With only minor modifications, most of these apply equally well to any branch of science or rational thinking. It's a really excellent list, here are just a very few select highlights.
Supporters of alternative medicine and purveyors of quack remedies love to criticise conventional medicine and science. They keep repeating the same tired arguments that are easily rebutted. This handy guide will help skeptics answer common criticisms from doctor-bashers.
Comedian Dara Ó Briain said it best: “Science knows it doesn’t know everything, otherwise, it’d stop. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”
Science is founded on only two underlying premises: that there is a material world, and that we can learn about how that world works. Science doesn’t “believe” anything; it asks and verifies. It has an excellent track record of practical success. The scientific method unquestionably works.
[I think it actually has more like five underlying assumptions, but that's a detail.]
They inconsistently argue that science is dogmatic while also arguing that science keeps changing its mind. Dogmatism is found in CAM [Complementary and Alternative Medicine, i.e. quackery], not in science.
There is a difference between the appeal to authority (“He’s a professor at Harvard, so we should believe everything he says”) and accepting the consensus of experts who know more about the field than we do. If ten top mechanics agree that your carburetor needs replacing, it is reasonable to replace the carburetor. It is not reasonable to listen to your barber if he says you can fix the carburetor by sprinkling lemon juice on it. All too often, CAM advocates are the ones who are parroting unreliable “authorities” who don’t know what they’re talking about.
We don’t need to keep an open mind about perpetual motion or a flat Earth, and we don’t need to keep an open mind about homeopathy. CAM advocates are the ones whose minds are truly closed. Most of them hold their beliefs so firmly that they reject any evidence to the contrary. One practitioner told me he would keep using his pet method even if it were definitely proven not to work, because “his patients liked it.”
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/defending_science-based_medicine_44_doctor-bashing_arguments_and_rebuttals
I wouldn't be so blankly anti-placebo myself, but that's a whole other can of worm. Otherwise, good points.
ReplyDeleteScience and medicine have, at best, a tenuous relationship with each other. Let's stipulate to the difference between a physician and a scientist. A goodly fraction of my consulting practice is tending to AI farms sedulously poring over payment claims for American health insurance firms.
ReplyDeletePhysicians are not in business for the good of your health. They are in that line of work to get paid and they are, as a species, among the most dishonest and devious professionals you will ever meet in life. The drugs firms routinely bribe them to prescribe their overpriced products.
I have also consulted for Pfizer, who stiffed me for a bunch of overtime. I can tell you for a rock solid fact, for all the money they spend on research, they spend more on marketing. And... a good deal of what they want to call Research is trying to find an isomer of an existing drug so they can get it back under patent shadow. Yes, that's what it's called, patent shadow.
This is science?
Yes, alternative medicine is so much shamanism. But from what I have seen of that mighty edifice called Modern Medicine, from behind the curtain, where the money moves and the prescriptions get written, do not attempt to tell me physicians are scientists. I find that amusing.