[WikiEN-l] Re: Pseudoscience category - GSPOV

Wed Jun 29 19:12:52 UTC 2005

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