Another fun site!

I just came across this quack-medicine busting site. Ah yes, my kind of thing.

I like to think I'm a broad-minded person. I'm certainly willing to admit that there are realities out there that science hasn't uncovered yet; that there are things we're wrong about, or very ignorant about; and that non-western cultures can contribute to Ye Aulde Knowledge Base.

But there is a side of me that will always be a skeptic. I have a *fear* of being accused of being Culturally Biased in my love of "Western science" (crunchy granolan peer pressure)... but the love, I do have nonetheless. I don't want to believe a certain kind of medicine or medical treatment works, just because I'm trying to be culturally sensitive.

I love the double-blind test. It's so simple, so elegant. If some people get the real pill, and some get a fake pill, that should tell us the pill's effect non? Not everything can be tested this way, but some things, like a lot of psychic phenom, can. Even some of our common ideas: Can people tell when they're being stared at? Can people tell when others are lying? (No, and no... except, in the latter case, for a small percentage of spies.)

That's why I'm less interested in the "it's been used for 100s of years!" argument. Just because people believe something works, for hundreds of years, doesn't mean it does. Let's test it!

And that's basically what Quackwatch is all about. This is the first well-rounded information I've found, for example, on acupuncture (which Dr Oz was touting on Oprah lately.) I don't want to over-state this page, because I think it's a bit too extremist and this probably makes them err in some other ways. I prefer the CSPI for food information. But for medicine, I think Quackwatch raises some good points...

* 25 Ways to Spot Quacks and Vitamin Pushers
23. They Claim They Are Being Persecuted by Orthodox Medicine and That Their Work Is Being Suppressed Because It's Controversial."

*More Ploys That May Fool You
"We have no money for research." Proponents of so-called "natural" products (dietary supplements and herbs) often complain that funding is difficult or impossible to obtain because the products can't be patented and therefore drug companies have little incentive to study them. That may be true for some products, but it is certainly not true for all. Think, for a moment, about plain, ordinary aspirin. Although not patentable, it has been subjected to thousands of published studies." [As someone at university, studying something as useless as a social science, I happen to know that there is money available for aaaaany number of crazy studies!]

"They persecuted Galileo!" The history of science is laced with instances where great pioneers and their discoveries were met with resistance. William Harvey (nature of blood circulation), Joseph Lister (antiseptic technique) and Louis Pasteur (germ theory) are notable examples. Today's quacks boldly claim that they, too, are scientists ahead of their time. Close examination, however, will show how unlikely this is. The ideas of Galileo, Harvey, Lister, and Pasteur's overcame their opposition because they were demonstrated to be sound.

*Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries: There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth. Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.