I am pleased to see that some Australian scientists are taking a stand and telling their universities to stop peddling woo — alternative medicine classes that only train students to respect quackery. I’m looking at you, too, University of Minnesota: we have a “Center for Spirituality and Healing” that fills me with rage every time I consider it.
There’s also a poll! Charge in and let Australia know what you think. Oh, and if anyone sees a poll on giving UM’s supernatural quack center the axe, let me know.
How do you rate alternative medicine?
Prefer it to traditional medicine 14%
Use it with traditional medicine 24%
Open minded about it 12%
Believe it’s quackery 50%
The “Use it with traditional medicine” team is my favorite. When they’re cured, guess which medicine gets the credit?
What the hell is with the “Believe it is quackery?” option? No question it is quackery, so why did they have to put the belief bit into it? That puts my view of alternative medicine as worse than useless woo right up there with those who believe in an Abrahamic god who is personally interested in me!
None of these refer to belief, so why are those who are based in reality and see it for what it is shoehorned into calling it a belief?
Or maybe I am reading too much into the choices.
I voted. Quackery is up to 52% already.
But it’s nice to be “open-minded,” don’t you know? And it’s impolite to call something quackery. (I run into this in my family all the time, where real medical treatment gets mixed with fake medical treatment and the fakery gets at least as much credit as the real stuff—just as Thy Goddess suggested above.)
quack
Quack = 56%.
There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t work.
57% now
If it can diagnose you like a duck…
If it can recommend dosages like a duck…
If it can heal you like a duck…
It’s probably……
QUACKERY!!
Yuck. This “alternative medicine” rubbish has managed to thoroughly saturate the minds of most people over here in the west of aussieland. My mum is thoroughly taken by it – she’s a “trained reiki master” and practices numerous other completely useless forms of woo – she also believes she’s psychic and is an avid reader of all sorts of “spiritual” excrement including Chopra. She’s got pictures of Sai Baba everywhere, she went to meet him once.
That’s just my mum, who’s a rather toxic example of how terrifyingly mainstream this kind of baseless shite is. The saddest part in all this? All the (easily refutable) Christian woo has been almost completely replaced by a sort of wishy-washy newage spirituality boom that’s taken in a massive chunk of the population. It’s the new fad for the middle aged here, and if you’re not a part of it you’re inferior and closed-minded. There aren’t enough eyes to roll.
No matter how much you stress education, this kind of stuff is so vague and pervasive that it doesn’t seem to matter a jot if it has nothing to do with reality, all you need is a funny feeling and a tenuous mental link to ‘the universe’ guiding your luck or whatever and you’re there. It feels so hopeless trying to reason with it, these people have such a logic-repellent fluffiness that anything you throw at them immediately drowns in the massive farty clouds of smug self-importance.
Alternative medicine is a huge factor in this, the media and social climes have normalised it so badly that the above is now considered normal.
I’ve pretty much given up, to be honest. I imagine this is how it feels to someone trying to live free-minded in the Christofascist States of America.
Sorry, very ranty. It’s Australia day and my tolerance levels for all sorts of horrid stupidities have been shot to pieces. Apparently we’ve gained a new political movement today too:
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/radical-youth-party-begins-propaganda/story-e6frg14c-1226254383756?fb_ref=rec-top&fb_source=timeline
Some of those comments make me want to just go back and live in the sea.
I believe!
58%
So alternative medicine is quantumn duck?
Still 58%. I won’t tell the wife, she believes. :(
quarkery?
@sophiadodds oh dear the comments. Our universities would be in big trouble without international students, do these idiots want us to be parochial and not universities of quality that people from around the world want to come to? Do they think they take places of Aussie students? They subsidise them!
Now at 62%, in a tiny part due to my vote.
Oh, no! Now all the kids who only read blog posts about Kardashians will call me ‘closed-minded’!
My Dad was a trained reiki master. He showed me his certificate. Incredulous, I asked him where he got it.
“Off the internet,” he happily chirped.
“Did you take a course or something?”
“No! I just sent them fifty bucks. They prayed for me, and now I’m a reiki master!”
He was proud of this last fact. That somehow, not even having to answer any questions other than the security code on his credit card was a point in his favour.
He was not a stupid man, but that whole side of the family is fucking ripe for con artists. (His sister gave millions—she marries rich—to JZ Knight and ‘Ramtha’).
I’m not sure these stories are worth it when people ask me if I got an inheritance when he died.
@Ariaflame Indeed. Makes me wonder how many of these people have actually set foot in a university, or even visited the website of one.
I honestly can’t remember the percentages from my brief dalliance with uni, though TAFE seems to be a gigantic cultural melting pot and that’s just how I like it! I adored the course I completed last year, training to be a chef. There were a total of three of us ‘generic white/pink aussie types’ in the whole class, the vast majority of students were either naturalised immigrants or international students, and all of them were awesome and interesting people. I learned how to cook so many new dishes – I can’t imagine how tedious a homogenous WhiteStralian class (country!) would be. Eugh.
Ramtha, I beg you to close that <i> tag!
