Sceptics

[frankus]

FBF doesn't understand it and you think it's trite. Fair enough.

I said it reads as less trite when I put it in verse. Being less trite makes it easier for me to read.

I like what beat poets have to say, it being in verses helps me remember some of what they're saying is for artistic effect - I view your comments the same - that's not a bad thing is it?

[Sporky_McGuffin]

My wife is really into yoga and so she tends to read quite a bit of "alternative lifestyle" type stuff. Thankfully, she is a mathematician so she doesn't believe it any more than I do (though she does have some worrying religious moments), but I love reading nonsense about energy flows and unbalanced energy fields and crap about elementary particles and barely comprehensible pseudo science being used to justify some new age wank.

One of my uncles is a bit like that, but without the mathematics bit.

He refused to have a microwave because he'd read that microwaving food denatures the proteins in it. We pointed out that this was entirely true, and is commonly known as "cooking".

[BlindLemonAde]

A customer in the Library once tried to warn me away from inoculation*, as they use bits of the disease itself in them... it was when her Uncle lectured me on the International Conspiracy of Bankers that the penny dropped.

(*Also known as vaccination, a name derived from Vache, the french for cow, as they used cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox. A similar process was known to the Ayurvedic tradition of medicine in India, 1000 BCE. Traditionalists eh, what do they know? )

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Traditionalists would want to treat everything with ebony.

[thebeagle]

I <3 Ben Goldacre, good to see him getting a couple of mentions (and on the placebo effect, his first book 'Bad Science' is well worth reading).

Of course science is in a state of perpetual flux, unable to reach finality. That's the beauty of the system; it's always creating more questions and encouraging us to learn more.

Or in the words of Dara O'Briein: "Of course science doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop."

[deano_l]

I am staying off this thread but I thought I would post the signature that someone has on another forum...

If I give a homeopathy advocate a really huge punch in the face, can the injury be cured by giving them another really small punch in the face?

[evilmags]

I <3 Ben Goldacre, good to see him getting a couple of mentions (and on the placebo effect, his first book 'Bad Science' is well worth reading).



Or in the words of Dara O'Briein: "Of course science doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop."

Bad science is a good book and a must read for the sort of people who can be seen buying stuff in "Homeopathic/ wholefood" type shops. That said Goldacre has a massive agenda and it is worth reading his stuff with that in mind. Bad Science is a much better book than Bad Pharma, which clearly shows Goldacre's hard left tendencies and is a bit too holier than thou. As to the original question, I reckon the dividing line between science and philosophy in strict academic terms is when you substitute mathamatics for logic. That said without logic to guide you you would have a hard time doing science.

[TheThingThatShouldNotBe]

"Is there, in fact, any sign at all that "science remains in perpetual flux"? That's kind of what I am asking. I'd say my initial point seems to suggest it is. "Cognitive dissonance".

Well science will always improve theres no ceiling to knowledge science is based on proovable predictions but when science falls short we have to fill in some gaps with our imagination using comparisons & algorithms which is also the basis for many aspects of philosophy . Sometimes philosophical methods help to set up experiments .
Cognative dissonance is a pretty eloquent realisation and a good indicator that some thing doesnt add up .

[hungrymark]

Bad science is a good book and a must read for the sort of people who can be seen buying stuff in "Homeopathic/ wholefood" type shops. That said Goldacre has a massive agenda and it is worth reading his stuff with that in mind. Bad Science is a much better book than Bad Pharma, which clearly shows Goldacre's hard left tendencies and is a bit too holier than thou. As to the original question, I reckon the dividing line between science and philosophy in strict academic terms is when you substitute mathamatics for logic. That said without logic to guide you you would have a hard time doing science.

What's the agenda? That pharmaceutical companies' main goal is to make money? That's just the law isn't it, given that they are plcs?

[evilmags]

What's the agenda? That pharmaceutical companies' main goal is to make money? That's just the law isn't it, given that they are plcs?

He dissaproves of the making of money. I've read both books and by and large they were worth reading and needed writing, but Bad Pharma would have been more effective if written from a more neutral standpoint. Bad science should be required reading at school to stop people beeing conned by homeopaths. But there is also a lot of joy taken in bringing people down.

The Gillian McKieth chapter is a good example. He is correct in identifying her as somebody who takes some basic facts (ie the diet of a bunch of uneducated 22 stone tubbers might be wrong) and combines them with some nasty emotional exploitation of her clients and a healthy dressing of mystical pseudoscience. She also gets them to eat some totally unessesary shite. But they so seem to get thinner and have their life expectancy increased under her tutelage. While it is fair to say that she has expolited her clients stupidity to get rich and that she is a horrible little woman with about the same appeal as a vat of diahorea mixed with septic penile discharge her methods (which basically amount to getting really stupid people to stop eating 20,000 calories of sugar and fat a day and ocasiocally walk somewhere) work. Her lie is dressing them up as some sort of nutritional sciene when frankly her clients are so fat and have such revolting diets that making the healtheir would simply require moving their eating habits broadly in line with "normal". A regression to the mean I guess.

So Goldacre views her as a nasty immoral conwoman taking advantage of her victims. I view her clients as dumb tubbers who need to believe the mystic shite she pedals to get of their fat arses and eat normally. The reality is that only she really knows. It strikes me as unlikely that somebody who has managed as much sucess as McKeith does not know her shtick is utter mystical shite. But also as possible that she knows that dumb people work better if they believe in something, so she gives them something to believe in.

If the end result is thinner healthier stupid people and a richer Gillian McKeith then I can't see that much of a problem with it. It's a diet, not a cancer treatment. Anybody with an education and a reasonable amount of skepticisim should know she is talking as much shite as she looks at.

That said homeopathy is genuinely dangerous, especially when alternative health specialists and people with serious conditions are allowed in the same room. And guess what, the government funds it.....