Hard News: Miracles just rate better, okay?
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And meanwhile, back OT -- here's the thing about the news media selling Mexican stem-cell snake oil from last night's Media7:
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how should I interpret this
Well, I interpret it as fucking gross. That 'psychic' person is exploiting that poor family for her own benefit, and the relevant TVNZ employees are either stupid or assholes. Or both.
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I interpret it as fucking gross
I trust that's reliably replicable grossness determined by a large scale lab study. :)
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You'd have to wonder about TVNZ's decision-making there. How does that ever look good for them? If the family want to try a psychic, they're not hard to find the contact details for.
(You'd think that one would turn up on the doorstep as soon as you decided you wanted one really).
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@81st Those TVNZ staffers are psychic doncha know... maybe one of the stars from Praise Be could offer guidance as well (sarcasm). It would be a lot nicer if in 6 months time they could have Jim Mora pop around with a new garden for Aisling's parents though...
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I've seen some of Breakfast this week and tuned in on Wednesday (?) to hear Paul Henry going on about Justice Potter. Very rudely. He then interviewed Deb Webber, asked her no awkward questions and treated her with respect. What??? One woman makes her decisions based on evidence and the other on the opposite.
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I am not wanting to offer advice, but have you tried hypnotherapy
Only self-hypnosis, which I have tried a hell of a lot of, ever since I was a teenager. It works, to a limited degree. Some have argued that hypnosis IS the placebo effect, that's exactly what a placebo does, makes a suggestion. My experience was that it worked but it didn't last - you had to keep doing it and doing it, and that is actually time consuming and mentally exhausting. To some degree it was actually depressing, and led to problems - telling myself something over and over and over led to 'self-distrust', when what you are telling yourself fails to eventuate. Eventually I think my ability to autosuggest diminished.
I'm not sure if listening to hypnosis tapes is technically self-hypnosis. Certainly they have had persistent good effects, not for what they purported to be about, changing habits etc, but actually as a form of pre-sleep meditation (eczema causes shocking insomnia sometimes). I typically found that the only valuable part was the 'induction' into a trance, after which I would lapse into excellent sleep. The bit where they try to place suggestions led to 'tape-distrust', again because the things they said failed to materialize.
I made some of my own recordings, and found that I have a fantastically hypnotic voice (some might say boring), and these are my most favourite recordings of all (who hasn't noticed that I love the sound of my own voice?), since I can tailor them to my own favourite mental imagery - I couldn't find any that used the idea of sinking down into water for induction, for instance, on account of the fact that so many people fear drowning. But I still only use them to get to sleep - I don't want to learn to distrust my own voice coming out of an mp3 player.
I've been extremely wary of letting any kind of therapist do it for me. Perhaps the time is nigh? I don't think I know anyone I trust enough to let them hypnotize me. I'm well aware that this is probably an irrational fear, that they can't easily make you do anything you don't want to do already, but still, its a fear all the same, and that is likely to make the experience expensive and worthless. But then again, it might not.
Anyone know a good hypnotist in Auckland?
there is nothing intrinsically woo-woo about it
I wouldn't care if there was. I leave the antiwoowooism to Peter Ashby and any others who have a taste for irrational hyperrationality. If woowoo helps then woowoo is good, that is my stance.
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Well, I interpret it as fucking gross. That 'psychic' person is exploiting that poor family for her own benefit, and the relevant TVNZ employees are either stupid or assholes. Or both.
There have been cases where psychics have described where the missing child's body is hidden, only for the kid to turn up alive. And vice versa. It's the last thing mentally stressed people need.
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Ben,
As it happens my Dad (a retired GP) does medical hypnosis :-) He lives in Hamilton, and sees a handful of people each week, mainly for smoking. If you want to get in touch with him, ask Russell for my email address (or just my last name, which is unusual enough that it would quickly lead to contact details for both me and my father :-)
Dad has little tolerance for woo-woo, and is very straightforward about the process.
