On 11/28/09 23:12, somebody wrote:
>> Except that evidence wasn't lacking.
>
> Claims motivated by greed is not evidence.

	Thanks for the non sequitur. Let me know when you're talking about 
psychokinetic and related claims.

>> Because no one came to you stating that they had dug a little and found
>> reason to believe there is a diamond mine there. No one came to you with
>> a story about how 200 years ago, someone found a diamond there, or found
>> clues indicative of diamonds.
>
> So your litmus test is *someone* telling you something. Let's see how you
> respond to the Nigerian scam problem:

	Nope. You asked why it's not analogous, and I told you.

>> It sure could be. Your point? I don't pursue them, because that's not
>> my area of interest. It's not exactly an academic activity, and if I
>> were to dig deep and find that some are legitimate emails, humanity has
>> gained nothing. Sure, I may get rich, but I didn't realize this whole
>> discussion was oriented towards /personal/ gain.
>
> So, instead of admitting that they are *all* scams (which would invalidate
> your point above, since they are claims made by *many people*), you are
> saying that you are not interested in money. Admirable. But why not pursue
> them anyway, get the money, and donate it all to a worthy cause that
> benefits humanity?

	Did you ever pass reading comprehension?

	What you're stating I said is not what I said. I won't bother to respond.

-- 
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's 
too late." - Frank Sinatra

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> Number of outlandish
> claims in general, definitely has increased dramatically 

I'm not sure that's true. The ability for you to know all the outlandish 
claims going on has increased. But I suspect that there were tons and tons 
of outlandish claims being made during the middle ages that would just be 
scoffed at these days. And no reason to think there were fewer.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> In other words, odds are, all paranormal claims are nonsense. To even
> *begin* investigating, there has to be some extraordinary supporting
> evidence.

And there was. Numerous witnesses all over saying it worked and they had 
seen miracles with their own eyes.

Think up a list of nonsense that *didn't* get investigated that might have 
aided the military, and you'll understand perhaps. :-)

> My argument (not feeling) is, there is a finite set of confirmed truths at
> any finite time, but potentially uncountably many falsehoods. Unless there's
> good evidence *before* we start, we cannot simply waste time investigating
> anything and everything. The onus is on who deem paranormal investigation is
> worthy to show that the paranormal claim in question is somehow different
> than all these falsehoods.

And they did. They offered eye witnesses. Then the scientific method, during 
investigation, showed that the eye witnesses were mistaken. What more do you 
want?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

On 11/28/09 23:45, somebody wrote:
>>>> There was a time when all of humanity honestly believed the world was
>>>> flat, and anybody who claimed it wasn't was *obviously* a lunatic.
>
>>>     AFAIK that's an urban legend. "Popular history" so to speak.
>
>> That's an urban legend if you're looking at "recent history". It
>> wouldn't surprise me if 10,000 years ago everyone thought this. And if
>> not then, keep going further back in time...
>
> Sure, and at one point, all proto humans were hurling feces at each other.
> None of this is relevant to the question of *modern* science investigating
> paranormal *today*.

	Thanks again for the non sequitur. Please raise a red flag for when 
your response is actually a response to something I wrote, as opposed to 
something unrelated that you just want to sneak into the conversation.


-- 
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's 
too late." - Frank Sinatra

Post a reply to this message

TC wrote:
> Once it was known as true that the earth is a disc. Jerusalem was the center 
> of the earth, the sun and the planets were proven to revolve around the 
> earth.

You know, I don't think this is true.  I think the religions pushing this 
stuff always knew they had no idea if they were actually right or not.

Even nowadays, it surprises me (in some sense) that religious people object 
to the teaching of evolution here. You'd think if creationism were *true* 
and they *really* believed it, they wouldn't be worried about *science*.

Why would the church lock up Galileo if they thought his observations and 
deductions were factually incorrect?

 > Look into the old theories of epicycles and hypocycles which were
> used to explain the movements of the planets scientifically. Today we know 
> better.

Epicycles were the String Theory of orbital mechanics. :-)


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> You know, I don't think this is true.  I think the religions pushing 
> this stuff always knew they had no idea if they were actually right or not.

Oh, I think there have always been people who truly, honestly believe 
that every single syllable of the Bible is the Word of God, and cannot 
be wrong. Whether these are the people "pushing" religion is another 
matter...

