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Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday Dose of Woo
Have you been getting your Friday Dose of Woo from Orac? If not you should.
You might notice that I don't list the alties as part of the denialists, and many have suggested that I should. However, while I see many altie meds as woo, and the companies that sell it as little more than charlatans, I don't see a concerted attack on science coming from the altie med types. If people can find the equivalent of the DI for altie meds, I'll track it, but I think for the most part people use alternative medicine to increase the feeling of control they have over their lives, and when they get sick, the go see the real doctor. And while the companies that sell this junk based on lies and made up facts and deprive people of good money are essentially crooks, I don't think you should lump swindlers in with denialists automatically. Exceptions abound, Abraham Cherrix would be an obvious example of someone who didn't see the real doctor when he should have, but I don't see the same campaign against reason from the alties that one sees from the global warming denialists, or ID proponents. Do you? Labels: altie meds, general discussion |
Denialism (n): the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none.
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15 Comments:
I think the alties are dangerous because they can corrupt institutions (as they have in South Africa) and lead to bad investments in medicine.
March 30, 2007 11:23 AM,
True, but just being a crook doesn't make you a denialist. I guess I'm looking for them to meet more criteria, or to find a specific altie-representing group that engages in the 5 tactics.
Although, I've heard in altie discussions things like "doctors don't like altie meds because they're competing with traditional medicine" which is a bit of a conspiracy theory. They are famous for cherry-picking and making a big deal out of tiny favorable results. They do have a disorganized collective of fake experts, they tend to be each hawking their individual brand of snake oil though. They refuse to allow NCCAM to disprove any of their claims and always move the goalposts so that nothing can ever be discredited. And they do use fallacious arguments and analogies to justify using their crap.
Damn, I may have just convinced myself.
March 30, 2007 12:26 PM,
Actually, the National Institutes of Health has been legislated to be more woo-ish because of a concerted effort: http://nccam.nih.gov/
Not to mention the concerted effort on the part of large herbal remedy companies to ensure that they are not regulated by the FDA.
I would count them among the most effective denialists out there.
March 30, 2007 12:26 PM,
There may not be one big organized altie group, but many do have a unifying set of ideas that really do have the effect of undermining science.
For one, there's their standard trope that "Western medicine only treats symptoms, it doesn't address the underlying causes of disease." Not only is this wholly untrue, but their supposed "underlying causes" are often woo like misaligned chakras or magnetic imbalances or whatnot.
That alone can do a significant amount of damage to people's understanding of, and respect for, medical science.
I'd go so far as to propose that it's their non-organized nature that can be damaging in itself. It leads to an "anything goes" attitude wherein anything that sounds vaguely "sciencey" is good enough for the hippies.
(One of my all-time favorite kook/altie webpages was from Bertha L. Veronneau, who seemed to be describing the biology of the natives of Planet Batshit. Her site is down now, but it's well worth Googling her name for nuggets like "the six chromosomes are red, yellow, white, green, blue, and reticulum." I submitted it to Portal of Evil a few years ago, and the forum dedicated to it has saved some beautiful excerpts.)
Not to mention that the woo industry quietly benefits from all this, without any burdens of governmental regulation (read up on how homeopathy, among other woo industries, escaped regulation). I'm not proposing any sort of overarching conspiracy here, but it's only natural that profitable industries will want to put resources toward their own benefit, and there may be some sort of loose confederation for the purposes of lobbying, advertising, and funding bogus "studies" that muddy the waters even further.
-Tim (minimalist)
March 30, 2007 12:30 PM,
Damn, I guess I have some more work cut out for me. I was hoping to cut back on the total number of kinds of denialism, and mostly I was interested in keeping an eye on cranks. And most alties aren't so much cranks as just magical thinkers. Most people do it because it gives them a feeling of control over their health that they can practice relatively cheaply with a visit to the local quackery isle of the grocery store.
I almost think this should be a topic for Chris to cover more than me, because while it's based on bad science, the real demon is the industry rather than persistent and annoying cranks.
Finally, Factition, I'm going to disagree with you on NCCAM. Yes, NCCAM should never have been bothered with, but the fact is, it was created and that means it's not going to go away. There is a powerful lobby behind it. Now that it's here, I really appreciate it. Running NCCAM is a thankless job, Steve Strauss used to run it, he's someone Chris and I have known from childhood. I don't know who he pissed off to get that job, but he ran it like a real scientific agency. They could have put some woo guy in charge like Deepak Chopra, but they didn't. Real scientists run the joint, they actually construct tight studies, and while they have to be very judicious about how they release negative results (they've been burned by backlash a lot), it's as good a situation as it can be.
