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Skepticism and alternative medicine
Dalboz
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
The vaccination/autism thread got me thinking about this. Without the search function, I don't know if there was a thread like this already, but if there was it was probably old enough that it would have been a thread necro.
I consider myself to be a skeptic, but at the same time an open-minded skeptic, wherein I believe that we don't know everything about everything, and there could be some mechanism through alternative approach that have some validity. Take herbal "medicine" for example. There is obviously some mechanism that makes them works the way they do, although it is obviously chemical they really are drugs, and quite frankly should be regulated as such.
I was in a car accident recently and hurt my back pretty badly. While physical therapy, rest, and anti-inflammatory medication helped to a point, there was a point on my back that has not been getting better. The pain management doctor wrote me a prescription for acupuncture, which I thought was odd and very unexpected. At the same time, it seemed to work, and within two appointments, the swelling in my back that had been there for over two months and gone significantly down. Of course, this is correlation and not causality, but I wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. At the same time, the physical therapist, two doctors, and the acupuncturist all said that I need a chiropractor. I found this very odd, as I was under the impression that the medical community still frowned on chiropractors, and I've read and heard enough to be skeptical of it. Hell, a chiropractor ruptured a disc in my aunt's back once. But with a medical recommendation, I've been seeing a chiropractor for a couple of weeks now. I'm only supposed to see him for a few weeks to actually adjust the part of my back that's bothering me (supposedly, one the vertebrae is slightly turned and is jabbing the muscle covering it, which is what's causing the pain) and the doctors, nor the chiropractor have recommended ongoing treatment beyond getting this fixed. In light of these experiences so far, my skepticism has waned a little bit.
This thread is to discuss the truth and falsities of alternative medicine and treatments, based on research and on personal experience.
I consider myself to be a skeptic, but at the same time an open-minded skeptic, wherein I believe that we don't know everything about everything, and there could be some mechanism through alternative approach that have some validity. Take herbal "medicine" for example. There is obviously some mechanism that makes them works the way they do, although it is obviously chemical they really are drugs, and quite frankly should be regulated as such.
I was in a car accident recently and hurt my back pretty badly. While physical therapy, rest, and anti-inflammatory medication helped to a point, there was a point on my back that has not been getting better. The pain management doctor wrote me a prescription for acupuncture, which I thought was odd and very unexpected. At the same time, it seemed to work, and within two appointments, the swelling in my back that had been there for over two months and gone significantly down. Of course, this is correlation and not causality, but I wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. At the same time, the physical therapist, two doctors, and the acupuncturist all said that I need a chiropractor. I found this very odd, as I was under the impression that the medical community still frowned on chiropractors, and I've read and heard enough to be skeptical of it. Hell, a chiropractor ruptured a disc in my aunt's back once. But with a medical recommendation, I've been seeing a chiropractor for a couple of weeks now. I'm only supposed to see him for a few weeks to actually adjust the part of my back that's bothering me (supposedly, one the vertebrae is slightly turned and is jabbing the muscle covering it, which is what's causing the pain) and the doctors, nor the chiropractor have recommended ongoing treatment beyond getting this fixed. In light of these experiences so far, my skepticism has waned a little bit.
This thread is to discuss the truth and falsities of alternative medicine and treatments, based on research and on personal experience.
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However, things like "homeopathy" and "healing touch" are in line with the placebo effect in proper studies. There is no reason to believe they are anything but. Still, if a placebo works, then it does give it some credit. Not sure I am pleased with the amount of support these things get though.
I don't know much about acupuncture.
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I would probably avoid any chiropractor that wasn't recommended to me by a medical professional.
The chiropractor I'm seeing said that acupuncture actually has a medical effect aside from the belief that it is aligning your chi. Supposedly, the little pin pricks cause just enough pain and damage (nothing serious) to release endorphins, which numb the area. It would explain why I feel them put the needles in, but when he goes to take them out, the area actually does feel numb.
At least, that's how it was explained to me.
There are therapies that have been shown to work, therapies that have not yet been shown to work, and therapies that are too stupid to work.
Some "alternative" therapies have been shown to work. Arnica, for instance, is an herbal remedy commonly associated with homeopathic medicine. Homeopathic medicine itself - the notion that you can dilute an herbal tincture with so much water that there is less than a 50% chance that the patient has consumed a single molecule of the active ingredient and yet still be cured - definitely falls in the "stupid" category. But arnica, at not-stupid dosages, has been shown to be a relatively effective topical anti-inflammatory.
There's nothing in medicine that opposes herbs or plants as therapy. There's nothing that opposes manual manipulation a'la chiropracty. But mainstream medicine demands that you show substantial evidence that your therapy works before you start making claims. Typically that means controlled studies, but it also might mean a convincing argument based on the current understanding of the human body. So few alternative practitioners are willing to engage in even the most basic intellectual discipline. They'd rather rant about some conspiracy of doctors keeping the truth from uneducated laypeople, meanwhile they make an easy buck on whatever ineffective snake oil they're selling.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If we're going to lie to people to make them better we should avoid giving them random chemicals, sticking shivs in them and possibly breaking their bones.
Being aware of what is merely placebo is valuable in assessing treatments with regards to risk and reward ratios.
Why is this scientifically unsatisfactory?
I was thinking of a generic test-and-control, it completely slipped my mind your control needs to double as a placebo group in this situation. Carry on! <.<
I'd be willing to accept that acupuncture might work for some conditions. Stimulation of nerve clusters around areas affected by muscle pain? Sure, that doesn't sound too crazy.
