Science denial

This, along with the book "Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial" (I sincerely recommend it) was an eye opener for me.
I am not interested in hearing from anyone who is going to be angry or narrowminded in their responses, but I am prepared to discuss this in a scientific and mature manner.
The reason to why I am posting this is that, although I've only been on here shortly, I love you guys, I love permies who are trying to make the world a better place, and I'd love to spread some usefull information in return.
I have noticed that there are a lot of idea's within the permaculture community that I don't agree with and I've been struggling to discuss these ideas in a constructive way. So, now I'm simply throwing this out there.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html

What do you think?

From the video:

"let's be honest" - so the rest of the time he is less than honest? Or is he suggesting that others are not honest?

"When you get proof, you need to accept the proof." What about when there is a group of people in suits saying "this is proof" and it isn't proof.

Then he gets started on autism connection to vaccines. This again?

I stopped watching it. I've heard this crap a hundred times before.

He started talking about scientific method: try lots and lots of stuff and see what works. Well, a lot of people tried the vaccines and had problems that were serious enough that they are shying away. Show a little respect for the numbers.

Let's also respect that a lot of studies are done and then they yell out "proof!" and later we find out about mountains of shenanigans. "Proof!" turned out to mean "lies!"

I'm moving this to the meaningless drivel forum where it belongs.

paul wheaton wrote:

He started talking about scientific method: try lots and lots of stuff and see what works.

I think a lot of people are unaware that in the case of many pharmaceutical treatments, how a product "works" does not seem to be known and it only needs to "work" slightly better than placebo.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

In my opinion many pharmaceuticals probably "work" because of the placebo effect, not because of actual function. This would not be a problem except pharmaceuticals are very expensive and many seem to have dangerous side effects. An inexpensive or perhaps home-grown herbal treatment which does not seem to have dangerous side effects but which "works" with or without the placebo effect would seem to be a better choice than an expensive potentially dangerous drug. Many herbal remedies have been used for centuries with little or no apparent side effects. These may be the best choice of all, in my opinion.

I don't know what he meant by "let's be honest". Maybe just a bad choice of words. Kind of seems insignificant to me.

Regarding proof, there seems to me that there is no such thing as absolute truth, but the closest thing we have is the scientific method. And I agree, if you are more concerned with the possibility of getting what ever the vaccine is for than you are with possible side effects from the vaccine it is up to you to choose. That is not something that science can decide for you.

I don't know what you heard about the MMR vaccine controversy, but the paper that showed the connection to autism got retracted and declared fraudulent. But I don't really care about that.

I'm sorry you stopped watching, Paul, and maybe I should have mentioned that he talked about a lot of stuff. There is a part further in to the clip, I think, regarding herbal medicine or alternative medicine and that part is the one that I would like people to listen to and that was why I posted it in that section of the forum. I understand this is your forum and you do what you will, I don't mind.

What I think was the point of his talk, and the point that I wanted to share is that there is a way to distinguish what is scientific "fact" and what some people claim to be scientific "fact". As there will always be frauds and mistakes I would suggest to anyone, reading this and who is interested, to look up the terms "systematic review" and "meta-analysis". There is a lot of research like this on a wide variety of substances and herbs and treatments and I think that you will find that you can really see what is true and what is fiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review

And really the book "Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial" is a goldmine. Regardless of what your stance on this subject is now, I think it would be counter productive to reject something before looking at it. I will certainley, at least, look at information from sources I would not concider trustworthy. If armed with a critical mind, what harm could it do?

Also, I completely agree that there are conventional medicines not suitable for consumtion! And there IS natural remedies that work! The thing is that there is a way to see which those are. Not everything used in China for 5000 years really does work. Most things don't. Some do.

AndreasBrevitz wrote:
Not everything used in China for 5000 years really does work. Most things don't. Some do.

It might depend on what one means by "work."

Placebos "work" for a lot of people a lot of the time.

Scientists are human. We are all subject to confirmation bias. Still, it's the best we got, and while I often think there's more to the story, I am still inclined to go with the preponderance of scientific opinion. Usually, it is more right than wrong. And, a hallmark of science is that when a scientist is wrong, the reason s/he is wrong is very interesting in itself, and eventually productive of further knowledge.