Richard
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@ george
Bumblebees cannot fly—or so physical models are said to have shown. That the insects routinely become airborne demonstrates the shortcomings of some theoretical accounts of the world.But one of the strengths of the scientific method is that, when presented with evidence that discredits their theories, scientists are forced to concede that their models are wrong and endeavour to learn from the failure. In science, observation always trumps theory, no matter how elegant the theory might be.
I have always found that "bumblebee cannot fly" cliche a trifle lame (and certainly not worthy of the Economist), but your post prompted me to dig up the origin of the story:
http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~ben/zetie1.htm
However, I think your anecdote actually proves the opposite point from the one your were trying to make, namely:
I'm not inclined to get into an argument with Peter Ashby, but I find it immensely frustrating when people argue that theory trumps observation, or that scientific theories invalidate what has been observed.
The issue here is that when naturopaths, chiropractors and the rest of them are actually observed systematically, they cannot (with a few trivial exceptions, relative to the strength of the claims the practitioners of these disciplines make) be shown to have any value beyond that of a placebo.
Consequently, the people to whom this applies would seem to be advocates of "alternative" medicine rather than its mainstream practitioners.
More generally, I think that one of the huge and almost entirely unsung successes of science (compared to, say, putting people on the moon or inventing the internet, not to mention curing smallpox) is the development of organized statistical methods and experimental protocols that allow us to sift data for causative relationships in an organized fashion. This is an incredibly powerful tool and it should stand as one of the towering achievements of our civilization, but it gets precious little attention, or respect.
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You do know the origins of 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' (TCM) don't you? It did not exist prior to Chairman Mao except as a random bunch of local witch doctory.
That's wildly inaccurate Peter. The oldest medical textbook in the world (detailing physiology, pathology, prevention, diagnosis, treatment) was written 800 BCE in China, as was a later, more detailed text "The General Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Disease" (581-618 CE) which consists of 50 volumes, divided into 67 categories, and lists 1,700 diseases and syndromes. Most of China may have been very poor before Mao, but there were some educated people. My cousin's family were highly educated (and obscenely wealthy) Mandarins, and her Gran fled China (penniless and in a hurry, during the Boxer Rebellion) while Mao as still a schoolboy. The Chinese weren't all hicks and bumpkins before the Great Leap Forward.
The arrival of Western Medicine in China is largely due to the efforts of Canadian physician Norman Bethune who "In 1938 Bethune travelled to Yan'an in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China. There he joined the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong in their struggle against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War."
Peter, Lucy you are both insisting that acupuncture is bogus but have you searched Med Line or Pub Med for studies? Peter, you said that the NIH had spent an enormous sum of money investigating alternative therapies and had not turned up nothing useful, but this is also incorrect.
The studies being done on the Tibetan Materia Medica are particularly interesting to me as I wrote a piece for New Zealand Doctor about Tibetan medicine many years ago. (And one for Russell's Planet Magazine come to think of it). I was, like Peter and Lucy, expecting Tibetan medicine to be largely shamanism but was surprised to find quite the opposite, and that their medical training takes 7 years - including many written exams, 2 years of supervised internship and (this would be useful in the west) rigorous screening of medical students for their motives for wishing to become doctors. Those who are motivated by a wish to achieve social status are denied entry into medical school.
Lucy, you say no alternative medicine has ever modified their methods, but what do you consider "alternative"? Chinese, Tibetan, Canadian, French, German? Are these alternative? French and German and Canadian medicine all employ methods that would be considered "alternative" in England or NZ.
Effects of electro-acupuncture on anovulation in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.
Changes in cognition induced by social isolation in the mouse are restored by electro-acupuncture.
Acupuncture relieves pelvic and low-back pain in late pregnancy.
The effect of Padma-28, a traditional Tibetan herbal preparation, on human neutrophil function.
Tibetan medical interpretation of myelin lipids and multiple sclerosis.
