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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles

Arnica root

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when i was preparing for med school a couple years back i traveled to china and thailand to study eastern medicine and a lot of the treatments make sense. india is one of the countries that has a nice blend of eastern and western medicine that i hope the rest of the world will quickly adopt. people do get carried away with the natural remedies and that is mostly due to ignorance. but, i think that it makes more sense to take an herb that will cure you for minor ailments than popping a pill to cover up the symptoms. great video above, does anyone watch peep show...fucking love that show

i've just watched the BBC's documentary on this. they say the effect has no scientific explanation and they've ruled out placebo as the cause of the curing effect. yet, they themselves said that it "apparently worked for people". so simply being tightass skeptic isn't helping here... lack of plausible scientific explanation does not cancel any effect homeopathy ultimately has on a patient, right? or am i getting this wrong

i guess the thing to distinguish is that the main idea behind homeopathy is treating the illness as a symptom of the whole body being out of whack. and when dealing with the root cause of most illnesses this approach does make a lot of sense. the way in which people try to re-balance the body is where you get into a lot of the weird cures such as crystals or extracts diluted to the point that they are essentially placebos. these are bogus, but if they work as placebos for people let them do it. there are actual chemical properties of herbs which act as medicine, actually it is medicine some pills are just synthetic versions of chemicals naturally found around the world. and these herbs taken in conjuncture with a specific diet and physical regimen designed to realign the body has had a lot of benefits. we are sort of slowly shifting towards this mindset in the west, there is a place where you can send your blood and have it analyzed and the doctor will give you a specific workout routine and dietary plan to lose weight. the science is slowly merging with the more natural as we advance, and that's great because it's pretty obvious that neither by themselves is enough.

There are of course a variety of actual, psychological effects at play whenever any sort of medical treatment is undergone. Whether it has been proven to "work" or not, false positive results are probably the most likely culprit when it comes to most alternative medicine - people would have been alleviated with time anyway, their confirmation bias contributing to the "proof" that this-and-that really works. Of course those are the ones you're going to hear about the most, too - most systems of magical healing and whatnot only want you to hear about the people who got better, not about the ones who lost their money on useless shit.

But then there are notable exceptions where that slippery placebo effect was at play, and there's really no reason to discount it outright; The integrity of the mind is not to be underestimated, and when somebody really believes something can work for them, and that they are in control, yet-unknown factors can contribute to their wellness in miraculous ways. Crystals and chakras and meditation just don't stand up to the same standards that vaccines, surgery, and traditional preventative measures do. They are generally poor potions, in comparison.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

$1 million homeopathy challenge - http://www.randi.org/site/index.php...-feb5video.html

people like Randi, who make their living by putting on shows and making fun of everything, even when rationale seems to back them up, are out of my interest. sure, Randi is amusing to listen to and his debunking of the bending spoon and moving objects with physic force myths have to be given credit, but he's not a professional scientist and there must be a reason for that. thus, his target audience is just as well common with science as the audience of an occasional magician or healer (i.e. is as easy to convince).

i think humanity has seen moments where things considered impossible were discovered, invented or proven. there was always a major scientific society, like the royal society in UK, which declared itself of the "conventional sciences", and was always ready to stomp new ideas in their birth. yet, times have changed and we now consider these scientists apparently wrong in their ideas and views on what is possible and what is not. magicians, horoscopes and even homeopathy may be the opposite extreme, building on faith and emotions rather than knowledge and logic. but it seems to me that both extremes should be avoided.

imho notions like "i don't see it so it doesn't exist" and "i know it exists but i can't prove it" are of equal scientific value

Last edited by boris_the_bear on Feb-05-2011 at 18:55

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