Smallpox really is gone from the wild. And I for one am really glad.

I speak here of honest, and honestly wrong, scientists. I have about as much respect for data fakers as I do for anti-gay preachers caught having sex with men. No tree is too high to hang them from.

Science has to be paid for. It costs a lot of money..... so it has to make someone some money before it gets done. A lot of those someones who are paying for the "Science" expect to get a certain result. Circumstantial evidence may be more trustworthy in most cases. Science is(was once?) great, if its done right, but those who can afford it generally already have the answer and only need proof of that answer so they can get permission to manufacture a product. Roundup was safe to eat for how many years before they were forced to put the word poison on their product?

I feel as though my point is not getting across. As Michael says in the video; "We hate big pharma, we hate big government. We don't trust the man, and we SHOULDN'T. Our healthcare system sucks! It's cruel to millions of people... ... So we run away from it, and where do we run? We leap into the arms of big placebo."
Individual scientists are subject to bias, absolutely. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis changes that. The thing is, ONE scientist doesn't make science. You need lots of independent studies by lots of different, independent scientists and you need them to produce the same evidence independent of eachother. Then you have science. One study is NOTHING.
It's when ONE paper is over representated by the media that people think "science says this and science says that and it's never right!", when in fact science hasn't even made it's statement yet.
How many studies regarding Roundups safety did you look at before you decided it was safe/unsafe, Len? I don't know what Roundup is actually, but there probably never was any science behind that product.

Another quote that comes to mind; "Science is not a company. It's not a country. It's not even an idea. It's a process."

We leap into the arms of big placebo.

And why shouldn't we, when placebos "work" as well as expensive pharmaceuticals in many cases? Acknowledging that placebos "work" as well as some expensive pharmaceuticals is not "denial of science."

And I don't think I've said it is. If you think that "big placebo" is better than "big pharma" I'm almost inclined to agree. I think there is a method to see what truly does work. And it's not listening to medical companies, it's not listening to government, it's not listening to gardeners, it's not listening to anyone. It's accepting and understanding the scientific method.

"The Cochrane Collaboration is a group of over 28,000 volunteers in more than 100 countries who review the effects of health care interventions tested in biomedical randomized controlled trials. A few more recent reviews have also studied the results of non-randomized, observational studies. The results of these systematic reviews are published as "Cochrane Reviews" in the Cochrane Library."

http://www.cochrane.org/about-us

AndreasBrevitz wrote:
I feel as though my point is not getting across. As Michael says in the video; "We hate big pharma, we hate big government. We don't trust the man, and we SHOULDN'T. Our healthcare system sucks! It's cruel to millions of people... ... So we run away from it, and where do we run? We leap into the arms of big placebo."
Individual scientists are subject to bias, absolutely. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis changes that. The thing is, ONE scientist doesn't make science. You need lots of independent studies by lots of different, independent scientists and you need them to produce the same evidence independent of eachother. Then you have science. One study is NOTHING.

That kind of science is stifled. A study is done... it has little meaning on it's own, but before it can be reviewed systematically, it has to be published. In order to be published it has to pass a review board (first bias here) then maybe someone else other than the scientist can look at it. If it gets published and to hurts someones bottom line, there will be a scientist hired to somehow have the study rescinded.... That is they will pick it apart and lie about it if needed... if the industry is big enough there may even be more than one counter study. Now the person who originally did the study has lost their name and maybe profession. Anyone else who wishes to study the same thing has real problems getting the money to do so and in general they will be unable to get anything published if they do, because that idea has already been proven false.

Unless a study is published... it does not exist. Unless there is money to do the study, the information to review does not exist. Big money spends huge money doing studies. They do good studies, but they are only published internally until they are sure the study will help the bottom line. So there is a great deal of info and study that is never allowed to make it to the public for review.... for the scientific process to happen.

It's when ONE paper is over representated by the media that people think "science says this and science says that and it's never right!", when in fact science hasn't even made it's statement yet.
How many studies regarding Roundups safety did you look at before you decided it was safe/unsafe, Len? I don't know what Roundup is actually, but there probably never was any science behind that product.