> Even nowadays, it surprises me (in some sense) that religious people 
> object to the teaching of evolution here. You'd think if creationism 
> were *true* and they *really* believed it, they wouldn't be worried 
> about *science*.

Oh, I think *today* people just want to be right.

> Why would the church lock up Galileo if they thought his observations 
> and deductions were factually incorrect?

They believed it to be blasphemy, a most evil sin, and that his work 
could corrupt the minds of others. And the church's job, of course, is 
to prevent the innocent from being corrupted. (Or raking in craploads of 
money, depending on how cynical you are...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes in 
>> the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that sounds...)
>>
> 
> It is nonsense.

Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical doctors 
can stop looking into it now.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> If *nobody else* studying it is good, an unqualified *nobody* studying it is
> even better, is it not?

No.

> Besides, the nature of paranormal claims is such that they can not be
> conclusively disproven. 

This is incorrect.

 > There will never be a study to disprove that which
> is not a theory.

That's why you make theories about it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> "Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
> news:4b111fbd$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>>>> Disproving a theory is every bit as important as proving a theory. By
>>>> proving that the psychic phenominon does not exist, now nobody else
>>>> needs to study it. This is beneficial.
> 
>>> If *nobody else* studying it is good, an unqualified *nobody* studying
> it is
>>> even better, is it not?
> 
>> The only way to scientifically determine whether a claim is valid or not
>> is to, you know, actually investigate it. If we wrote off anything that
>> sounded too weird, human kind would never have advanced anywhere.
> 
> Person A: I can read minds.
> Scientist: Hypothesis: Some people can read minds. Sure, let's test it.
> - Test yields a negative result -
> Person A: I was off that day. I cannot read minds on Fridays.
> Scientist: Sure, let's repeat the test on a Monday.
> - Test yields a negative result -

After a few of these, you start asking questions like "why does the day of 
the week matter."

Just like you say "Things fall at the same speed."  "Well, not a feather and 
a hammer."  "Why not?"

> Person A: The room was too cold. It doesn't work in the cold.

Scientist: Why not?

> So what did the scientist "prove"? 

That's not how science works.

> Even if she tests a million people with
> negative results, she can not conclude that reading minds is not possible

That's not how science works. The scientists investigating the claim weren't 
trying to prove it's impossible. They were trying to find people who could 
do it. If you run out of people who say "I'm willing to prove I can do it", 
or you test a statistically large sample, you can come back and say "we are 
99% sure nobody can do this."  You don't have to prove that remaining 1%, 
any more than you have to prove a drug always works for everyone before you 
can start prescribing it.

> The supposed hypothesis stated at the
> beginning was patently inadequate and nonsensical,

And what hypotheses did the actual scientists actually investigate? Or are 
you just making up straw men and then knocking them down?

> A claim itself is not evidence (unlike what some people here seem to think).

It *is* evidence. It's just not *scientific* evidence.

If I claimed I drove to Las Vegas last week, would you doubt my claim? Would 
you insist it must be nonsense because I'm the only one making that claim?

> With paranormal, there are only personal/subjective claims.

Yes. And that's evidence. It's just not scientific evidence. So then you 
apply the scientific method to see if the personal claims are actually 
scientific evidence.

I can measure cold fusion or irregularities in the orbit of mercury too, and 
until you run through the scientific process, it's also personal/subjective 
claims.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   *Some* people believed the Earth was flat at some point, but it was not
> as common as most people nowadays believe.

The people arguing against Columbus setting out weren't arguing that he'd 
fall off the edge, but rather that the Earth was far too large to sail 
around in the size ships he was taking. Which was true. He would have died 
had he not run into the Americas.

>   The placebo effect also causes measurable chemical changes in the body.

Interestingly, I've read that the placebo effect has been getting measurably 
stronger over the last few decades. How's *that* for a mind-screw?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve quite 
> a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then rediscovered, often 
> after a seriously large length of time.)

That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really happened 
much since the invention of the printing press.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Have any links to those studies, I would love to see it in print and be
> able to pass it around to others.

GIYF? http://www.livescience.com/health/090120-acupuncture-placebo.html

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

On 11/29/09 11:15, Darren New wrote:
> Even nowadays, it surprises me (in some sense) that religious people
> object to the teaching of evolution here. You'd think if creationism
> were *true* and they *really* believed it, they wouldn't be worried
> about *science*.

	The same could be said about teaching creationism.