So I'd say, support NCCAM, they do interesting studies that yield useful scientific information about woo, and real scientists continue to run it. That's the best you can hope for.
March 30, 2007 12:47 PM,
"who seemed to be describing the biology of the natives of Planet Batshit."
Seriously Tim, never leave us.
March 30, 2007 12:47 PM,
That's the best you can hope for.
I'd rather hope that the institute were dismantled, and start spending the money on real research. I mean, why spend limited research dollars to show that elves don't cause cancer? We already know elves don't cause cancer. It's an institute that can't possibly win. They'll never convince alties that their favourite cure doesn't work (see their study on echinacea and colds - alites claimed it wasn't the right dosage of echinacea). And if the alties ever get a hold of that place (and I suspect some of them are trying) they'll produce horseshit science with a stamp of legitimacy on it. I think they're in a lose-lose situation. Dump it, and put the money back into other institutes at the NIH. That's what I hope for.
March 30, 2007 12:56 PM,
I do to, but I feel a certain fait accompli about it. It is a waste of money, but hey, what can we do other than run it scientifically. I guess I just worry that by undermining it we might end up allowing the woo people to control it. If we support it and say, yeah, it might be a bit of a waste but it's run by real scientists, they won't manage to get a hold of it.
March 30, 2007 1:02 PM,
Most people do it because it gives them a feeling of control over their health that they can practice relatively cheaply with a visit to the local quackery isle of the grocery store.
This is true, but also keep in mind that most run-of-the-mill creationists are kind of in a similar position. They value their beliefs, are honest in them, and want to hold onto them, having some measure of "control" in their own way. They trust the leaders of the ID/creationist movement who profess to hold similar beliefs, but who unfortunately are badly misleading them.
Creationism is still disturbingly rampant in this country (if polls are to be believed) but if that's so, then most creationists are keeping it to themselves. Most of the real noise, the lies and denialism, is coming from a small subset -- the leaders of the movement, as well as the nuttier cranks and trolls who post at talk.origins or try to take over school boards. Parental complaints about teaching evolution are common, it's true, but it appears that the figure is still nowhere near 50%.
Don't get me wrong, these movements as a whole are anti-science, and individual alties or creationists can lapse into denialist methods (emulating their leaders), but it's important to keep track of who the real enemy is. In the case of alties, it's the unregulated, profiteering companies who benefit from blowing smoke about science.
In that sense, I definitely think they can be put into the category of deniers.
-Tim. minimalist. Timinalist.
March 30, 2007 3:31 PM,
I'd tend to agree with Factician, but I see that NCCAM is doing a lot of woo debunking. Just check this out http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/
"In homeopathy, a key premise is that every person has energy called a vital force or self-healing response. When this energy is disrupted or imbalanced, health problems develop. Homeopathy aims to stimulate the body's own healing responses."
They're basically just flat out saying that homeopathy is bullshit!
March 31, 2007 7:55 PM,
April 1st Gag?
April 1, 2007 10:28 AM,
Probably a gag, but the British press can be so sensationalist and credulous sometimes that it's hard to tell.
Incidentally, I can't believe I didn't think of using the Wayback Machine at archive.org to find Bertha Veronneau's woo.
Anyway, enjoy. It is a thing of beauty.
April 1, 2007 6:52 PM,
Oh, c'mon tim, that's definitely a gag. A run on viagra plants among elderly gardeners?
Pretty hysterical.
April 1, 2007 9:36 PM,
I find it odd that news organizations want to be taken seriously and authoritatively, and yet intentionally put their credibility at risk through these Apr 1 stories. It seems counterintuitive, that news organizations would lie publicly. Is this to minimize the affront from the daily stories that they lie or omit on the other 364 days?
Which stories from the Independent's Health Section Apr 1 should we not believe?
1. Cannabis debate: 'I let my son have skunk. It ruined his life'
2. Grow-your-own Viagra craze hits Britain's garden centres
3. Rise in UK's child mortality rate is linked to inequality
4. Long-term cannabis use raises risk of lung cancer
Well, the Brits are queer for their gardens, so there's three stories on hebs out of four.
April 2, 2007 5:23 PM,
Eep.
That's pretty sad when the Lancet pretty much came out and said pot is harmless this week. Hard to continue to justify the anti-marijuana paranoia. Maybe we need drug-war denialism.
April 7, 2007 5:53 AM,
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