That's part of the problem when talking about "alternative" medicine. It's not really useful to talk about alternative medicine as a whole, because the label "alternative" runs the gamut from therapies which are viable-but-unproven to smoking-some-goddamn-crack. Unless we're talking about specific therapies, we're making generalizations.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
First off, the statement that "what we used to think just occured in the brain actually is located within the body" is rather simplistic. Organic conditions can cause personality changes... I know that my personality changes when my blood sugar is slow; if I were to develop diabetes, my personality would probably change. Does that mean personality is located in the pancreas?
Outside of that, though, smells like bullshit. Especially the bit about memories. I'd need to see the specific cases, but it would take a lot of convincing for me. Like, up there with astrology and tea-leaf-reading.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That sounds like just a bunch of anecdotal evidence that borders on urban legends. I can't say for sure but I would be willing to bet that if these stories were investigated that not only would a more plausible answer be found, but the stories would be found to be greatly exaggerated.
There was this one about a guy who got a hair transplant from a criminal, and he ended up trying to murder his family!
Oh wait, that was a Simpsons episode.
Evidently he read a book with these stories in it or something. I mean, yeah, I basically had the same reaction you guys did.
Saying "well I read this book once" is basically the same as saying "I heard this from this guy one time" except that you had to pay him $15 to hear the story.
Yes, I figured it was full of shit. I was asking if anyone had any specific knowledge of these kinds of cases so that I could learn about the specific reasons for it being full of shit.
There's also the fact that a stressful situation, say: everything leading up to, during, and after organ transplant, can cause a shift in personality.
Edit: Honestly, the specific reason is basically everything we've learned so far about memory. It's complex, it's got a lot of unknowns, but it's probably your hippocampus and not your hand that stores them. There are brain tissues that seem specialized to perform tasks that could related to memory. Long-term potentiation, for instance, when two neurons fire at the same time and over time a connection is formed where when one neuron goes off so does the other.
Your fingers, however, have nerves that are pretty specifically dedicated to receiving a stimulus, then transmitting it. Also nerves that control muscles, etc. The odds that you'd store any sort of personality traits there are pretty low.
Now, that isn't to say your body doesn't affect your personality. Of course it does, like Feral said blood sugar etc. But grafting my legs to your body won't grant you my taste in car.
Hell, grafting bits of my brain into you probably wouldn't do that either, actually.
there's a lot of stupid being peddled as medicine. Homeopathy in particular. But both my flatmates are natural therapies students. One does acupuncture, which works like wow (I know because he practices on me :P ). The other does a broader naturopathy thing, which is full of interesting stuff. Iridology in particular shows massive potential as a diagnostic tool. Its just a matter of looking at the observational evidence and the increasingly common clinical trials.
"The first thing I ask my patients to do in order to begin considering the presence and impact of the heart's info-energy"
This is all I needed to read of that book to be convinced that it's a bunch of bull.
but they're listening to every word I say
I guess his anger issues afterwards were just the p;late's personality shining through?
Anything traumatic enough to require an organ transplant is probably traumatic enough to cause a personality shift.
not to mention in a case like that the brain has a defense mechanism of rewiring itself to recover from trauma
I wonder how large the test groups were and what part of the brains lit up. If it showed brain activity around pain centers then "dur".
but they're listening to every word I say
Yeah, I'd venture a guess that what you see after an organ transplant falls into two broad categories:
Negative: Organ transplant, gotta suck large, understandably upsetting. That causes a person to react negatively. Probably happens more often with things like war injuries or something.
Positive: Hey, you're saved! Yay for modern medicine. You went under, you woke up with a scar, and suddenly you don't get shooting pains in your chest from walking. That's probably going to make you a bit happier as a person. Maybe make you re-evaluate life and such.
What I'm going to guess is far, far less often seen is a sudden, demonstrable shift in activity or a facet of personality with no real mood alteration. Such as "I just had to pick up gardening after I got the liver transplant. It felt right." or "I had to quit smoking! I don't know why, but I just couldn't stand it anymore."
You might say "I picked up gardening to deal with anger by killing weeds" or "because I wanted to do something with my new lease on life", but it's not going to be "well I felt like there was something that compelled me."
And I mean, even if you did see that often, you'd have to rule out a reaction to the surgery anyways, which doesn't seem to have been done, or even possible. I mean for the control you'd need to cut people open, then take out their heart, then not switch it and put it back in. I mean, that's just not going to pass ethics committees.
Organ transplant recovery isn't painless. Just because your life has been saved doesn't mean that you aren't being put through a lot pre and post surgery.
That's true, but I'm just covering that you could conceivably have a positive affect change.
I can't imagine every personality change after surgery is negative, but then I'm not at all well-read or well-anecdoted about surgical recovery.
As when it comes to homeopathy, Amazing Randi has a kick ass video on youtube explaining the whole thing. I highly recommend it (I am at work so I cant link to it).
That does not sound right. If I stick a needle in your arm and then stab you with a knife in your arm you wont just feel the needle pain.
As for homeopathy, I remember hearing somthing about it on the radio. They were saying that you had to add kinetic energy to the herbs for them to work. So you put them in a bag and WHAM, WHAM, whack it against the table. The crazy thing is it made a perverse kind of sense. It had jack to do with kinetic energy, but in some herbs the breakdown of celular walls would be vital to the effectiveness of whatever is in it.
But it is bull. Superstition and made up mechanisms for how things work.
but they're listening to every word I say
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bg1mSo7JQM