Article 8726 of misc.health.alternative:
From: t…@sw.stratus.com (Tarl Neustaedter)
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>[Massive cross-posting modified to follow into one group]
>In article <CBs2y6….@newsflash.concordia.ca>, grog…@cs.concordia.ca (Peter Grogono) writes:
>>> [scientific medicine vs alternative, astronomy replacing astrology]
>> There are several rather doubtful arguments here. Has astronomy "well and truly
>> replaced astrology"? There are more astrologers than astronomers; the best
>As an amateur astronomer, the concept of astrology competing with astronomy
>in today’s world rather takes my breath away.
>But the more I think about it, the analogy with alternative medicine is
>exact, and I thank you for pointing it out to me. It is an analogy I will
>>keep in mind for future discussions on alternative medicine. Both astrology
>and alternative medicines are systems of belief which rely on tradition
>rather than investigation, and are unfriendly to objective analysis.
>Astronomy and Medicine have historical roots in the older "disciplines",
>but have diffentiated themselves by attempting to measure, quantify, explain
>and predict behaviour in their fields of study. This has led them in far
>different directions than they started out from. In both fields (like all
>science), the sole standard of validity is how reliable and accurate the
>predictions are. In the predecessor fields, different standards apply, and
>thus don’t qualify as science.
There have been many studies performed by the medical community on
different aspects of alternative medicine. Fortunately, there are
many open-minded people in the medical community who are performing
experiments on remidies that have been around for thousands of years
rather than simply lumping it all together as quackery. It seems
fairly unscientific to jump to such conclusions.
I take solice in the fact that more and more hospitals are opening up
wellness clinics and giving classes in natural foods, meditation, yoga,
breathing techniques. As has already been mentioned several large
pharmaceutical firms are already spending big bucks investigating how
and why certain herbs work. Accupuncture and biofeedback has been
used in the U.S. medical community. Over the last 15 years, I have
literally met thousands of people who have been helped tremendously
by alternative medicine. (Of course, you might say "duped".) More
and more people are giving up on symptom-relieving drugs produced by
drug companies and finding success with alternative medicine. Just today,
there was a five-hour, five-part TV series on alternative medicine
hosted by Bill Moyers. Many of the people involved are well-known
scientists in the modern medical community. I heard today that
Dean Ornish’s alternative medicine program to reverse heart disease
was recently accepted by a major insurance carrier as a legitamite
treatment.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t plan to wait for
alternative remedies to be proven by the medical community to be
helpful and safe before I use or recommend such remedies.
Attempting to debunk alternative medicine by linking it to astrology
(which many scientists consider laugable at best) may be considered
by many people an insult to their intelligence. Linking alternative
medicine to a field that many people don’t believe in doesn’t prove anything
except that the person doing the linking hasn’t (or can’t) given any
legitamite arguments against studying the viability of alternative
medicine.
>If we get a sci.med.alternative, I’ll feel compelled to propose
>sci.astro.astrology and sci.physics.flat-earth.
How about:
sci.med.close-minded
or
sci.med.if_the_doctor_doesn’t_know_nobody_else_could_possibly_know_either
– Mark
Tarl Neustaedter writes:
>[Massive cross-posting modified to follow into one group]
Thanks Tarl for modifying what was indeed an excessive and
maybe immodest cross-posting. Still, I fail to see why
even this reply was posted to rec.food.veg.
Really, alternative medicine and astrology are not
coextensive nor is the former subsumptive of the
latter. I’ve worked as a clinical psychologist using
relaxation therapy and biofeedback as an "alternative" to
valium. Would you call this "alternative medicine"? If so,
then to equate the extensive body of respectable scientific
justification and proven efficacy for such techniques with
that of astrology is glib, if not simply insulting.
Indeed, it is even somewhat misleading to equate vegetarianism
as an "alternative medicine" and it is also disparaging
to so categorized such a diverse group of people. The
motivations for vegetarianism are varied and are not all
contained only by a concern for better health nor are the high
standards of scientific evidence supporting the merits and
advantages of vegetarianism to be equated with the somewhat
more languid standards of, say, herbal medicine.
In point of fact, there are so many diverse practices and
theories INFORMALLY and inconsistently lumped under the
omnibus rubric of "alternative medicine", that it makes little
sense to proffer any generalizations about them. Better to
talk specifics and thereby avoid lapsing into what in the end
may only turn out to be a political/personal shibboleth and
uninformative generality. Hey, this last statement may even
be one of them ;-).
