On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 at 03:23, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote:
Things like vaccination are tricky because they are not strictly science. > Science is repeatable, and things that don't work on everyone the same > don't strictly deserve the label of science. What? That's not right. It's perfectly legitimate to use statistics and measures of uncertainty in science. > That doesn't mean they should > never be made mandatory, there merely has to be a very very high bar before > that is done, The bar is actually pretty clear - the benefits have to outweigh the costs. We can have a discussion about how to measure the benefits (reduced mortality is a simple one. Vaccines kill far fewer people than the diseases they prevent.) On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 at 05:09, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote: > It is what keeps for example homeopathy in business so .. > > It is the favorite whipping boy of pseudo science for the moment. > Actually I thought "flat earthers" were the favorite whipping boy of pseudoscience at the moment. You used them yourself. Homeopathy has been out of fashion as a whipping boy for quite some time. Actually "anti-vaxxers" and "climate change denialists" are the pseudoscience flavor du jour. > Which reminds me of the water memory experiments done by another Nobel > Laureate, Luc Montagnier. I don't think the science is quite settled > there. > You seem to be attracted to "famous names in science" as if that alone conferred some kind of scientific authority. That's not how science works. Those famous names are only as good as their experimental results. Montagnier's results have not been replicated by anyone. The publication of the results was in a non-peer reviewed journal of which Montagnier is the chairman of the editorial review board. Montagnier himself has said the results do not support homeopathy. Homeopathy's lack of scientific basis is as settled as anything in science. -- Charles