	The sad truth is (and history - both recent and past - suggests) that 
being true/correct/logical is not that good a criterion for being accepted.

> Why would the church lock up Galileo if they thought his observations
> and deductions were factually incorrect?

	Because it's not too hard to make false statements the "truth", despite 
their being lots of evidence to the contrary?


-- 
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's 
too late." - Frank Sinatra

Post a reply to this message

On 11/29/09 11:21, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Oh, I think there have always been people who truly, honestly believe
> that every single syllable of the Bible is the Word of God, and cannot

	Every syllable? In which language?<G>


-- 
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's 
too late." - Frank Sinatra

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Have any links to those studies, I would love to see it in print and be
>> able to pass it around to others.
> 
> GIYF? http://www.livescience.com/health/090120-acupuncture-placebo.html
> 

The article doesn't say that sham acupuncture is just as effective.
LiveScience isn't a journal, so I will give them the benefit of doubt
that they didn't misquote things, but still take their opinion with salt.

If that article is referring to
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab007587.html then it doesn't say
that acupuncture to the wrong points was just as effective. From the
abstract of "Acupuncture for tension-type headache", Linde K et al:

> Main results
> Eleven trials with 2317 participants (median 62, range 10 to 1265) met the inclusion
criteria. Two large trials compared acupuncture to treatment of acute headaches or
routine care only. Both found statistically significant and clinically relevant
short-term (up to 3 months) benefits of acupuncture over control for response, number
of headache days and pain intensity. Long-term effects (beyond 3 months) were not
investigated. Six trials compared acupuncture with a sham acupuncture intervention,
and five of the six provided data for meta-analyses. Small but statistically
significant benefits of acupuncture over sham were found for response as well as for
several other outcomes. Three of the four trials comparing acupuncture with
physiotherapy, massage or relaxation had important methodological or reporting
shortcomings. Their findings are difficult to interpret, but collectively suggest
slightly better results for some outcomes in the control groups.
> 
> Authors' conclusions
> In the previous version of this review, evidence in support of acupuncture for
tension-type headache was considered insufficient. Now, with six additional trials,
the authors conclude that acupuncture could be a valuable non-pharmacological tool in
patients with frequent episodic or chronic tension-type headaches.

And for migraine headaches, it seems that the placebo effect is strong
enough that real needles are not needed. But, same authors, so perhaps
that speaks more about migraine headaches than it does about acupuncture.
(http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001218.html)

> Authors' conclusions
> In the previous version of this review, evidence in support of acupuncture for
migraine prophylaxis was considered promising but insufficient. Now, with 12
additional trials, there is consistent evidence that acupuncture provides additional
benefit to treatment of acute migraine attacks only or to routine care. There is no
evidence for an effect of 'true' acupuncture over sham interventions, though this is
difficult to interpret, as exact point location could be of limited importance.
Available studies suggest that acupuncture is at least as effective as, or possibly
more effective than, prophylactic drug treatment, and has fewer adverse effects.
Acupuncture should be considered a treatment option for patients willing to undergo
this treatment.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> No, but that's a posteriori. Anyone may make a claim without good reason or
> evidence, and I can justifiably laugh at him (for making a claim without
> supporting reasoning or data). That's present time. That same person, in the
> next 10 years, may actually work very hard to prove his claim, and let's say
> it turns out to be correct (whether it was dumb luck or unexplainable genius
> behind him making such a claim 10 years before he had any evidence, matters
> not). But that won't change the fact that at the time he made the claim, he
> did not know enough to make it.
> 
> 

So, how much is the minimal evidence required before the person can
state their absurd hypothesis aloud? Or would you prefer no one made a
hypothesis until after they had enough evidence to back it up?

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> The article doesn't say that sham acupuncture is just as effective.

