Poll: Belief in pseudoscience/paranormal phenomena

Yeah I would agree actually. But the point being our environment does actually affect us a lot more than some sceptics would like to believe. If you can dig through all the mysticism and crap that tends to surround things like this then there are things worth taking a more detailed look at.
 
You can find a disgruntled person from ANY field, that doesn't make them credible; the bias was obvious. Either way, yay for him, chiropractic medicine has a nice scientific mode as well as the holistic mode.
 
Just reminds me of an apropos point my sister made earlier.

It's not what you think, it's how you think



Emphasis mine.
 
Gosh, I do envy you.
To the best of my knowledge (from what I have been told by those in the field) it works both ways. Gov't does do some funding for research, but Drug co. also approach universities etc. wanting specific research done. Either way, money does grease many wheels.
 
The first part of your post goes some way to answering mine. And agrees with me. If treatments/tablets/whatever are subject to proper clinical trials then I have no problem with them.

I'm not against alternative medecines per se. I'm against spurious claims for treatments based on no actual evidence. "Cut by a sword? You'll want weapon salve. Hundreds of years of tradition say it's true so it must be right." Once evidence in clinical trials is in place all's well. Until then buyer beware, it's potentially bunkum and there is a biiig market out there for this stuff.



There were many MD's prepared to swear that smoking was not harmful. Guess what? They lied. I want to see the weight of scientific opinion behind something, not just one or two.


What precisely do you mean by complementary? Thank you for being so reasonable and informative in your posting btw, much appreciated, I always stand to be corrected


Bet their death rates were higher than ours though. Doubtless some traditional remedies work. Most are now mainstream. When any others are properly researched, they'll be mainstream too.


Now you lose me. Because if this stuff really works, and you clearly believe it does, then why not get it proven and rolled out to as many people as possible as soon as posible t maximise the benifits? Set up proper trials of everything and get it into the public domain, not just the new age domain.

Mitch
 
Well, I am in the field here in the UK.
And I'm telling you that the the vast majority of research done in my particular department, is funded by
1. The Medical Research Council (publicly funded). These are who fund my own research.
2. Cancer Research UK (charity)
3. British Heart Foundation (charity)
4. Wellcome Trust (charity)
5. British Lung Foundation (charity)
6. Norman Salveson Emphysema Research Trust (charity)
7. Multiple Sclerosis Society (charity)
8. Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust (charity)
9. Arthritis Research Campaign (charity)

Off the top of my head head I cant think of anyone I work with who's funded exclusively by a pharmaceutical company. I'm sure they're there, but it is by no means the most common source of funding in medical research in Universities. What usually happens is that you put in a grant application and the funding body considers whether or not your ideas are good enough and within their remit before deciding to give you the money, rather than someone coming to you with the money. Sure, it happens, but its not the norm.

I guess you are right to envy us!
 
I think if you actually do your homework you're going to find that there is a ton of money pumped into universty studies by the pharma industry. No one is talking about basic science... we are talking about studies and tests of drugs which the pharma industry spend lots of money on to test and market. Much of that testing is being done in conjunction with Uni's.



You're arguing something that no one else (at least not me is) is trying to defend. I think if you had actually worked in the med estabilshment then you might have a slightly different view of it. Having been an EMT I, II and a Paramedic I can tell you... it's not all warm and fuzzy.
 
Since I am on my school laptop, I managed to find some of the resources we used for the CAT class I took this summer.

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/herbsataglance.htm
http://www.who.int/en/
http://www.cdc.gov/

There are other sites, but these three I used the most often. WHO and CDC are good for looking up research.
 
Whether they are impartial as an organisation doesn’t change the fact that the scientific evidence speaks for itself.



Well there could be many way to explain this, such as confirmation bias, which can be seen in this comment:
”His findings have been backed up by his personal experience on patrol. Ins Parr added: “When you try to reason with people on a full moon they become more aggressive and less rational during full moon. When you try to reason with them on a full moon they become more argumentative.””

Here’s a science-based article:
”For example, researchers Ivan Kelly, James Rotton, and Roger Culver, in their study "The Moon was Full and Nothing Happened" (published in the book "The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal," 1991) examined more than 100 studies of alleged lunar effects and found no significant correlation between phases of the moon and disasters, homicide rates, etc. Furthermore, there is no known mechanism by which the moon would somehow influence a person's mind to make him more dangerous—except of course for his own expectations.”
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070613_bad_moon.html

Here’s some more:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/31/full-moon-effect-debunked-again
http://skepdic.com/fullmoon.html

Of course, this does not disproves the claim that the moon has some effect on people, but is not conclusive. In any case, this has nothing to do with astrology anyway. Astrologers claim that our lives, such as relationships, money, careers, friends, and families are all influenced by the planets.


