Yeah, no, ya know, no? Yeah. Ummm. Ohmmmmmmmmmm. Don’t reeeeesist Ohmmmmmm’s law. Ohmmmmmmm.
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Are you talking about chiro purely for lower back problems, or for solving other stuff?
Isn’t the whole subject based on a load of woo about holistic healing?
I’m talking Chiro mainly for back pain, and some for neuromuscular pain in extremities, since they all connect to the back. I am NOT talking about Chiro for indigestion or cancer.
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This is true to an extent. To say it sucks betrays unreal expectations from medicine.
A persons with allergies will of course want a cure but since we don’t yet know everything there is to know about allergies, to expect a cure is at the same time, completely normal behavior for a suffering human, and completely unreasonable given that we are still in our infancy in regards to understanding and therefore treatment.
Homeopathy, the topic at hand doesn’t do this either, not all alternative medicines operate the same way either so you’ll need to be more specific and defend those that operate as you describe, after all, there exists western alternative medicine as well. In Mexico, for example, prehispanic herbal remedy’s are still quite prevalent and popular. Some are even effective. Quite a few are bunk.
Even if homeopathy was to look at the whole environment, it would still need to be more effective than a placebo. Which it hasn’t proven itself to be.
[size=10](More effective than a placebo = People undergoing homeopathic care can get better, but it is not possible to assure that the homeopathic treatment is the cause, homeopaths have not been able to demonstrate a reliable measure of effectiveness under controlled environments.)[/size]
TL;DR
I would argue that if so called “alternative” medicine was more effective, we wouldn’t need what you describe as “western / pharmaceutical / science-based medicine”
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I saw them at the Reading Festival. They were the warm up for Pearl Jam. A bit rubbish, really.
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Pearl Jam? Yeah, they are a bit rubbish. 
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I’m not sure why anyone is surprised at this. The overhyped “Black Swan” basically pointed out a couple of known problems with modeling and prediction from imperfect statistics, and lept wildly to the conclusion that it’s pointless to try. This is by more of the same thing.
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It’s the offset, because they come back later with terminal cancer and cost more that way.
Noms law?
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…which looks like it has reached it’s homeopathic goal…
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I think Taleb might be seen here as a wit or a humorist. The business about homeopathy reminds me strongly of Feyerabend’s ‘defense’ of astrology, which I used to use to wind up the more literal of my scientismist friends back in the day. The problem with the known problems of modeling and prediction pointed out in The Black Swan and elsewhere by Taleb is not that they can’t be handled, it’s that people persistently refuse to handle them because they want to believe in some kind of supernal Tooth Fairy that will make everything turn out well. This can be either funny (as in Taleb’s anecdotes) or tragic (as in the U.S. leadership’s policies and practices with regard to the Middle East for several decades now).
It’s something that my (convention medicine) General Practitioner excels at too. My last one from ten years ago did as well, come to think of it
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I’m a strong proponent of talk therapy & support the use of drugs only in conjunction. You can change your mind more effectively than a drug regimen IMO, depending on the definition of effectively and what is being changed.
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True this, my GP also considers all aspects mentioned when discussing our health. The false binary presented serves the homeopath industry well, much to the detriment of many.
It boils down to "Doctors only know x, while Homeopaths consider all and it is completely ridiculous. Most major systemic advances, like many involving sanitation & hygiene, were brought about by medical persons thinking critically about environment and practices.
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via reddit
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His conclusion wasn’t that it was pointless to try, it was that we need to create systems that are resilient to failure, because failure is inevitable.
If the entire efficacy of homeopathy depends on the placebo effect, then why are there homeopathic “remedies” for animals? Google ‘homeopathy for dogs’ and Google even completes the search term for you there are so many hits.
And I suppose dogs are buying these for themselves and telling us they work? The owner is the one who identifies the health problem and seeks treatment. If the owner believes that the dog’s health has improved than the treatment is considered a success by the owner, regardless of whether the dog’s health improved, whether there was a legitimate health problem to begin with, or whether the treatment had any hand in the improved health.
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agreed