Maybe I'm misreading the second sentence, which says
"""
But the results also suggest that faked procedures, in which needles are 
incorrectly inserted, can be just as effective.
"""

> LiveScience isn't a journal, 

I thought I saw a link there to the actual study, but I see I'm wrong. 
However, google is still your friend.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/5/1242

http://www.google.com/search?q=accupuncture+double-blind

http://www.google.com/search?q=sham+acupuncture+study


so I will give them the benefit of doubt
> that they didn't misquote things, but still take their opinion with salt.
> 
> If that article is referring to
> http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab007587.html then it doesn't say
> that acupuncture to the wrong points was just as effective. From the
> abstract of "Acupuncture for tension-type headache", Linde K et al:
> 
>> Main results
>> Eleven trials with 2317 participants (median 62, range 10 to 1265) met the
inclusion criteria. Two large trials compared acupuncture to treatment of acute
headaches or routine care only. Both found statistically significant and clinically
relevant short-term (up to 3 months) benefits of acupuncture over control for
response, number of headache days and pain intensity. Long-term effects (beyond 3
months) were not investigated. Six trials compared acupuncture with a sham acupuncture
intervention, and five of the six provided data for meta-analyses. Small but
statistically significant benefits of acupuncture over sham were found for response as
well as for several other outcomes. Three of the four trials comparing acupuncture
with physiotherapy, massage or relaxation had important methodological or reporting
shortcomings. Their findings are difficult to interpret, but collectively suggest
slightly better results for some outcomes in the control groups.
>>
>> Authors' conclusions
>> In the previous version of this review, evidence in support of acupuncture for
tension-type headache was considered insufficient. Now, with six additional trials,
the authors conclude that acupuncture could be a valuable non-pharmacological tool in
patients with frequent episodic or chronic tension-type headaches.
> 
> And for migraine headaches, it seems that the placebo effect is strong
> enough that real needles are not needed. But, same authors, so perhaps
> that speaks more about migraine headaches than it does about acupuncture.
> (http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001218.html)
> 
>> Authors' conclusions
>> In the previous version of this review, evidence in support of acupuncture for
migraine prophylaxis was considered promising but insufficient. Now, with 12
additional trials, there is consistent evidence that acupuncture provides additional
benefit to treatment of acute migraine attacks only or to routine care. There is no
evidence for an effect of 'true' acupuncture over sham interventions, though this is
difficult to interpret, as exact point location could be of limited importance.
Available studies suggest that acupuncture is at least as effective as, or possibly
more effective than, prophylactic drug treatment, and has fewer adverse effects.
Acupuncture should be considered a treatment option for patients willing to undergo
this treatment.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes in 
>>> the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that sounds...)
>>>
>>
>> It is nonsense.
> 
> Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical 
> doctors can stop looking into it now.
> 
Yep.. Right along with "alternative medicine", which results in stupid 
BS like one guy a while back that nearly died from a treatable genetic 
disorder, because the doctor looked him over and concluded he was merely 
lacking energy, so prescribed an "herbal supplement", until he didn't 
feel any better and went to the emergency room. It took, ironically, one 
look from a nurse to rush him into a better doctor.

Medical doctors are not, for the most part, scientists. Some manage to 
pass their examines while believing in creationism, denying germ 
theories of disease, and thinking that the brain has nothing to do with 
"thinking". They are basically human repair techs, who know how to 
determine, when they bother to *actually* apply stuff, instead of 
picking and choosing which things to look for (in some thankfully rare 
cases), to diagnosis.

They are not trained in double blind studies, they do no conduct 
experiments (nor would they be allowed to, considering the consequences 
of what they would be experimenting on), they are not even often aware 
of *every* detail of their own practice, never mind necessarily their 
own specialty, and often, the things they end up trying, like 
acupuncture, isn't even *in* their own specialty. In short, most of them 
a) will make mistakes that a more careful study would catch and b) don't 
know how to properly conduct such a study.

There are some that *are* and *do*. Guess which ones are producing the 
negative results and saying it doesn't work, and which ones claim its 
effective... Others, do know, and have been caught making claims that 
don't hold up, when looking at the data. I.e., their results are based 
on confirmation bias, not proper testing or analysis.

The only reason people are still "studying" it is that there are a great 
many people obsessed with the idea that it does still work (just look at 
the huge and growing amount of new "alternative" BS being sold every 
year), and an endless line of non-specialist, non-scientist, non-trained 
in such investigation, doctors jumping in to look at something that is 
pretty much dead at this point. Give it another 20 years, maybe, and 
acupuncture will be "fringe", like like homeopathy. And, like 
Chiropractic treatment, which is, I repeat, *not* provided by medical 
doctors, but a side line industry with its own "schools", it will 
probably still be used, despite all evidence that its pure gibberish.

