[quote=“nungesser, post:22, topic:70519”]
Unrelated: I’d love to call for a moratorium on the idiotic word “woo” to describe things authors think are lacking in substance.
[/quote]Should we go back to “quackery”?
It depends what it’s about, really. Coffee enemas to remove “toxins” are quackery. So are ear candles, homeopathy, and clay colon cleanses. They’ve all been repeatedly proven to be useless. But when it’s something that could be real, that seems to work for a whole lot of people, but isn’t empirically, clinically proven yet – dismissing it as “woo” or “quackery” is a very closed-minded way to report on it.
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So, you’re saying in this coffee enema case it’s okay to call it woo but you don’t want that word applied everywhere?
As a side note, this place isn’t reporting, it’s an editorial space. So while there might be a lot of facts going around, there’s no objective take on anything posted.
I think the word “woo” is very silly and meaningless, especially when used indiscriminately to describe anything unproven.
And that’s very true, this isn’t a news website. I’m just stating my personal opinion on how things are frequently posted.
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It’s a silly word for silly and meaningless things. That’s the point.
Woo’s pretty heavily used in the skeptic community for exactly the scenarios we’re describing, I wouldn’t go for said moratorium nor would I expect others coming here to follow it.
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I was being a bit snarky when I said “I would love to ask for a moratorium”; I wasn’t actually calling for one or asking anyone to “follow” it. It was just an eye-rolling offhand comment on a very stupid word that’s overused on BB.
And my point is that it’s frequently used not for ‘silly and meaningless things’, but simply things the author has decided are outside of their comfort zone of curiosity.
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But that’s not the case in the skeptic communities I hang out in. It’s specifically used for non-scientific nonsense
http://skepdic.com/woowoo.html
So anybody coming in from those communities will use Woo to mean what it’s supposed to.
Might I propose something else? How about verifying that when others use ‘woo’ they’re referring to things that science has indicated are nonsense? And if the subject of the ‘woo’ allegation is NOT unsupported by science then you can point it out by demonstrating it isn’t woo, right?
Do you have an example of said incorrect usage? That’d help.
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Cool! I’m glad it’s helpful there. Unfortunately, it’s misused here, and no, I’m afraid I’m not going to search through the BB archives for frequent examples.[quote=“William_Holz, post:67, topic:70519”]
How about verifying that when others use ‘woo’ they’re referring to things that science has indicated are nonsense?
[/quote]
Sure, if you’d prefer that.
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I only found 50 uses of it https://bbs.boingboing.net/search?q="Woo%20"
So I’m not sure about how “frequent” you’re thinking it happens but it’s probably not that many.
Thank you!
That’s a really good point. I don’t know about here at BB, but I’ve had conversations IRL with many a proud skeptic where someone in the group says, “I had this wild subjective experience, it was as if [insert metaphor here]”, and the skeptic proceeds to tear the person down for spouting “woo”. To which the reply is, “yeah, we know the person isn’t making a literal report of what happened. They’re trying to convey their subjective, emotional response to what happened”. Which usually just makes the skeptic declare “WOO!” all the louder.
Kind of a drag at casual social gatherings.
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a relative passed away a couple years back - cancer - and of all the nonstandard remedies she tried, coffee enemas at least had the benefit of being cheap. I can’t say the same for shark cartilage, 714X, tibetan singing bowls or whatever else
this is not so much a defense of coffee enemas. just, seeing it talked about here brought back a lot of memories, and fuck the quacks who make a living off of killing people with cancer
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You should stop inviting that person to your parties, they sound like a jerk.
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Condolences on your loss.
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I’m pretty sure it’s only supposed to be ‘woo’ if there’s claim of some non-subjective thing. I do a lot of healthcare work so yeah, anything that’s just pulled out of somebody’s ass deserves the ‘woo’ treatment even if a few people say it works (even subjectively) because we’ve been fighting like crazy to keep money from going to people who are wasting it on treatments that don’t just ‘have no scientific basis’ but ‘have been tested and validated not to for what it’s being described for’
So in homeopathy, coffee enemas, detox, basically anything that comes out of Dr. Oz’s mouth…that’s Woo. Having a kick-ass time at a concert, mediation, even embracing the placebo effect (well, there are like seven placebo effects technically) and the like aren’t.
Though honestly, if somebody’s peeing in somebody else’s cheerios for their harmless fun, then they’re just a dick and the problem isn’t the word ‘woo’ or the misuse thereof.
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What…I don’t stick coffee in my woo, i stick it in my quack!
Also, on a more serious note enemas serve a legitimate medical purpose if you are impacted and cannot poop, or have lost muscle control over the muscles that drive the intestinal action (some paralysis cases). If you aren’t passing your poop you do indeed get a highly increased toxic load on the body that the enema will relieve. Enemas are not a quack medical treatment, they just don’t do many of the things people ascribe to them, and aren’t indicated for many of the uses they are suggested for…When being skeptical it is good to note when things have legitimate application.
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Enemas, themselves, are very useful and helpful in the right situations, and there’s very good reasons to get them! Using coffee as an enema in order to ‘absorb toxins’, on the other hand… not so much.
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I prefer a nice spirit-sogum, thank you very much.
Okay, but that gets back to what @nungesser was saying about limits on curiosity. I’m always astonished by the number of skeptics who want to shut down and diminish anything observed but not yet explained by science. The easiest way to freak out the skeptics I know is to say, “No-one knows how that works yet.” That’s different from the “we know it doesn’t work” of the coffee enema, but I guess it doesn’t give them a sufficient opportunity to be skeptical or something.
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I still maintain you’re partying with the wrong people.
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