On 11-12-15 08:33 PM, Mary Yugo wrote:
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Charles Hope <[email protected]
<mailto:[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.
Probably because the endorphin system was unknown until relatively
recently, and traditional practitioners of Chinese medicine are still
largely ignorant of the theory which would let them understand what they
do. (I mean, they use acupuncture, which pretty clearly works for at
least some stuff, and at the same time they prescribe reindeer antlers
for fertility problems, 'cause they're long and pointy ... mixing
plausible folk medicine with sympathetic magic, the ones I've
encountered are not strong on theory.)
The meridian nonsense is no doubt just that, but for inflammation relief
there appears to be little question that acupuncture does something
quite useful -- just as onions and garlic on a sore back may relieve the
ache. It's not magic, it's just NSAIDs that don't happen to come from a
drug company.
And all the classical stuff about Yin and Yang and meridians which
antedates modern medicine is nothing but nonsense.
Yeah. For sure.
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.
My understanding is that it's been approved in the U.S. in large part
because it works better than allopathic medicine when treating muscle
and joint injuries.
(Of course, given what most conventional doctors know about treating
muscle and joint injuries, it's quite possible that doing nothing at all
would typically work better.)
The theory of chiropractic, namely that disease is caused by
misalignment of the spine, is absurd.
No argument there.
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.
Were those experiments done *before* or *after* onset of rigor mortis?
Just wondering...