Again.. All the studies done to find mechanisms for both provide none, 
all evidence for both suggest it doesn't work like described, the 
effects of both might be provided by less inconvenient (or in one case, 
dangerous) means, and the studies that do suggest it works don't 
generally ask, until recently, why, how, or even 'if' it works in a way 
that is better than placebo.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> The only way to scientifically determine whether a claim is valid or 
>>> not is to, you know, actually investigate it. If we wrote off 
>>> anything that sounded too weird, human kind would never have advanced 
>>> anywhere.
>>>
>> No argument there. Now.. Given how only the people that cheat, lie, 
>> stack the deck, or consider "Blair Witch" style theatrics, followed by 
>> babbling, "That random sound sort of sounded like...", or, "Gee that 
>> random camera glitch moved like moved 'purposefully', why can't we 
>> drop the supposed paranormal already? Oh, and I love that last one, 
>> "move purposefully". By whose definition, by what criteria? That its 
>> less random than some other random light? More? Moved in what you 
>> *think* is a pattern? What the hell does "moved purposefully" even 
>> fraking mean without context of the ability to determine what the 
>> purpose *is*?
> 
> The military weren't studying the entire zoo of paranormal claims, they 
> studied one specific aspect: the claim that certain people can see 
> events distant in space and possibly time. This one is quite easy to 
> verify one way or the other. They tried; the statistics were 
> unimpressive; they gave up and shut down the project. Seems like a 
> non-WTF to me.
> 
>> Its been tested and retested ***over and over*** thousands of times, 
> 
> It has *now*. Not sure about back when this study was done...
> 
lol True enough. Doesn't stop people from *continuing* to test it. There 
is even a group of *ex-subjects* from the original military test that 
are still busy babbling about how it *does* work, the military still 
secretly uses it, and using the same unimpressive BS as "proof" of it. 
Go figure..

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Sadly, while plausible, its not the case. It been done using the "wrong"
>> places, and even using needles are fake, and don't cause any sort of
>> puncture at all. In fact, the only thing that seems to effect outcomes,
>> based on the experiments done by one person, who used to be an advocate
>> of it, until he started wondering why the hell the multitude of
>> acupressure methods neither agree with each other, or the acupuncture
>> chart, is if the explanation "sounds" plausible to the patient, and the
>> practitioner appears to believe it themselves. Mostly the later. If you
>> stick someone in the room to do the procedure that pretends to think its
>> all BS, and who won't provide any facts, details, or explanation, the
>> result is complete failure.
> 
> Have any links to those studies, I would love to see it in print and be
> able to pass it around to others.
> 

Wish I knew where to find them. Hmm. Ask Penn and Teller? They where the 
ones that tracked down the guy, whose name I can't even remember. But, 
he was, apparently, for a while, one of the #1 people running around 
advocating its use, and even still has the bus he used to treat people, 
as part of spreading the idea around. He now uses it to show people why 
its bunk.

And for why its not placebo.. I never said it wasn't. But we don't use 
placebos, in most cases, for one key reason, and two lesser ones. The 
main one is ethics. To make a placebo work you have to basically *lie* 
to a patient. The others are 1) lying about the effect of such a 
treatment allows those denying that it "is" placebo to continue to 
suggest that its not, and that a whole host of other BS is real too, 2) 
some of those things *can be* and *are* dangerous, under certain 
circumstance, and 3) people may opt to use the placebo, and refuse 
*real* treatment. The later two happen all the time, and people die from 
it every single year, some of them children.

You can't lie to patients, and you can't support things that result in 
people failing to take treatments for *serious* conditions, by only 
taking the placebo. And then... there are the "doctors" who haven't 
managed to get their license pulled, because they are not *technically* 
doing anything they *know* (or at least believe) is wrong, who may hurt 
or kill people by advocating the placebo *instead* of the real 
treatments. And, since no rules exist to prevent it, other than the 
ethics rules, which deny use of such things at all, opening the door to 
them means you have no way to remove such doctors from their practice 
for malpractice.

Its literally one of those slippery slope issues that it would be *far* 
better to avoid than advocate openly.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

>>> Its been tested and retested ***over and over*** thousands of times, 
>>
>> It has *now*. Not sure about back when this study was done...
>>
> lol True enough. Doesn't stop people from *continuing* to test it. There 
> is even a group of *ex-subjects* from the original military test that 
> are still busy babbling about how it *does* work, the military still 
> secretly uses it, and using the same unimpressive BS as "proof" of it. 
> Go figure..

Some people are just delusional. And hey, let's face it, who wouldn't 
want to believe that they actually have secret super-powers and/or make 
craploads of money?