…
>Both astrology
>and alternative medicines are systems of belief which rely on tradition
>rather than investigation, and are unfriendly to objective analysis.
As with all analogies your comparison is imperfect,
but fatally so. I certainly don’t defend astrology in the
least, but like it or not some respectable and hard nosed
empirical researchers like Michel & Francoise Gauqelin,
Geoffrey Dean, and H.J. Esysenck have found some significant
correlations of personality with certain astrological signs
(e.g., sun signs and extroversion and the so-called Mars
effect predicting outstanding athletes).
Of course, the effect size of these relationships is very
small indeed and consequently huge sample sizes are needed to
reach statistical significance. Even small effects, however,
are not to be dismissed, especially when they might point to
some novel or interesting theoretical implications. Of
course, more plausible explanations do exist to also account
for the data. One need not automatically infer the existence
of some mysterious planetary influence (one that contradicts
our existing knowledge of physics and psychology, and even the
simple inverse square law!). For instance, the effects are
more likely, in my opinion, to be due to both personal and long-
standing cultural expectations associating astrological signs
with certain personality traits.
If you are proclaiming objectivity on your part towards this
issue, than at the very least you should be aware of Esyenck &
Nais’s book, ASTROLOGY: SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION, 1982. If you
are looking for an easy certainty from this book, you won’t
find it, much to the credit of the authors.
The point to not lose sight of here is that it is simply incorrect
to proclaim that "both astrology and alternative medicines are
… unfriendly to objective analysis". Maybe many of the believers
are but that is a different issue and one that is NOT confined
to only alternative medicine or astrology. The fact remains,
however, that the theories and hypotheses, unpalatable as they
may be, themselves can be investigated.
It is also incorrect to bluntly demarcate science from non-
science by some chaste criterion like that of non-science
evincing a characteristic reliance on "tradition". Science
also relies on a long-standing tradition of past results
in order to evaluate new findings. Of course, no past finding
is sacrosanct but there are certain taken for granted
metaphysical assumptions that are more or less fixed and are
of the status of inviolate "tradition" rather than investigation
(see E.A. Burtt’s classic, "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Science", 1924). Even Popper’s prestigious FALSIFIABILITY
criterion incurs some logical and theoretical problems
as that of, say, the "tacking problem", conflict with Duhem’s
Thesis, asymmetry of a falsifiable proposition with its
negation, etc.
Life, as well as science, is complex and there is no simple
rule to mechanically determine which is to count as "science"
and which is to be `a priori’ relegated to the scrap heap of
"pseudo-science". Don’t take my word for it (and you
shouldn’t), but do read some philosophy of science by, say
Feyerabend ("Realsim, Rationalism & Scientific Method"),
Stephen Toulman ("Human Understanding"), or even the later
writings of Sir Karl Popper himself where he more or less
adopts the LIKELIHOOD PRINCIPLE over that of simple
falsifiability. The *likelihood principle* (see A. Edwards,
"Likelihood", 1972, Cambridge U. Press), to put it simply,
goes as follows:
Observational statement O favours hypothesis 1 (H1) over
hypothesis 2 (H2), if and only if H1 assigns to O a
probability that is greater than the probability that H2
assigns to O.
Like it or not, even astrology can be considered an eligible
candidate for rational consideration by way of the above
principle which modestly guides our interpretation of any
single observation in hand. I think it fails by this criterion,
but this must be carefully argued by rigorous enquiry rather than
`a priori’ dismissal.
Do note that the above likelihood principle does NOT
presume to tell us what to believe, NOR, even tell us how we are
to ultimately decide among competing hypotheses which overall is
more plausible. A lot more goes into these latter decisions
and informed judgements than any single or even small set of
principles can ever contain and conveniently decree. As
Neitzsche wisely observed:
"If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure,
then believe, if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then
enquire"
So, please, do engage in the hard work of open-minded enquiry
rather than take refuge into some self-comforting phantasm
that vegetarianism in particular, or all alternative medicine
in general, is mere fiddlesticks. Do avoid the implication
that vegetarians, say, are irrational or non-scientific.
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.
While maybe this latter claim has not been explicitly made,
the implication is there when vegetarianism is conflated with all
of alternative medicine and the latter with astrology.
No doubt, some (maybe most, depending on what is here being
included) of the theories and advice that one might group
under the informal rubric of alternative medicine is mere moonshine,
but to equate all that goes under that name with astrology and
in turn to imply that the same applies to vegetarianism,
ends up being contemptuous of people’s greater intelligence.
Regards,
ted, PhD