This has nothing to do with astrology.


The point being made is that while Mars is larger, the obstetrician was a lot closer, and hence would have a greater gravitational effect than any planet.


Seriously!... YouTube is just the video hosting web site. The video itself was from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series. Carl Sagan is an astronomer.


But the only two means by which the planets can effect us - gravity and light - really have no demonstrated influence on humans at all. So just what is the mechanism by which the planets effect us? How exactly could it even work?

Anyway, the fact that the planets may have an effect is not purely what astrology is about.


So what. It still doesn’t apply to humans. The fact the dolphins have sonar abilities does not mean humans have sonar abilities.


It’s theoretically possible, but this doesn’t prove anything. Consider:
a) It would not apply to scattered individuals, it would apply to a whole environment who would evolve these new senses due to their environment. (Also, as the world is ‘smaller’ we could make the case that on some level the world can be views as one environment.)
b) It must provide survival advantage, and if this is were the case, we would expect to see everyone in that environment having these abilities. They would become standard.
c) It would probably take, at least, thousands of years.
d) It’s never been demonstrated.
e) Such claims of ESP are not merely senses also known about in the in the animal kingdom, but rather claim of paranormal senses, such as telepathy, or remote viewing.


Synaesthesia is related to autism. It’s an abnormality in how the brain stores and handles memories, so suffers will see a number and experience a colour, or see shape and experience a taste, or hear a sound and experience a taste, etc. This is not extra-sensory perception. It is just an abnormality in the traditional senses.


Yes, and scientists discovered what was going on. The usual claims of ESP have never been demonstrated. Now, this doesn’t disprove ESP, but is provides a sufficient grounds in rejecting it, at least until demonstrated.

As for auras, this has no relation to synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is merely the cross-firing of normal sensory input (e.g. a number is processed by the part of the brain which processes colours).
 
No one is denying that our environment has an effect on us. But astrology =/= “our environment effects us.”


Please elaborate on the bias? What was bias about it?


Right. And it’s the mumbo-jumbo mainstream Chiropractic which I am critical of.
 
Well lets see. You said:

”I suggest you perhaps do a bit more research; maybe something a tad less biased than the "New England Skeptics' Society", like, oh, I don't know, JAMA? I posted a link to it. I trust that over this skeptic stuff any day of the week. At least JAMA is peer-reviewed by medical professionals I can trust and who aren't afraid to be objective without an agenda”

and

”You can find a disgruntled person from ANY field, that doesn't make them credible; the bias was obvious.”

Nowhere did you explain WHY they are bias. You just asserted that they were bias, afraid of objectivity, and has an agenda, and that they had found a “disgruntled person.” (Why was he disgruntled btw?)

It seems that you think they are bias just because they don’t accept the claims of Chiropractic. They agreed that scientific Chiropractic has a valid use, but not the claims of mainstream Chiropractic.

By the way, the host of that poscast is a neurologist who works at Yale University! So he is in fact a medical professional who works in neurology, and so is more than qualified to assess the claims of Chiropractic. So it seems like you saw they were critical of Chiropractic, and then just jumped to the conclusion that they were bias with an agenda, thus demonstrating that it is YOU who seems to be afraid of objective criticism, and also that you just assumed they were not qualified because, it seems, they didn't agree with you.
 
On the other hand topher I have heard of MDs/PhDs in very prestigious positions that would prefer to believe in "spontaneous remission" than give any kind of credence to "alternative" therapies. So imagine a highly educated person saying that cancer essentially "just disappeared" rather than having something physical such as alternative therapies be able to treat people.
 
Well these are certainly valid questions which must be ruled out before we can conclude what did happen. The purpose of sceptical analysis is not to avoid “giving credence to alternative medicine,” rather; it is to rule out all other possibilities. Only then can we say it was effective. We don’t just go, “well, it looks like it is effective, so it is” or “she said it works, so it does.” We instead put the treatment through rigorous double and triple blinded tests.

While many people claim to have received effect treatment, being sceptical of it does not equate to “not wanting to give credence to alternative medicine.” It is only to seek the effectiveness of it.