Quacking about the quackery… yesterday i explained mu mother that dermatome based clinical foot examination was not reflexology. She has an issue between S1 and L5. Little bit of knowledge can cure a quack flu. Simple as that.
@Brownian
Oh, my mum had proper training – you know, with real people in classes! they also showed her how to manipulate your chi so you can perform amazing feats such as breaking a chopstick against your throat using only the palm of your hand. My brother (whom I adore for having a brain) and I managed to pull up hundreds of internet videos showing clearly that this was a trick anyone could do, her argument was that they were actually using chi and “just not calling it that” or some other rubbish about how the trick itself was irrelevant.
I almost wish she’d just gotten it off the internet, then we could just point, laugh and not have to be quite so depressed about the whole thing.
Unlike your dad, she’s not exactly the brightest candle in the stack, but oddly enough my dad is. He’s a GP, doesn’t buy into the woo as far as I can tell, but has managed almost superhuman feats of compartmentalisation to shut off any avenue of cognitive dissonance. It’s baffling and amazingly difficult to fathom why, but on the other hand it’s kept their marriage rock-solid for over 30 years.
I can’t do a thing about it though, talking to either one of them is useless. No matter how old I get I’m still just the ‘silly child’ and my opinions aren’t to be heard or considered valid under any circumstances.
I’ m no fan of woo. Rekki!? I know a guy around here that charges$100 an hour, and for what??? Moaning and chanting. Sheesh!! However, I do believe nutrition is more a factor in illness and disease that mainstream medicine will admit to. I’ve changed my own health issues around by eliminating junk food. There is solid science behind nutrition and some (very few) supplements. I think our docs will catch on soon. Rekki?! Yeah right!!
I am open minded about it. That’s how I know it’s quackery.
Current standings:
10% Prefer it to traditional medicine
16% Use it with traditional medicine
8% Open minded about it
66% Believe it’s quackery
This poll has been well and truly pharyngulated.
I have to admit I was tempted to vote “Open Minded” about it, simply because some alternative treatments, like herbal medicines, have been shown to be effective. Aloe, for example. But beyond that, it’s quackery, of course.
$100. If I was an immoral, evil scumbag, it would be so tempting to go into business. I’d have a few problems here though as the only place I could practice would be in our local church hall, but the Catholics wouldn’t let me. Apparantly the pope thinks it’s superstitious mumbo jumbo.
That’s open-mindedness for you. It’s a one-way street.
But the concentrated isolated and purified form of any herb’s active ingredient(s) is more effective than the herb itself. Case in point Cocaine versus chewing the Cocoa plant.
Or even Lindt dark chocolate versus chewing the cocoa plant.
Yes, a herbal remedy’s pharmaceutical properties and effects can be more accurately assessed when its active ingredient has been isolated and refined. And its dosage can be more precisely controlled too, for safer and more effective application.
Of course, at that point it’s not a herbal remedy anymore; it’s a drug. Herbal remedies that actually do something useful tend to become drugs in a few years. Herbal remedies that have remained in the alternative medicine pharmacopia for a long time have a high probability of being useless if not harmful.
Quackery at 69%
Damn it, I think it’s quackery because I am open minded!
Being “open minded” is not measured by what viewpoint you hold: it’s all about how you hold it. Are you open to considering alternatives? Are you open to considering the possibility that you might be wrong? Are you open to changing your mind if the evidence seems to go that way? Are you open to using the method that evolved over time to try to avoid error, bias, and self-delusion? Or are you instead dogmatically committed to being the “kind of person” who either believes in X or admires those who do? You “know what you know.”
Basing your views on science means you’re open-minded. Refusing to throw out a disproven hypothesis on the principle that “anything is possible” or “all I know is what I can be sure of through personal experience” is evidence of a mind that is snapped shut like a trap.
Go, Friends of Science in Medicine!
scottplumer #22 wrote:
You’re the victim of a classic bait ‘n switch.
Pharmacognosy is the branch of medical science which studies herbs and other “natural” ingredients. Many common medications have been derived from plants, trees, and so forth. There is nothing “alternative” about herbal medicine as such — not even when it’s home grown or used as a tea. Not if it’s been tested and shown to be effective.
It would only be considered ‘alternative’ if extensive tests have shown it to be no better than placebo — and yet people still insist on claiming that it works.
Alternative medicine tries to look reasonable by co-opting reasonable things and claiming it for themselves. Diet, exercise, herbs, massage, and listening to the patient, taking a full history, and “caring” about them are not exclusive to alternative medicine. The alties don’t get to cry dibs on them and trot them out as examples of where alt med ‘works.’
It’s the same bait ‘n switch tactic they try to get away with with religion and spirituality. Take a lot of normal secular things and claim that, if you practice or believe them, you are now “religious.” Morality? That belongs to religion. Love? That’s religion. Do you feel awe when contemplating nature and admire the beauty of a sunset? That means you’re spiritual. So those are reasonable ideas. That’s all they meant.
And then they switch it for crap. Don’t fall for it. It’s an old, old apologetic trick called “Moving the Goalposts.”