Medicinal plants used by Tibetans in Shangri-la, Yunnan, China.
Effect of hepatophyt on the choleretic function of the liver damaged by tetracycline -
ask Russell for my email address
Thanks
More generally, I think that one of the huge and almost entirely unsung successes of science (compared to, say, putting people on the moon or inventing the internet, not to mention curing smallpox) is the development of organized statistical methods and experimental protocols that allow us to sift data for causative relationships in an organized fashion. This is an incredibly powerful tool and it should stand as one of the towering achievements of our civilization, but it gets precious little attention, or respect.
To be honest, I don't think it's all that. I think the way in which scientific discoveries are made is incredibly mysterious, rather than organized and scientific. What scientific methodology provides is a way in which to verify these discoveries. This makes the outcomes of the discovery process public. The secrets of the discovery process itself is probably the most woowoo of all arts - deeply creative and intuitive. They're also highly secretive and jealously guarded, at times.
I'm also not sure that the scientific method itself is a particularly scientific thing. That would be circular, as Hume realized long ago. The reasoning must come from outside of the methodology, and it is a far more controversial subject than scientists appear to let on. To that end the calling of one set of theories scientific and others non is nowhere near so straightforward as it might seem. There are certainly some examples that fall into the easily categorized mumbo jumbo boxes, but there's an awful lot that fall in grey areas too. I tend to agree with Feyerabend that a formal methodology for science can do more harm than good, if it were exalted too much. It is quite possible that every science has its own methodology, that there is no general methodology, or even that each actual theory breaks new methodological ground. Certainly it would seem that very little actual science has ever come from philosophers of science, that the methodology lags behind actual science hugely.
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Maybe something else will come up - who bloody knows, man.
I am liking this very much :) ooops! back OT......(still, what to do with the ankle?)
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@ Russell
I saw Jeremy Wells on last years Media 7 - Sensing Bullshit
He asked why psychis weren't used in police investigations.So TVNZ did it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10602134
Is this as mercenary as it seems or are there rows of crystals on someones desk at TVNZ telling them this is a good idea?
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@richard - funnily enough, the stat I've heard about conventional medical treatment is "1/3 cured, 1/3 stay the same, 1/3 worse". Now, since I was told that while training as a classical homeopath, I have no idea whether it's true. I wonder if the medical profession do. (I have oodles of respect for conventional medicine for life-saving surgery, and some kinds of treatment, but I think it's crap at chronic low-level stuff)
What would be interesting if some kind of difficult-to-treat problem like migraines were treated by various different methodologies: conventional medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, etc. With a large enough group of people and a decent amount of time (say, at least 6 months), the results would be interesting. Of course, given the expense, only pharmaceutical companies would be able to fund such research, and of course they wouldn't. It's a shame.
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Also:
If woowoo helps then woowoo is good, that is my stance.
Totally seconded. I don't care if homeopathy is a placebo effect (although curing my 6-week-old nephew of jaundice within a day doesn't seem like placebo, although I suppose it could be a coincidence), but if no-one's being deceived about it being the One Cure for terminal cancer or whatever, fuckit, who cares what the mechanism is, if you feel better.
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One more thing (I should think about editing before I start reading the rest of the site). Plenty of the scientific method was invented by such dodgy types as alchemists and homeopaths (the quaint notion of trying a remedy on someone suffering from a syndrome, waiting to see if it improved and then prescribing the "proven" remedy to others with the same syndrome? Homeopaths). Implying that science has essentially been a seamless development via logic and immediate proof is completely disingenuous. Hell, the Big Bang theory wasn't proven till the 1960s.
This is not to say that we should not make efforts to try and determine the mechanisms for why alternative medicine may work - I wish more money were pumped into figuring out why so many people report it does.
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@TracyMac,
One more thing (I should think about editing before I start reading the rest of the site). Plenty of the scientific method was invented by such dodgy types as alchemists and homeopaths (the quaint notion of trying a remedy on someone suffering from a syndrome, waiting to see if it improved and then prescribing the "proven" remedy to others with the same syndrome? Homeopaths).
