several times over the past two decades by the medical establishment on this issue. A woman having a baby at home with a midwife is alternative medicine. Accupuncture has been proven scientifically and yet it is considered an alternative medical procedure. An example: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0306987795901175 The term alternative medicine is just too general. - plantfood Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:54:54 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1443 I think we need to be careful that as skeptics we don't automatically agree with everything that fits our worldview, either. If we do, if we automatically accept any account that says something we in our gut feel is wrong, then we are as bad as people who blindly follow the faith of their parents. One important thing to note is that alternative medicine does not necessarily mean non-Western medicine. I have a friend who is a naturopath who prescribes Western medications as well as herbal remedies. Most of my friends (mostly athiests and skeptics) use naturopathic medicine. The difference is that naturopathy sees the whole body as an inter-related system that has to be taken as a whole, that illness has to be taken within context. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I am always skeptical of anything reaking of paranoia. However, I think we also need to take into account the plethora of articles (including mainstream articles) about drug companies monopolies on their products, their suppressing research that goes against their own moneymakers, etc. Where would funding to test something that appears to work and is very very cheap come from? It is not in the drug companies best interest to fund such things. I am not saying this is widespread or even particularly common but I do think it is something to consider. I have never believed in even herbal remedies but through friends forcing echinacea down my throat at the onset of illness, I do believe it has immune system elevation properties. Consumer Reports agreed with this assessment on that remedy alone. Yet this has not been tested by the FDA and probably never will be. Yes I saw above that herbal remedies are considered to be possibly effective but the discussion also says that if things worked they'd be sold as medicines not herbs. That's contradictory. The other thing to think about is the power of the mind. I don't mean psychic minds, I mean the power we have to convince ourselves that something works even if it doesn't. My hypochondriac mother takes a lot of medication that works and way more that doesn't work. But she also frequently finds homeopathic remedies that work for her. Of course they don't work for me--I don't believe in them. So how can you say alternative medicine doesn't work? It works, just not the way the taker thinks it does: it's not the medicine but the person's own mind that makes it work. If the end result is the same, who are we to say it's bogus? I'm just bringing this up because I believe my duty as a skeptic is to question *everything*. I am not a theist but I am not an athiest either. I cannot prove there is a god but I cannot prove there isn't one. I don't believe in God but I cannot say with certainty their absolutely isn't one, either. (I'm 99.9% sure there isn't but still...) There are lots of things I pretty much believe in, such as atoms and electrons and black holes that I cannot see or prove, either. Anyway, as someone above said, let's be a little more tolerant of believers and remain focussed on the deceivers. Remember, less than a century ago psychiatry was an alternative medical practice and the idea that doctors would ask about a person's stress levels as related to their health was laughable. Just because it isn't mainstream doesn't mean it's wrong. - plantfood Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:15:45 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1419 DrMatt Good points. As Carl Sagan pointed out, one of the great virtues of science is that it has self-correcting machinery built-in. When scientists make a mistake, it is other scientists that correct it. We all make mistakes, which is human, but some refuse to acknowledge they may be in error while others are open to the possibility. Whether you happen to be right or wrong in a particular instance, this attitude of assigning an appropriate level of certainty is of key importance. - ashomsky Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:50:45 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1408 On behalf of the credulous, let me point out that they are the same species as us. We're all susceptible to the same kinds of delusions, errors, and frauds. So they remind us to never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never relax the controls of science...and to always publish our results, whether we like them or not. I'm frustrated by recent reports of confirmation-bias in drug trial publication (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38881/title/Many_drug_trials_never_see_publication) but heartened that scientists and science writers are exposing the ploy and fighting back, demanding truth. This shows not that science is intrinsically corrupt but rather that there are motivations for people to pass off corrupt practices as if they were science--i.e., science is prestigeous. That's exactly why "CAM" departments sought validation at research hospitals. Medical centers are shrinking to cut costs now; we'll see whether they cut their "CAM" departments as cost centers doing redundant research on implausible topics with no benefit to patients, or retain them as market-based