Wow, that puts a whole new spin on chocolate addiction.
Quackery is up to 70%, as 12:41pm EST.
Take that, quacks!
The Prince of Piffle is going to be very angry with you lot.
Would Goldy the Gopher be available to perform some excirsisms at the Center for Spirituality and Healing?If you are up to the challenge we can box and ship our Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker immediatly by over-night express. Sorry though, we will accept no return deliveries.
Wow, sophiadodds. The bizarro nature of such parties is somehow thrown into sharper relief when I see them in other countries. Maybe it’s because the U.S. is just so suffused with nationalism that I just take the craziness for granted here, but expect that some other places will be different enough to have little of it.
Semi-off topic, but it bugs me when somethings that do work get lumped in with “alternative” medicine. Some people think that if it doesn’t require a prescription to get then it must be part of this woo-crap. My roommate is into homeopathy, and she calls me a hypocrite because I discount that while doing meditation for stress relief. Because all meditation is alternative just like homeopathy, right? Is it so hard to comprehend that if I’m sick I see a doctor, if I’m frazzled I do something that relaxes me? Not the same thing!
FML, Coca plant not Cocoa
To be fair, sometimes there is more than one active ingredients in a plant which work separately or synergistically to contribute to the effect.
There is a tendency to find the first one with any clinical effect and trumpet it as THE important one so it can be patented. At that point the research often stops.
I know people doing research into synergy right now. You want to correct that?
@F – Thankfully over here it’s usually just relegated to politics and Australia day, or at least those are the only two arenas in which it seems to be perfectly acceptable to be an idiotic bigot in public and get away with it because you’ve got flags stuck on your car next to the “fuck off, we’re full” sticker and the southern cross decals.
summerminor, some meditative practices have verifiable, repeatable empirical effects. The Fire Meditation raises BMR. Mindfulness meditation causes measurable long-term effects on brain structure and function. Chanting the Lotus Sutra on fast forward for hours on end makes you lose twenty points of IQ and give all your money to Soko Gakkai.
We may not completely understand the mechanisms for the first two, while the third is all too easy to comprehend. If they can be shown to work it’s not woo or craziness to use them and wait for full explanations later. As Oliver Heaviside said “Shall I reject a good meal simply because I do not understand the principles of digestion?”
If my GP tells me to quit smoking and join a gym, that’s orthodox Western medicine, and therefore bad. If my TCM practicioner advises me to eat some tincture of rhino testicles, that’s alt med, and it’s good.
We are Ing:
Sadly I don’t want to correct that. Some people are working on the synergistic effects of multiple compounds within medicinal plants. Many, perhaps most, only want to make a quick buck and keep everyone else out.
It’s also harder and more expensive. If you find one compound which can has an effect and can be clinically exploited you are fortunate. Searching through the whole combinatoric possibilities within the complex chemistry of an organism is much more difficult, expensive and time consuming.
Looks like it’s 73% “Duck noises” and rising!
Keep up the Evil Satanic Nature-raping work!
I need to modify #43 to apply to private funding sources, not the researchers themselves.
What meds are you using to make yourself a mindreader
Then they are no longer alternative.
They’re just medicine.
Voted in each of the eight browsers on my Mac. We’re up to 75% at time of writing. Yay!
Remember the Minchin Declaration. Alternative medicine has either not been proved to work or has been proved to not work. Otherwise, it would be called “medicine”.
Alt medicine usually fails to get a correct diagnosis.
If alt medicine produces a certifiably correct dosage, it is of an ineffective drug.
If alt medicine heals you then it becomes just medicine.
Alternative medicine IS quackery.
Sixteen hours left and 77%. I didn’t think about the different browsers (have access to 3 computers) so I think I will go and vote a few more time.
Mary P
We seem to be asymptoting to 80%. I just left it at 79% with my second vote (thanks for the multippple vote idea diotima)
Quack! OvO
Poll: How do you rate alternative medicine?
Prefer it to traditional medicine 6%
Use it with traditional medicine 10%
Open minded about it 5%
Believe it’s quackery 79%
Total votes: 7773.Poll closes in 14 hours.
I don’t know about anybody else here, but I’ve always preferred medicine that comes with a disclaimer telling me it’s not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
I think I made this one up, but it’s hard to tell sometimes.
I went to a seminar about last year for couples trying to conceive. The guy was a chinese medicine expert and an acupuncturist.
Surprisingly the majority of the advice was to eat properly, sleep well, reduce stress and to have sex!
Something strange happened to this poll, it was 79% against woo-woo. Now it’s only 59%
Prefer it to traditional medicine 19%
Use it with traditional medicine 17%
Open minded about it 5%
Believe it’s quackery 59%
Total votes: 13739.
Poll closes in 47 minutes.
Prefer it to traditional medicine 20%
Use it with traditional medicine 17%
Open minded about it 5%
Believe it’s quackery 58%
Total votes: 14033
Poll closes in 16 minutes.
I have to agree that the poll results have been screwed over. I went to bet when it was 79% quackery and when I check this morning it’s over and suddenly at 58%. What the Fuck!