Nassim Taleb defends homeopathy

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@zikzak

There are plenty of real medical problems (whatever that means) for which placebos are an effective treatment

placebos are great for psychosomatic illnesses as they work directly on the cause!

@soulb

homeopathic coffee…which looks like it has reached it’s homeopathic goal…

they are doing it wrong, homeopathic coffee would be a sleep aid.

[subextraordinaire]

FYI: Students with “pink eye” (or as @FunkDaddy pointed out, those with bacterial infections) are considered to be walking contagions and are promptly sent home from California schools. But infectious colds? They get to share the wealth AND be miserable.

[redesigned]

@awjt

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.

This is an excellent distinction. Some old school chiropractors think that all illness originates in the spine and that they can cure everything from the cold to cavities by cracking your bones. I think that part is BS.

I love chiropractic adjustments, i like cracking my fingers though, so it follows that cracking my back is nice. I’ve had success with treatments for back pain with chiro. Same with osteopathic manipulation, i’ve found it helpful.

so even though i love being adjusted i give chiropractic medicine a thumbs sideways, instead of a full thumbs up.

[insert eddie izzard crack your bones video here] <= the internet failed me

[TooGoodToCheck_]

try wrapping it with a try/catch

[enso]

An anti-homeopathy post? Is it Wednesday?

[tachin1]

@Tom

If the entire efficacy of homeopathy depends on the placebo effect, then why are there homeopathic “remedies” for animals?

Its a good question, why indeed?

[gregmcph]

I had a little Chiro. Came to the conclusion that it was a rather expensive and too short back massage.

[gregmcph]

When you know that a Placebo is a Placebo, then it ceases to be one. You can’t be in on the joke.

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@redesigned

they are doing it wrong, homeopathic coffee would be a sleep aid.

oh, it actually is…coffea cruda. LOL.

[Skeptic]

@awjt

Allopathic is the traditional style of western medicine. Allo meaning opposite, so when you have a pain, you take an anti-pain medicine. When you have a tumor, you “go against” the tumor and remove it.

Allopathic is a term coined by Samuel Hahnemann to distinguish homeopathy. The term is used almost exclusively by alt med proponents to denigrate scientific medicine, and it is not an accurate term to describe scientific medicine, which uses many methods, including vaccination, which is not “opposite”.

@awjt

And so, allopathic and alternative medicine alike have factions that capitalize on the unawareness of the mechanism for healing. Homeopaths do it with water. Naturopaths do it with tinctures. Osteopaths do it with spinal manipulation. Allopaths do it with medicine they only suspect might be working.

As much as we’d like to portray that we are medically advanced, we are still barely out of the dark ages.

Before you can opine on the mechanisms for healing, first you have to prove there is an effect in the first place, and homeopathy has not done that. It is non-science - the kind of “medicine” kids playing with water and mud might invent.

If you want to get out fo the dark you need to be able to discard things proven not to work. Tell me one thing that alt-med has ever discarded? Anything? Hell, iridology is still practiced, and even taught in naturopathy “colleges”.

As to placebos, the placebo effect is not a single effect, but one thing we can say is that it affects (in some people, some of the time) the subjective symptoms of disease, not the objective measures of disease. So while a placebo like homeopathy or acupuncture might make an asthma patient say they feel like they can breathe better, an actual test of lung function will show that the do not. This kind of mistaking subjective belief for fact is potentially deadly, and part how cancer patients can think they are doing better thanks to alt med but actually getting worse.

[LDoBe]

And to call homeopathic practitioners con men is quite an insult. At least were I come from they have to pass pretty rigorous exams to be allowed to practice their healing. Not sure about the US, though.

I spent an awful lot of time and effort learning how to whittle ducks out of butter using a paperclip. That doesn’t mean I’m a qualified Michelin 3 star chef. When your training doesn’t actually have anything to do with medicine, it’s fraudulent to call yourself a doctor.

[Skeptic]

@zikzak

I’m totally for people being educated about their treatment, but it seems weird to demand such an abundance of sceptical information on placebos specifically, since many pharmaceutical drugs are also largely placebo effect. So if we’re going this route, I would say we should also put warnings on - for example - Prozac saying that 90% of the effects of this (expensive) drug can be achieved with sugar pills.

Yes, we should.

But that isn’t an argument in favor of not labeling homeopathy.

There are a few simple things we should do:

First, don’t stock fake drugs (homeopathy) next to scientific medicine.

Second, make the labeling clear: “This product isn’t proven to work.”

Also, stop with the homeopathic dilution labeling, such as 100c or 30x. Instead, say how much of the purported ingredients are in the dilution (generally, 0.00000000000000000000 mg per dose).

Don’t call any of the ingredients “active,” since they aren’t proven to have any effect.

And, finally, label ingredients by their common names, not in deliberately obfuscating Latin. So, Oscillococcinum pills (which should not be labeled as being for “flu” since they aren’t proven to do anything) should label the purported ingredient as “Muscovy duck heart and liver - rotted for 40 days at room temperature” rather than “Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum” - which sounds all sciency, but really isn’t.

[Brainspore]

@redesigned

If you take his advice and opinion and dilute it 1000x then it starts to make sense.

Homeophobe!

[LDoBe]

All homeopathic ingredients: lies, false hope, water, sugar.

[Skeptic]

@lolipop_jones

Leeching is still a valuable procedure in some surgical settings.

Nope, that isn’t still valuable, it is an entirely different procedure that happens to use the same tool, a leech. It’s like saying we still use bloodletting because both bloodletting and open heart surgery both use knives. They aren’t the same at all.

Leeches were used in medieval times to drain blood to balance the 4 humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood) as part of the pre-scientific medicine of humorism.. There was no actual physiological basis to bloodletting. It was a system of nonsense based on vitalism and balancing life forces, as are chiropractic, naturopathy, rekki, acupuncture and homeopathy. Whereas surgical use of leaches to drain blood from re-attached appendages is evidence based, and rooted in actual, proven human physiology. It is completely different than medieval use of leeches.

[Brainspore]

@P_Lenhart

We might still have Steve Jobs if he didn’t fall for woo woo cures.

Possibly. Even so, he still survived longer than most people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

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@Brainspore

Homeophobe!

I laughed, then was all like…wait? what does this even mean? if i’m only a really really little bit homeophobic do I encourage others to use homeopathic medicine?

@Skeptic

chiropractic, naturopathy, rekki, acupuncture and homeopathy

That’s quite a broad grouping. Acupuncture and TCM is recognized by allopathic medicine as being an effective legitimate form of medicine. Naturopathy just primarily uses herbal forms of pharmaceutical medicines. Granted there are quacks in both of those fields, but they can hardly be grouped with sugar water and holding your hands over someone.

[Brainspore]

@redesigned

I laughed, then was all like…wait? what does this even mean? if i’m only a really really little bit homeophobic do I encourage others to use homeopathic medicine?

If I haven’t gotten laid in three years, does that make me a homeosexual?

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@Brainspore

If I haven’t gotten laid in three years, does that make me a homeosexual?

You still have 997 years to go…then you will be homeopathic spanish fly!

[caze]

@redesigned

Acupuncture

Acupuncture has never to my knowledge been shown to outperform sham-Acupuncture in any decent study, and even then only for pain relief, which is a highly subjective and quite susceptible to placebo.