hopes for eventual moneymaking regardless of patient impact. - DrMatt Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:23:55 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1377 This is the problem with public perception. Modern medicine (and science) isn't a 100 percent perfect solution to anything. It is a slow, progressive, methodical gathering of information that leads to better solutions over time. We can't cure AIDS. We can't cure cancer. This isn't because medical science doesn't work. It is because medical science is humans trying to understand extremely complex things. The alternative is to be simplistic and offer some mumbo-jumbo and say that it cures it without any real backing or understanding (alternative medicines). I'd take Spock's 'best guess' over some fuzzy bull any day of the eon. The public wants expediate, authoritative solutions. And that is a weakness in humans which has always led to bad decisions and exploitation. The hard facts are that it takes real work to do real things and it doesn't come easily. The old mantra remains true always - if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. This should be taught every year from kindergarten to Ph.D. just to reinforce a bit of skepticism at random claims of efficacy without objective backing. - Kuroyume Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:57:30 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1376 Modern medicine has worked wonders. With the development of vaccines, steroids, antibiotics, and opiates physicians appear to be able to work miracles. This has led to unrealistic expectations by the general public. Not everything is treatable and/or curable. However, MOST of the time we go to the doctor we are prescribed one of the wonder drugs and everything is OK in a short time. Even self-treatment with aspirin has wonderful results most of the time. We learn from this to expect wonderous results EVERY time! Of course, that's unrealistic, but that's what experience teaches us. If people don't get the wonderous results from scientific medicine, they seek wonderous results elsewhere. - GusGus Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:14:30 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1374 [quote]This should be a laughing matter, but it isn't -- not with the Obama administration about to confront the snarling colossus of health-care reform.[/quote] Perhaps he could pay for the "alternative medicine" with "alternative money." [img]http://elcofrecito.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/monopoly_money.jpg[/img] [url]http://elcofrecito.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/monopoly_money.jpg[/url] - kenhamer Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:54:45 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1370 My biggest quip is that these alternative medicines typically skirt around the required clinical tests because they don't fall under pharmeceutical or medical regimes. By being 'herbal supplements' or 'massage 'therapies'', they slide under the regulatory radar even if they claim real medical efficacy. Ephedra was a killer and it was allowed to be sold without prescription because it was labelled as 'herbal'. I should sell some foxglove or hemlock as 'herbal'. These will cure all your ills (since you might be dead). - Kuroyume Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:16:12 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/365-the-wall-street-journal-debunks-the-myth-of-alternative-medicine.html#comment-1369 There’s a link on wsj.com that says “register for free,” so I did that and attempted to post a comment on this article. However, the website seems quirky and I don’t think it worked. I don’t see my comment there so I guess not. I’ll post it here but I feel like I’m just preaching to the choir: Human beings in general are hugely inept at judging the efficacy of medical treatments and one can hardly deny that we are highly prone to mistaking useless treatments as useful. The scientific method has been an admittedly imperfect but still spectacularly successful aid in separating myth from truth and represents a great step forward in human thinking. “Alternative medicine” is alternative only because it hasn’t been proven to be effective by the scrutiny of the scientific method to the satisfaction of the scientific community. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t effective; it just hasn’t been proven yet. Unproven alternative medicines are indistinguishable from placebos, and some alternative medicines, even the most credulous of us must admit, are certainly nothing more than placebos. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all alternative medicines are placebos; I couldn't know that for sure. But how is one to judge which are useful and which are not? Anecdotal evidence is unreliable to say the least; one could easily collect a list of sincere testimonials for fraudulent treatments. The only reliable way to determine a treatment’s usefulness is through scientific studies. Those treatments that pass muster after proper testing will be welcomed into the fold as standard medical practice, and we all benefit. It is true that the scientific method does not guarantee success. However, dismissing science is like saying “people still die in car accidents despite wearing seatbelts and using airbags, so let’s just get rid of seatbelts and airbags.” The scientific method, like seatbelts and airbags, is helpful but not infallible. As Carl Sagan said, “it’s just the best we have”, and throwing it out is a huge step backwards. - ashomsky Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:08:36 +0100