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the rise of pseudo-science
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
after reading a tabloid review of that new film out, thats apparantly a documentary, which is as close to a documentary as that film u-571 
anyway i think this rise of 'alternative science' - basically filling the holes in that we dont know with faith based crap is due to a lack of people understanding what science is, which isnt technically the end results, but its the method of gaining knowledge by mathematical modelling and logical mix of isolating variables to test effectiveness of hypotheses
for example, homeopathy - its never been proven to work, apart from one 'experiment', which whenever its been carried out again (hundreds of times) fails, so the person who done it orignally done a bad experiment as you cant reproduce the results, so for all we know it wasnt the 'homeopathy' that done it
or saying theres things in nature which cant be explained by natural selection, means evolution never happened, when natural selection as a theory only explains part fo what happens over periods of time, and theres probably other things that happen to
just because we dont knwo why something happens yet, doesnt mean theres a higher being behind it, it just means we're yet unable to hypothesis
religion didnt get you your fridge or car, thermodynamics and mechanics did
slightly useful link: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html - not the best but still
anyway i think this rise of 'alternative science' - basically filling the holes in that we dont know with faith based crap is due to a lack of people understanding what science is, which isnt technically the end results, but its the method of gaining knowledge by mathematical modelling and logical mix of isolating variables to test effectiveness of hypotheses
for example, homeopathy - its never been proven to work, apart from one 'experiment', which whenever its been carried out again (hundreds of times) fails, so the person who done it orignally done a bad experiment as you cant reproduce the results, so for all we know it wasnt the 'homeopathy' that done it
or saying theres things in nature which cant be explained by natural selection, means evolution never happened, when natural selection as a theory only explains part fo what happens over periods of time, and theres probably other things that happen to
just because we dont knwo why something happens yet, doesnt mean theres a higher being behind it, it just means we're yet unable to hypothesis
religion didnt get you your fridge or car, thermodynamics and mechanics did
slightly useful link: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html - not the best but still
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Comments
I quite agree. Rational thought is a wonderful thing.
One problem we have these day is that most actual "science" doesn't follow these rules either. Funded by corporate bodies well aware of the power of a media run on a science article from someone with a fucked up alphabet after their name, most modern science starts with a conclusion and then adjusts the data to fit, or is sent down discrete lines by those who fund it.
Also, to take another example, medicine isn't a science. It's a methodology based on looking for "what's wrong". For a drug to get passed, it will have to work on a percentage of people, but no drug works for everyone, as any packet of paracetemol will tell you.
This simply isn't the case. Because of the placebo effect, homeopathy will work on a percentage of people who believe that it will work on them. Placebo's are actually the most effective drugs in exisitence, which is kind of a mad thought, innit?
If homeopathy works, try it. Forget the 'evidence' for it.
Ditto various hanging objects to put outside your door pointing at some direction.
I honestly can't fucking believe people fall for such bullshit.
My grandmother got that, and she was more or less "forced" by my dad, yet it did have a positive effect on her.
to my knowledge acupunture has some benefits technically too, just becuase someone believes it works doesnt mean we should fund it for example
show me a reliable scientific study where homeopathy has be shown to work in a mass volunteer controlled sample test which can be repeated
in making this thread i was on about other things as well as medicinal 'alternative's' which havent gone through medical trials
yes and reading the small bit at bottom most news reports tend to ignore is that, it was a 14 person smaple, and theres plenty of experiment to show it doesnt work
There's none for CPNs as far as I know.
I think alternative therapys need to be developed a lot more, we are still in a relatively barbaric age, we cut people up like bits of meat to cure them, and with anything major it's not normally that successful. It is my opinion and possibly always will be that you need to spend time and resources on both improving treatments / science that has already been discovered, but you also need to spend time and resources on developing new treatments and new discoveries.
Of course, I don't agree with 'filling in the blanks' method, though it's an interesting way of coming up with new hypothosese (sp?). I am always suspicious of modern science though when it is said to be so infallible, from the days of the 'medicine man', to the Greek and Roman four humours / Galen, to middle age leeches, to todays surgery, it's all just been a development which has rendered what came before obselete, I'm pretty sure that modern surgery will follow this route and with it a lot of our beliefs about how the human body works.
Homeopathy I'm not an expert in (you don't seem to be too well up on it either mate, no offense), but I will vouch for herbalism even if it isn't the sort of thing perscribed by a doctor.
Ahh yes, the same doctors that perscribed Seroxat from the same pharmacutical company that surpressed information about how dangerous the drug is. Yet we trust these people...
No, I'm not saying that if you are diagnosed with cancer you should go and have a nice reiki session to clear it up, but why are people so intolerant of other people's beliefs? I mean even if these therapies have merely a placebo effect then it show's further the body's ability to heal itself without the use of medicines that often have side effects.
