Check out the Marketplace show. If you live in Canada, go to Cure or Con?, otherwise watch it on YouTube (below). Our Center for Inquiry friends in Vancouver overdose at the beginning of the show. Will they survive?
How can people fail to grasp the obvious implications of a crystal clear statement? Take: "A homeopathic remedy is indistinguishable from a sugar pill both by its ingredients and its effects."
If a quack gave me his bag of homeopathic remedies and I exchanged roughly half of them (coin toss for each) with sugar pills he would be none the wiser - ever. His uncertainty would be maximal, he'd have zero information. And no method known to mankind could help, not even the best double blind clinical trial.
Or how that mother believing in homeopathy urges laymen to "research both sides". How can she fail to notice her own lack of research? If I asked her "How can this work?" her best reply would be "No idea."
ARGH!
But, using a placebo for headache is just what placebos are good for, ie diminishing the symptom "pain".
Center for Inquiry friends in Vancouver overdose at the beginning of the show. Will they survive?
I would be wary of trying that because there are known cases where "alternative" medication contained actual drugs which were not listed on their labels.
5 comments :
Great program!
Thank you for posting it!!!
How can people fail to grasp the obvious implications of a crystal clear statement? Take: "A homeopathic remedy is indistinguishable from a sugar pill both by its ingredients and its effects."
If a quack gave me his bag of homeopathic remedies and I exchanged roughly half of them (coin toss for each) with sugar pills he would be none the wiser - ever. His uncertainty would be maximal, he'd have zero information. And no method known to mankind could help, not even the best double blind clinical trial.
Or how that mother believing in homeopathy urges laymen to "research both sides". How can she fail to notice her own lack of research? If I asked her "How can this work?" her best reply would be "No idea."
ARGH!
But, using a placebo for headache is just what placebos are good for, ie diminishing the symptom "pain".
Center for Inquiry friends in Vancouver overdose at the beginning of the show. Will they survive?
I would be wary of trying that because there are known cases where "alternative" medication contained actual drugs which were not listed on their labels.
there are known cases where "alternative" medication contained actual drugs which were not listed on their labels.
You are definitely safer with the "alternative" medications that do not contain the ingredients listed on the label.
Thanks for posting this, Larry.
It's refreshing to see real journalism done right.
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