[WikiEN-l] rampant scientism

Mon Dec 8 15:15:52 UTC 2003

On 12/07/03  at 04:12 PM, Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> said:

> Indeed; they are the gold standard in all forms of science. Asians,
> Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, Blacks, and Whites all use this method to verify
> claims. These peer-reviewed methods
> are used in Eastern, near-Eastern and in Western countries. In fact,
> there is nothing "western" about so-called
> "western" medicine at all.

First, please, Robert, use your intelligence: "western" as I used it here
isn't a geographical designation; it is abstraction synonymous with
"modern". One could also say  "modern medicine" or "conventional
medicine", but these terms also have their disadvantages. In political
economy, when people use the term "the North" instead of "the First
World", they are not talking about Greenland!

Second, a traditional Chinese doctor would laugh at your ignorance and
your presumption. Acupuncture goes back four thousand years; the first
books on acupuncture appeared in BC 2500. You think these people were
doing double-blind tests and publishing in the BJM  all these years? You
really think the you guys have a monopoly on the knowledge of human
physiology just because you have been doing so for the last seventy-five
years?

Third, western scientific protocols, as elegant as they may be in theory,
are implemented in the *real world*; all your double-blind, peer-reviewed
studies are only as good as the data and the scientists who perform and
review them. If you look at the real history of modern medicine, you see
that the system has not exactly been infallible, most notoriously with
regard to side effects. Amalgam fillings (already known in the 1920s to be
toxic but still used by dentists up to the 1970s), thalamide, X-ray,
hormone replacement therapy, birth control pills, antidepressants,
thimerosa, which was added to vaccines and recently 
determined to have caused widespread autism in children, -- all these have
various side effects which you noble scientists have taken an awful long
time see. And what about the grotesque practices of the mid 20th century?
Lobotomy, electroshock, plutonium poisoning? Primum non nocere? Ok, these
aberrations are hardly representative of the work of many decent people in
the health sciences but show how far the system is capable of going.

And indeed precisely one of the attractions of alternative medicine is
that absence of such pernicious side-effects. Maybe St Johnswort won't
cure your depression, but at least you won't jump out of a window. Perhaps
valerian root won't cure your insomnia but it isn't addictive. But please
note: I am not trying to convert you to homeopathy; I am not "promoting"
anything. All I would like to see is decent coverage of alternative
medicine in Wikipedia as befits any serious human endeavor. I am trying to
demonstrate to you and the other technocrats here your ideological
blinders with the hope that you will show slightly more humility with
regard to the limits of Western science and slightly more openness to
non-Western medical experience. Mr Natural Health was a problematic user
when he first appeared, and you could have helped us incorporate his
material in a constructive way, but your hostility and rabid scientism
only aggravated the situation. The ultimate victim is the encyclopedia.

V.