let me argue this point by point
- galileo im not sure about however lots of people had logical reasons why the world was round, the only reason the curch supressed it was because it went against them, no other reason, this isnt the same thing, if you can find a valid experiment that has been repeated to show the same positive effect for a alternative medicine then ill believe you
ys i think positive thinking has an effect, but you dont need to pay someone to do a stupid routine to make you think positive
and incompetant doctors, well it was mainly the drug company heavily marketing it that caused the problems, if the medication was used as it was intended ie a chemical method of not worrying so much so you can focus on what is causing your problems then it would be okay, that is extremely different from someone pushing to sell something that is in now way been proved to worked, even if you are unsure how it works which is perfectly possible
homeopathy i know quite a bit about actually, and it is effectively having a non-pharmocolical effect dosage of a plant extract, which isnt even proved towork, and every experiement bar one (which only worked once and is reckoned they cheated on) has failed to show any effects
i know there are things we dont understand, however there are ways of proving whether methods work even if you dont know why yet, which is acutally how chemistry got started as a subject from alchemy, which then later meged in with physics as it appeared to be physics on a larger scale, and on a larger scale thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
read my link at first page
and yes in many way im doubting youre beliefs im not being intolerant however, believe faith-based garbage if you want just dont claim it has a basis for logical proof
ps - sorry been pub bad spelling
yes you do not rule out impossibility, i know anything can happen if you do not knwo what will happen 100%, however there are methods of confirming whether it is that which is donig the desired effect or something else, its called a controlled experiment, the only reason in the past things were called crazy was because of faith-based establishments that had no basis for their arguments to say it was crazy other than a book supposedly written by whomever hundreds of years ago, in all fairness people liek to hear what can contemplate, and well for example if i had no idea of mathematics, id believe anything could make plants revolve around sun, and relativity would seem stupid, how it is relativity that almost exactly predicts the fluctuations in mercurys orbit which newtons gravitiational rules dont work
the peopel who push the forms of alternative science im on about dont use scientific methods thus it snt even a science. do you hear of people or organisations who push for this sort of stuff to be experimentally proved, no they rely on blind faith that it works, read the link i provide on the 'research' done and that can sum up quite a lot
theres a difference between hypotheses and reliable evidence, a hypothesis is a statement which you set out to see if it is true or not using known observational facts and observations with an open mind
modern science, what do you mean, the methods of modern science are exremely reliable, science is a method, not the end results, and the endresults constantly change, ive got the 8th edition of a book made in the 70s, cause that much has been shown to be different in 30 years from the general case, even if just slightly different
Would it matter if someone invented one for you so you believed implicitly in the treatment? If you believe in it and then it works because you believe in it, then Doc's should be working around the clock to understand belief.
You are going to struggle to find one I reckon, just like you would struggle to find the early church trying to validate Galileo's conclusions. Not that this means alternative remedies work, only that they get dismissed as quackery and then not investigated, which may or may not be a shame.
That's you though, everyone knows someone who believes what they are told if it's from a "credible source"
Given what else I usually post about on here, no comment.
which is why i dispice peoples attidue to anti depressants, they do not 'cure' your depression, they are just a treatment, and part of it, that stop your brain from responding to horomones that make you feel bad so you can sort out the root cause so less will be made by your attitude
belif is usful, it can only help so much, as in painkillling and a few immune responses, but you cant do that for everyone, thats what psychiatrists are there for
a recent example is the guy who believes in cold fusion, yes it might be possible,however his experiment fails everytime, as its observatiosn are too vague, and i highly doubt he has suceeded and from what i read of him, he doesnt seem too interested in getting a real experiment done that can measure neutron counts, it is just the cheap route out of full on research in real fusion
you always interesting comments to a discussion
ps on a side note, in my lectures at uni, numerous times, we are told "this si not fact, we'll never see this with our eyes, for all we know atoms could be cubes, however we will never know and the best mathematical way of desribing them that fits all the observations we can makes is to assume spherical-ness which then still needs electrons orbitals when you apply quantum mechanics which then explains 99.9999999999% of chemical reactions"
Believe me, there is no difference to your usual spelling.
: :flirt:
You shouldn't need to pay to think positive but by the way we're conditioned by society (i.e. to depend on corrupt pharmacutical companies and keep the rich wealthy), we seem to have the need to take these tablets to make ourselves feel better. Again, tablets which often aren't that good for us... Now if somebody heals themself even if it is because of a placebo effect or positive thinking... Is that not a good thing?
Does it not open a door way for a whole new band of research? That is... If the government wouldn't consider it too risky.
But the thing is, people don't push to sell. If people want holistic treatment then they pay for it.
You could use the same definition for herbalism, something else which has been used for years. Is this a pseudoscience?
http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=617
Ill still read the article though.
Sorry, I should have made this clear, I mean our current understanding of the world. Which as you rightly pointed out changes every single year. I don't care much for the attitude you encounter sometimes that because it is the most up to date science that it's infallible.
And modern medicine is reliable depending how you define reliable. What about in Star Wars when you can drop someone in a bacta tank and heal them from death practically. I still think medicine has a long long way to go and still believe we are in a 'barbaric' age. People still die from infection caused from open surgery and being in a hospital.
I envision a time where you'll have a little cubicle which will be a shower come bed come medical thing where even if you've just had your leg blown off you can just go for a nice rest listening to your favourite music or tv programme and wake up with your leg back
Ok, I may sound insane, but I'm trying to push a point
And all alternative remedies are reliable depending on how you define reliable too.
If by reliable you mean has worked for "x" percentage of people and might work for you, we reckon, then yeah. Take away the starting presumption that any two people are exactly the same and the whole thing looks decidedly dodgy.
It's a very very wacky premise, when you think about it. If procedure "x" is done on a hundred people and 80 of them get better, then it's assumed that you will have a 8 in 10 chance of the procedure "x" being a success. Obvious bollocks. Think about it.
Yeah I agree. Too many times we get theory minus data, or conclusion or inference, minus the data. Then new "research" is done based on old research. What you can get is a huge inverted pyramid of thinking that can fall over at any moment. A bit like you study the field of politics from the point of view of "nation" or "class" or "race" when those things don't exist, and some madman comes along and wipes out every thought you have ever had on those lines by showing your starting assumptions were bollocks.
Bear in mind that the entirety of some sciences should have been restructured after Einstein, but wasn't. (yet)
you cant cause relativity and quantum theory in their own way work, cannt blend them together as we know we know it though to explain quantum gravity, which is why a planck second is the smallest division of time you can do mathematical stuff with
Eh?