Actually homeopaths started by dosing HEALTHY people with potions, seeing what it did to them, and then prescribing highly diluted versions of those potions to cure the same symptoms in sick people. But you are right that there was experimentation and observation involved.
What they did not do was pay any attention to the discovery of atoms which tells you that you can dilute something indefinitely, but eventually get to the point where NOTHING of the original substance is left. (Never mind that the whole "like cures like" thing and the virtues of dilution were simply invented).
The difference between real science and homeopathy is not that real science does not get things wrong, but that homeopathy it is not prepared to make fundamental changes to its approach in response to data. (e.g. at the level of moving from a geocentric to a heliocentric solar system). Homeopathy may fiddle with things at the edges, but it does not have the nerve for the sort of ruthlessness that makes genuine science so effective, and is thus stuck somewhere in the mid-19th century.
(And it is worth remembering that "professional" homeopathy is making far stronger claims than it can cure a few sick people -- for its underlying theoretical mechanisms to be valid it needs to somehow repeal the atomic structure of matter and quantum mechanics. So it had better offer up some pretty impressive proof.)
Implying that science has essentially been a seamless development via logic and immediate proof is completely disingenuous. Hell, the Big Bang theory wasn't proven till the 1960s.
Which is the point really. The big bang came as a huge suprise to many physicists (Einstein included) -- but the real scientists involved adapted to the facts, and moved on.
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@Richard
We only have Russell's subjective view on that benefit. Where pray tell are the objective measurements of his range of movements before/after and a week later with no further interventions? How do we know that he doesn't feel better because he expects to and/or because he doesn't want to admit to himself he might have wasted his time and money? (I'm not saying these things are, only that they have not been objectively ruled out).
This is why we do randomised case controlled studies to tease out these factors and when we do nothing, nothing at all, including doing nothing works for back pain except perhaps, losing weight and a structured exercise program (the sort of things most people are never going to do).
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@richard
The issue here is that when naturopaths, chiropractors and the rest of them are actually observed systematically, they cannot (with a few trivial exceptions, relative to the strength of the claims the practitioners of these disciplines make) be shown to have any value beyond that of a placebo.
Except, as Dyan notes, in the case of acupuncture that's not true.
And if the efficacy of acupuncture can be demonstrated, then you and Peter have a bit of a problem -- because its core theory is, in scientific terms, all kinds of woo.
You know, intellectually, that it can't work. But, oops, it does.
Osteopathy's similar: the founding theory is bunkum, but there are properly-controlled studies (some of them using placebo to the extent that's possible) which show benefit from the clinical practice.
Peter rejects any significance on the basis that, he says, nothing, conventional or alternative, works for back pain and I should just "suck it up". But this treatment works for me. I'm quite happy to accept that part of its efficacy is related to it being a pleasant environment, but the massage and stretching of troubled muscles seems pretty effective too.
I'd be a mug to stop my occasional recourse to it on the basis Peter suggests.
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BTW we now know how bumblebees fly and it is seriously cool (am I the only one who reads New Scientist?). When they flap their wings they generate vortices and it is the upward force they get from these that was missing from the earlier analyses.
So basically bumblebees dance across the sky balancing on a series of little vortices. Around here they don't bumble at all. I watch them flying in a straight line over the back fence and straight towards the large planter box with the herb garden and to whichever herb is currently in flower, they then gather the nectar before flying straight over the garage roof into next door's garden. I've watched them do this many, many times. The ones we have here have either orange or white bottoms.
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@Russell
And if the efficacy of acupuncture can be demonstrated, then you and Peter have a bit of a problem -- because its core theory is, in scientific terms, all kinds of woo.
You know, intellectually, that it can't work. But, oops, it does.Not better than placebo it doesn't. We now have a number of different placebos for acupuncture, the absence of which held the analysis of its effectiveness back for some time. When you compare acupuncture with either sham acupuncture or random placing of the needles there is no difference.