Actually, I suspect there was a great deal of science that went into the development of roundup (which almost every person in the world ingests daily). The company who sells it (along with the genetically modified seed to go with it) was well aware that the product was toxic for over 10 years, but kept that information to themselves. They only started to put that on the label when that info leaked. Even though there were studies being done that showed the product had problems during that time, they "disproved" them.

The public does not distrust science, they are fully aware that science is not happening in any real way except behind closed doors. Science has a bad name and for good reason. It has been used as the name for studies to allow big money to make more big money at the expense of their customer. The general feeling is that there is no real science happening in todays world. That is why people are more willing to use circumstantial evidence to base their decisions on.... it is more often true. The problem is not "Science denial", but Science withholding and blocking.

AndreasBrevitz wrote:
And I don't think I've said it is.

Ok, in that case the title of this thread seems confusing.

AndreasBrevitz wrote:
This, along with the book "Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial" (I sincerely recommend it) was an eye opener for me. I am not interested in hearing from anyone who is going to be angry or narrowminded in their responses, but I am prepared to discuss this in a scientific and mature manner.

What do you think?

I think we should be fair and put all medical practices on trial. I think that if you want to divide medicine into mainstream vs alternative, fine. But I am certain that there are many practitioners who are charlatans or idiots on both sides of this dichotomy. When it comes to seeking help for a problem, it is rolling the dice regardless of which general path one takes. I had a medical condition that got three different diagnoses from 3 different doctors, and the first two who got it wrong prescribed medicines with rather disturbing potential side effects.

And the notion that most doctors are all about the science is far from the truth. They practice the medical arts as they were trained, or simply as they decide they want to. Mainstream doctors routinely act from coarse heuristic rules, faulty generalizations, and I have seen case after case where they don't have time to research the particulars or deal with the patient's unique circumstances... they dismiss critical information from patients, they ignore lesser known studies, they are biased towards using heavily marketed pharmaceuticals, they often treat symptoms instead of causes.

Most recent case in point from my personal experiences:

I recently had an ultrasound done - gallstones were detected and I got referred to a specialist. The doc said "Gallstones - you need surgery." I said fine, how many are there, how big are they, where in the bladder are they, what else can you tell me, please lay out the options. After a bit of himming and hawing, the doctor ultimately admits he doesn't have a copy of my ultrasound report and can't provide me with details ... but goes on to tell me it doesn't matter, because "these things always require surgery." I ask him if there are any lifestyle factors that can be changed, and he says no, aside from avoiding fatty foods if I find that causes symptoms. And I go home and do real science, finding that there are a number of interesting scientific studies that point to routes where a person might be able to reverse gallstones - for example, a single aspirin a day reduces mucin in the bile, while also increasing the flow of bile and reducing the saturation, leading to a lower lithogenic index ... there are studies showing that aspirin has a decent preventive effect in people with arthritis who have taken it for long periods of time, and decent preventive effect in people who had been treated for gallstones (but did not have their bladder removed) and who went on low dose aspirin for other reasons. But the odds that a doctor will tell a patient about these studies is disturbingly low. Insurance companies pay for surgery, doctors believe that the gall bladder serves no real purpose and that we are fine without it (!!??!!). Surgeons have a hammer, they see every problem as a nail.

Modern, high tech medicine has some strong points. For acute conditions, they can be very effective. But the fact that they can do a better job at saving a person having a heart attack does not carry over to preventing heart attacks. I propose that relatively simple things like the Mediterranean Diet, physical activity, and stress reduction would go much farther in preventing heart attacks in the first place, and on these issues, 'alternative' health practitioners have been out in the lead for the past 50 years.

And then there are huge issues related to the distortion of the scientific literature by for-profit companies; they will commission multiple studies to 'prove' their drug is safe and effective, and those that find otherwise are buried instead of being published - the researchers who discover anything negative are silenced by confidentiality agreements. The end result is that our 'scientific' literature is not giving us science, it is highly skewed towards those with money and a patent medicine. Years ago, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine took a bold stand to curb this by requiring that studies pre-register so that we would at least see how many unfavorable studies were being hidden. Yet even that modest measure has not been embraced by the medical scientific community. Because too much science would change the way that business is done.