Post a reply to this message

>> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve 
>> quite a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then 
>> rediscovered, often after a seriously large length of time.)
> 
> That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really 
> happened much since the invention of the printing press.

Which, AFAIK, is "fairly recent".

(I still find it amusing that if you plot the names of all the famous 
mathematicians on a graph, there's this big cluster in the middle, about 
400 years ago, and there's Pythagorus at the other end of the graph. And 
seemingly nothing inbetween. Also seemingly nothing since a few hundred 
years ago. I guess mathematicians aren't all that famous any more...)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> The article doesn't say that sham acupuncture is just as effective.
> 
> Maybe I'm misreading the second sentence, which says
> """
> But the results also suggest that faked procedures, in which needles are
> incorrectly inserted, can be just as effective.
> """
> 

Sorry, I rearranged my post to make it more readable, and ended up with
that line out of context. I was refering to the articles by Linde, which
the LiveScience page seemed to be referencing. In those, they found
that, for tension headaches, actual acupuncture worked marginally but
statistically better than sham acupuncture. For migraines, they both
were more effective than certain drugs.

>> LiveScience isn't a journal, 
> 
> I thought I saw a link there to the actual study, but I see I'm wrong.
> However, google is still your friend.
> 

Yes, it is, that is how I got the other two articles on Cochrane that
found that it was effective for certain things. Google is a nice large
place to look, and with a tonne of studies on acupuncture and the
placebo effect I thought that if there was a single large meta study
proving it was ineffective at just about everything, as Patrick
suggested in the post I first replied to, then I either missed it or was
searching in the wrong terms. All I found were cases where the efficacy
was either proven or disproved for certain symptoms or disorders when
compared to either drugs, placebo drugs, or placebo acupuncture.

I hate linking to Elsevier studies, for reasons that would take a whole
other thread, but:
Acupuncture doesn't work for chronic pain
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304395999003048
Real needles do work better for rotator cuff tendinitis
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304395999001074

That is just two that google scholar pulls up. The nearest to an overall
study, that I can find today, is
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1295163/ and the results
there are . . . odd? Placebos are known to have an effect in roughly
1/3rd of people, so if 60% benefit from either acupuncture or sham
acupuncture, then something else is happening.

> http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/5/1242
> 

Acupuncture doesn't cure allergies, alright that I can believe. Neither
does aspirin, or cipro, or valium.

I get the feeling that there are some things acupuncture can be used for
in modern medicine, and others that it shouldn't be used for.

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Wish I knew where to find them. Hmm. Ask Penn and Teller? They where the
> ones that tracked down the guy, whose name I can't even remember. But,
> he was, apparently, for a while, one of the #1 people running around
> advocating its use, and even still has the bus he used to treat people,
> as part of spreading the idea around. He now uses it to show people why
> its bunk.

I will keep digging then. I keep journal search engines bookmarked,
because I keep finding my self needing things to read.

> And for why its not placebo.. I never said it wasn't. But we don't use
> placebos, in most cases, for one key reason, and two lesser ones. The
> main one is ethics. To make a placebo work you have to basically *lie*
> to a patient. The others are 1) lying about the effect of such a
> treatment allows those denying that it "is" placebo to continue to
> suggest that its not, and that a whole host of other BS is real too, 2)
> some of those things *can be* and *are* dangerous, under certain
> circumstance, and 3) people may opt to use the placebo, and refuse
> *real* treatment. The later two happen all the time, and people die from
> it every single year, some of them children.

"We" . . . If you are speaking from medical training, I will defer to
better knowledge of the field. Just let me know. All I know is from
years on the patient side of things.

Beyond that, I got my wording mixed up. Happens, I suck at English some
days. I wasn't openly advocating the use of placebos over all other
drugs. I was trying to say that if acupuncture and sham acupuncture have
similar success rates for Disorder X (what ever that individual symptom
or ailment is), and that success rate is higher than the known placebo
effect of around 30%, then why not use it. Why not study it?

> You can't lie to patients,

Yes you can. Every time a doctor gives out some antibiotics for a viral
infection, that's a placebo. Sugar pills were found to have roughly the
same effective treatment rate for mild depression and anxiety. So
someone gets a mild anti-depressant for times when they are just feeling
blue, another placebo.