It is an effective placebo though, but with everything be wary of what they claim to be able to treat and don't stop your meds.
Oh and why not save some money by just going to a massage therapist if that is all it is? or get your Darling to massage you, my wife is quite good at it. The general rule is massage towards the heart for long muscles and around the spine and from outside to inside for the sheet muscles of the back. It isn't as hard as you might think. And if you look online you will find all sorts of stretches you can do yourself. Having pulled my groin muscles recently i found a number of exercises on physiotherapy websites and now have them well under control. The thing about this sort of thing is it has to be done regularly and kept up along with attention to posture (he says sitting up straighter as he felt his back twinge from slouching). The problem is of course that the required dedication to exercise and stretch is hard to come by, mine comes as a side effect of wanting to run so I do what is necessary to continue to be able to do so. I am bad at it when I'm not running.
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Russell, if this is to be meaningful Dyan would also have to be looking for studies which show no effect -- the mere existence of these studies proves very little other than that someone has mistreated some rats (especially given that they seem to be done with heinously small samples), since you WILL see apparent correlations if you do enough studies, just thanks to sample statistics.
So given that a number studies on acupuncture have been performed, I would be astonished if a list like Diane's could NOT be compiled.
I have better things to do with my time than perform a meta-analysis of these papers, however, but one swallow does not a summer make.
Wrt to your visits to the osteopath, I am not saying you are wasting your money since it clearly works for YOU -- but there is a huge leap between one piece of anecdata (no matter how good a story it makes) and actual evidence that osteopathy has any real substance to it.
You see the the big win for osteo, but if Jimmie really did get better on his own, you could easily now be singing the praises of some other theraputic technique that you just happened to try "that day".
(I would guess that parents with a kid having as hard a time as yours would "try" at least one thing every day -- might be osteo, might be the gp, might be a naturopath, might be not eating pizza before nursing him, you name it -- but you are always trying SOMETHING. So in this scenario you are almost certain to have "tried" some active strategy just before he improved -- and it is all too easy to then assume that what you DID and what happened are connected, since you would always have been doing SOMETHING.)
On the other hand, if we found a 100 people in a similar situation to you before you had your first "osteo experience" and half of them saw the same dramatic change we would be on to something.
(And sorry again for making intellectual hay out of your personal example)
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@peter
We only have Russell's subjective view on that benefit.
That's good enough for me. It's Russell's money, and it makes him feel better. However, I do not think this one piece of data should then be used to argue that people other than Russell should see an osteo.
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We now have a number of different placebos for acupuncture, the absence of which held the analysis of its effectiveness back for some time.
Actually, 11 years on from the NIH consensus statement, the research still seems active and quite interesting.
Oh and why not save some money by just going to a massage therapist if that is all it is?
I wondered if we'd get to this point: you're emotionally more comfortable with me going to an unlicensed, unregulated massage therapist, than to a regulated practitioner whose training includes conventional study of the musculoskeletal system.
FWIW, I doubt it would be cheaper. With an ACC subsidy, a half-hour treatment is $45.
But I really must correct you on that Cochrane Review of spinal manipulative therapy. This is the summary:
Spinal manipulative therapy for low-back pain
There was little or no difference in pain reduction or the ability to perform everyday activities between people with low-back pain who received spinal manipulation and those who received other advocated therapies.This review of 39 trials found that spinal manipulation was more effective in reducing pain and improving the ability to perform everyday activities than sham (fake) therapy and therapies already known to be unhelpful. However, it was no more or less effective than medication for pain, physical therapy, exercises, back school or the care given by a general practitioner.
It performed better than sham treatment or known-inefffective therapies, and no better or worse than standard medical care. Both performed better than sham treatment. The authors clearly seem to find that some things treat back pain usefully and others don't.
You've been repeatedly touting this review and I don't think it actually serves your argument at all well.
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