Viajero wrote:
Hi all,
I am the last person who want to see Wikipedia turned into a repository
for flaky, New Age esotericisms, but at the same time the scientism which
has manifested itself in the past few days in response to Mr Natural
Health's questionable contributions is also profoundly disturbing and
likewise a very insidious form of non-neutrality.
I think we have a basis for agreement here.
Take for example this comment by user Snoyes on the
[[Alternative
medicine]] talk page:
The thing is that once numerous randomized
controlled trials and
double-blind experiments have shown a treatment to be effective, it is by
definition not an alternative medicine anymore. It is therefore quite
simply a case of the rigour of science vs. unsubstantiated claims by
wonder-healers. -- snoyes
Obviously, it has a certain logic to it, but such an attitude is *so*
dualistic and dogmatic.
The quote starts from a reasonable premise, but draws improper
conclusions. The rigour of science becomes the rigidity of science, and
the fallacy of the excluded middle. It presumes that any thing which is
"unsubstantiated", or unknown, or unidentified is ipso facto false. An
Unidentified Flying Object may very well turn out to be an illusion, but
it is unscientific to presume that. I prefer to accept the fact that it
is unidentified, and go on with life with a compulsive need to answer
what cannot be answered. And "wonder-healers" is certainly a straw man.
There are surely some alternative practitioners who make extravagant
claims or send out "penis enlarger" spam, but I would venture to say
that there are far more who (like most physicians) quietly see patients
in their treatment rooms, doing the best they can.
Or take this edit summary from the page history of the
same article by
user Robert Merkel:
(cur) (last) . . 01:30, 7 Dec 2003 . . Robert
Merkel (put a big fat
"doctors think this stuff is bogus" sentence near the top of the
article,
where it belongs, rather than burying it at the bottom)
This individual hasn't a shred of impartiality regarding the subject.
The fallacy of authority. If the person making the statement is
sufficiently authoritative, everybody will uncritically accept it as true.
I am the only one disturbed by this?
No!
Perhaps it is because I live in Northern Europe, where
these issues are
less polarized, but for me issue is anything but black and white.
Alternative medicine is well-established here. My health insurance pays
for various forms of it (some but not all). My GP is an MD with a
conventional medical training, but anthroposophic orientation (Rudolf
Steiner stuff). That means he prescribes both mainstream medicines as
well as alternative therapies as he sees fit.
Steiner certainly believed in a more wholistic approach.
I realize that double-blind trials are the gold
standard in Western
science, and I don't want to argue with that; however, there vast realms
of human knowledge which have not yet been verified by these means, and to
dismiss such empirical knowledge out of hand is both foolish and not our
job.
The priests of scientism have become today's grand inquisitor's. It
takes nothing less than one of Kuhn's paradigm shifts to shake things up.
For example, I have travelled extensively in South
American and one
sees that vast amount of "alternative medicine" practiced there (I put it
in quotes because for people there it is not "alternative"). I doubt that
chewing coca leaves has ever been "proven" effective by Western scientific
protocols for altitude sickness but millions of people in the Sierra
believe it does. I was in a small village in the Altiplano once where the
women cultivated a small, bitter green potato for its birth control
properties. Again, something which I doubt has ever been "proven", but at
the same time something one can't simply dismiss as quaint folklore.
The big multinational pharmaceutical companies are aware of these
things. For them the question is can it be patented? If the plants
could be used just as they are found in the wild, there would be no
profit in that.
Can we get away from looking at healing as two opposing
factions and see
it rather as a broad spectrum of techniques, ranging from nuclear medicine
to voodoo, of which some is "scientific", some is pragmatic, and all which
have pros and cons?
I've consistently supported that approach.
In any case, at the moment the [[Alternative medicine]]
article is una
gran porquer.
Indeed!
Ec