It wasnt poor. It was null.
Well… yes.
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So this is a guy who has a PhD in electrical engineering and head of a major semiconductor maker… And he still buys into the bunk about homeopathy? The compartmentalization is strong in this guy for sure.
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Are you sure you’re on the right website?
Around here, we disdain any measured consideration of things that we’ve already decided are ideologically unsound. Actual privately funded research that might prove we were totally right is anathema, because it also just might show we were partially wrong, and we can’t intellectually deal with even the slightest possibility of that.
That’s more like it! The mind only functions properly when solidly closed and impervious to all new data! #MAGA!!!
Wooops - exsanguination is a mainstream accepted medical practice for several ailments. It literally saved the life of a friend of mine who suffers from hereditary haemochromatosis (Hi, Liz!). Bloodletting is once again mainstream medicine, and thus holy beyond all reproach here. You must now do penance by condemning chiropractery to redress your heresy.
Sure, because you are confirming the consensus religion. Your personal claims to efficacy would be considered anecdotal and “fake science”, of course.
Stop that you heretic! NO RESEARCH! It’s EVIL!
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On the bright side if they get honest researchers then that money will be spent on expensive and detailed studies that debunk such things. Like people say, science it true regardless of belief. So if all is done correctly, it will end up being the largest debunking institution on earth; 200 million ways how homeopathy is bullshit. Again that’s only if they get honest researchers.
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They’ll do it after he’s dead.
What scientific advance would make the most difference to your daily life?
It’s not a scientific advance, but it would be an advance if Prince Charles would shut upabout alternative medicine.
FIFH.
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Considering I tend to believe everything at some level is “conscious,” including inanimate objects, there’s probably not much point in us debating this. 
We also probably have radically different ideas about what consciousness even is, or what the word means. But considering science has not answered that question, I feel somewhat free to leap to my own conclusions. 
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That’s not how it works.
If you, or any other supporter or practitioner of acupuncture wishes to support the claim that acupuncture is effective, then the onus is on the claimant to provide the necessary supporting evidence, not on those who dispute a baseless assertion to prove otherwise.
If you want people to believe that acupuncture works, you have to provide evidence that it works. It would also help if you could provide a coherent mechanism, based in modern understanding of physiology and biochemistry, by which it could have the effects its practitioners claim. Unfortunately, there is no such evidence and there is no such mechanism.
Homeopathy patients think homeopathy works. People who pay for nonsense detox therapies think detox works. People who pay for osteopathy and aromatherapy and those absurd Himalayan salt lamps think those things work. Some people think the earth is flat. Some people think Adam Sandler is funny. Just because they believe it doesn’t mean those beliefs are rational, and it doesn’t mean there’s any evidence to support them.
Insurance companies will insure anything they can make money on, and they can make money on all kinds of nonsense. Insurance companies are businesses, but their business is not to make decisions about whether a form of alternative medicine has been demonstrated by evidence to work.
It has been. Quite a lot. For the most part, the studies are shit for quality (as is very often the case for studies of alternative non-medicine, because their practitioners aren’t good researchers), so the conclusions are fuzzy. But generally, real acupuncture (needles actually go in) is no more effective than sham acupuncture (needles don’t go in). It’s a placebo. It works for some people for subjective chronic stuff (e.g. my back hurts sometimes, but I got acupuncture and it stopped hurting for a while) and doesn’t work at all to treat objective underlying conditions (e.g. any actual disease).
The placebo effect is a hell of a thing. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing. Elevating acecdote to the status of data is a hell of a thing. Mistaking correlation with causation is a hell of a thing. But none of them is the statistically significant result of a placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trial, and when you do one of those you learn that acupuncture doesn’t do anything real.
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If I could give two cents about alternative medicine, homeopathically, I’d be giving millions.
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Not quite, Tiger. The medicine is reducing the concentration of iron in the blood. The method is phlebotomies, specifically because it reduces the amount of iron in circulation, which is then diluted as fresh blood is created to replace that drawn off. In other words it is a specific method applied to achieve a specific and known effect to treat a specific and known ailment. It’s not just opening arteries to balance the humours.
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Yes, it is. I’m not a “supporter of acupuncture”; frankly, having not used it myself, I have no strong feelings for or against it.
But I am a very large supporter of not presenting personal opinions as universal, accepted fact, and keeping an open mind to new ideas that might challenge your own. Making a blanket statement that acupuncture is useless (or any other ill-studied alternative therapy used by millions of people with much success around the world) is a poor statement without data or information. It’s simply a personal opinion, otherwise.
And that is precisely why I am in favor of studies that are not “shit for quality”.
In your own words, that sort of trial has not been done properly to date, so you cannot make that conclusion.
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I think this is where the money should go. It’s one of the greatest mysteries of our time.
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“a fool and his money will soon be parted.”
How come there aren’t any homeopathic auto repair shops?
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Really, quite. Calling it different names does not change what happened… reality doesn’t change when you rename the process.
My friend was regularly bled in order to rebalance the composition of her bodily fluids. This resulted in a massive improvement of quality of life (including regaining her hair - she didn’t like being a balding young woman for some reason).
And I think my hopefully humorous mocking of the boingboing commentariat’s fetish for corporation approved medicine was in reference specifically to the word exsanguination anyway.
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Intent matters. Intending to rebalance humours is woo bullshit. Intending to dilute the concentration of iron in the blood is medicine.
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Well, of course. If I intend to use a Philips head screwdriver, the Robertson screwdriver I grab by mistake will totally work. Results are always driven by intention and proper belief, and the names you call things always determine their efficacy. That’s just common sense!
I kid because I love, you know.
Homeopathic car repair shop sounds a lot like a homemade air freshener store, hanging sprigs of lavender from your mirror by an amethyst pendant or something.
Homeopathic tires: You take a mix of something really bald, like apple skins, then you dilute it a million-bazillion times, and you pour it on the tires to promote tread growth.
Perfectly sound pseudo-science!
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