Let’s look at homeopathy for example. Homeopathic substances cannot do anything, since they are just water, there is nothing in them, but people do still provide positive feedback, so clearly something is happening. Well it could just be a correlation fallacy (i.e. that the problem just disappeared on it own or by something else and the prior Homeopathic substance taken by the person is credited). It could also be the placebo effect. I recall one quote with regards to acupuncture along the line of “half the treatment is done before the needless are even applied to the patient” which is true for a lot of alternative medicine. People often have the expectation that something will happen, the procedure is often carried out in a relaxing environment, maybe with soft music, soothing voice, a massage, etc. All this may be part of the ‘healing’ effect. Perhaps the actual procedure or substance is even incidental to the healing in some of the cases (or, as with homeopathy, all of the cases).

Perhaps some people will just do anything than credit an alternative medicine (do you have any examples of professions doing this), but I don’t, I would happily endorse an alternative medicine once it has been proven effective by scientific research (at which point, incidentally, it would cease to be alternative).
 
Placebo effect is true for a lot of non-alternative medicine as well. I find myself amazed, as a nurse, at the constant willingness of western medicine to completely dismiss the placebo effect. In point of fact, I find it disturbing. The fact of the matter does remain that if the patient believes that something is helpful, it is. I am not willing to dismiss that in my practice.

And once again, you have yet to prove you are doing any real research on the subject other then blindly dismissing anything that isn't "proven". Despite the fact that several good research sites have been handed to you.
 
Also now currently with acupuncture and TCM they have started to do studies of it on animals. Thus nearly eliminating the placebo effect:
http://www.townsendletter.com/June2007/acumoxi0607.htm
Either acupuncture and TCM works or animals have a higher intelligence than we give them credit for and are subject to the placebo effect.
 
Of course.


I don’t doubt the placebo effect can have an effect, but this doesn’t mean we should accept some ‘medicine’ - which is based and promoted on specific claims - just because it *seems* to work via the placebo effect. We should still test them vis-a-vis their claims they are based on.


What are you talking about!?! I am just talking about the method of science/medcine: test claims! Try to rule out other possible explanations. This does not mean I am merely “blindly dismissing” as you assume. I’m simply saying that there is not sufficient evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of an entire branch of alternative medicine. Sure, there are a few positive studies for some alternative medicines, but you cannot form a conclusion based on a few studies, you actually need to look at all the studies and then determine whether there are significant results, and overall, most alternative medicines have yet to be demonstrates as effective under appropriate testing conditions. This gives me a rational basis for being sceptical. Do you have a problem with that?



Well it’s based on a misunderstanding of like cures like. However, homeopathic substances are so dilute that there remains no molecule of the original substance left in the water. This was because Christian Hahnemann (the inventor of Homeopathy) lived before Avogadro (who discovered molecules). So this problem is resolved by a claim so absurd it’s almost unbelievable: while the original substance is no longer present, the water memorises the substance!!! Obviously, if water memorises what it has previously been mixed with, it means most water contains salt, human waste, sewage, etc.


This doesn’t change the fact that people receiving acupuncture are likely to already believe in it and so already expect it to work. It wouldn’t surprise me if the more calm and relaxing the environment which the procedure is given in, the more positive the feedback. Prehaps?

Anyway, saying “acupuncture” is almost like saying “alternative medicine” in that we have a huge collection of claims. Most acupuncture claims are pseudoscience, while others might have actually some validity/benefits. For example, the life force/chi model of acupuncture is superstitious and certainly pseudoscience; however, you are actually sticking needles into the body, and it’s not impossible that this may have indirect effects. One neurological hypothesis behind acupuncture is called the counter-irritation theory which basically suggests that inserting needles into the skin stimulates neurological pathways, which in turn inhibit other neurological pathway, producing an effect for the patient. A basic example of this is when you bang your elbow. What do you tend to do? You rub it, because rubbing it inhibits the neurological pathways which cause pain, making the area feel better. So this is certainly a possibility, however whether this has a clinically significant effect remains to be established.

It should also be pointed out that while there are some positive acupuncture studies, when you look at all the studies that have been done, the majority are negative. There also seems to be a correlation which suggests that the better designed the study is, the more likely it is to be negative.


Well is it medically possible to make such a diagnosis purely by feeling the pulse? Exactly how did the man get this information just from doing that? You said this person was a patient of your. Are you a doctor?

Although remember what one anecdote certainly does not prove anything. Even a single study cannot be used to make conclusions. You need to test the claims/prodecure/medication/modality and upon having positive results, have them repeated.
 
And I am stating that, as a nurse, that is EXACTLY what we should be doing. Placebo effect is a real and very significant part of the therapies available to medicine. And the best part is, I don't have to believe in the modality to bring about this positive effect.
 
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