On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Charles Hope <[email protected]> wrote: > > Are there any examples of pathological science persisting 20 years without >> being properly debunked? > > > Not to my knowledge. Unless you count things like water memory, which may > be real after all > You'd better hope it's not, says the water in my toilet, the water in the sewers, the water exposed to toxic metals in mines, and the water used to clean slaughter houses, after accidents, in mortuaries and infectious disease labs... do I really need to continue? > and acupuncture > Acupuncture is a real intervention in which needles are stuck into people. I'd expect it to have some effect yet after millenia of use, nobody is sure what it does much less why. And all the classical stuff about Yin and Yang and meridians which antedates modern medicine is nothing but nonsense. Some people may get mild pain relief from it. It's claims to provide surgical anesthesia are probably based on bad experiments or fraud. > and chiropractic, which seem to work. > Chiropractic manipulation done very cautiously and gently may make people feel a bit better from minor muscle spams, aches and pains. The theory of chiropractic, namely that disease is caused by misalignment of the spine, is absurd. Nor can manipulation change the alignment of the spine which is held in place by steel-strong ligaments. Experiments in cadavers verify that manipulation would have to tear off your head to reach the strength required to do what chiropractors claim.