"Just feeling blue" may be a local phrase. What I reference is feeling
justifiably depressed and sad; dog or parents died, wife left, house
burned down, things of that nature.

> and you can't support things that result in
> people failing to take treatments for *serious* conditions, by only
> taking the placebo.

Was not suggesting that at all. If another medical treatment has better
results, great. But, benefit analysis needs to be done, between the
doctor and patient, on the side effects too.

> And then... there are the "doctors" who haven't
> managed to get their license pulled, because they are not *technically*
> doing anything they *know* (or at least believe) is wrong, who may hurt
> or kill people by advocating the placebo *instead* of the real
> treatments. And, since no rules exist to prevent it, other than the
> ethics rules, which deny use of such things at all, opening the door to
> them means you have no way to remove such doctors from their practice
> for malpractice.

Those same fake doctors have an arsenal of things they can claim work,
with propped up studies that back them up. Hunt them down, sure, but it
doesn't hurt to look at their data just to see if one in a thousand of
them might have been on to something real.

> Its literally one of those slippery slope issues that it would be *far*
> better to avoid than advocate openly.
>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Invisible wrote:
>>>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>>>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes in 
>>>> the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that sounds...)
>>>>
>>>
>>> It is nonsense.
>>
>> Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical 
>> doctors can stop looking into it now.
>>
> Yep.. 

<long 100% nonsequitur rant deleted>

Wow. OK, I think I'll just give up now.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve 
>>> quite a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then 
>>> rediscovered, often after a seriously large length of time.)
>>
>> That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really 
>> happened much since the invention of the printing press.
> 
> Which, AFAIK, is "fairly recent".

Yep. The first "modern" press was the mid-1400's.  There were some in China 
that didn't work out all that well due to the lack of an alphabet.  Plus, 
there were wood-cuts which again for some reason didn't work out all that well.

> seemingly nothing inbetween. 

Quite possibly due to either libraries burning down, or due to math not 
being all that useful without science, once the basics you need for 
architecture census and such are figured out.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

>>>> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve 
>>>> quite a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then 
>>>> rediscovered, often after a seriously large length of time.)
>>>
>>> That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really 
>>> happened much since the invention of the printing press.
>>
>> Which, AFAIK, is "fairly recent".
> 
> Yep. The first "modern" press was the mid-1400's.  There were some in 
> China that didn't work out all that well due to the lack of an 
> alphabet.

Hahaha! Isn't China that country that *has* an alphabet, but it's 22,000 
characters or something absurd?

>> seemingly nothing inbetween. 
> 
> Quite possibly due to either libraries burning down, or due to math not 
> being all that useful without science, once the basics you need for 
> architecture census and such are figured out.

Check out the graph:

http://tinyurl.com/ydncoro

Notice the huge gap in the middle, and the much smaller gap between then 
and now? I'm sure other mathematicians *existed*, they just weren't 
especially famous... ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Hahaha! Isn't China that country that *has* an alphabet, but it's 22,000 
> characters or something absurd?

No, it's not an alphabet. It's writing, but there aren't phonetic letters 
you rearrange to make words, which is what "alphabet" means. From the greek 
Alpha Beta.

> Notice the huge gap in the middle, and the much smaller gap between then 
> and now? I'm sure other mathematicians *existed*, they just weren't 
> especially famous... ;-)

Well, anyone whose name we still know 500+ years later would probably fall 
under "especially famous" for me. Of course there might be a big gap when 
you list individual mathematicians. You're not graphing famous mathematicians.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Chron.html


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Well, anyone whose name we still know 500+ years later would probably 
> fall under "especially famous" for me. 


Yeah, I guess if you don't count Pythagoras as a famous mathematician, we 
might get some gaps in there, yah. ;-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>>> Invisible wrote:
>>>>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>>>>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes 
>>>>> in the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that 
>>>>> sounds...)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It is nonsense.
>>>
>>> Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical 
>>> doctors can stop looking into it now.
>>>
>> Yep.. 
> 
> <long 100% nonsequitur rant deleted>
> 
> Wow. OK, I think I'll just give up now.
> 
Sigh.. Not a rant, but an explanation. As I said, your "medical doctors" 
are almost universally not trained scientists, they are a sort of 
technician. As such, many of them get it into their heads to run "tests" 
of things that are marginal at best, and *do it wrong*, producing false 
results, which then get promoted by advocates of the alternative 
treatment. The ones that are trained as scientists all, at this point, 
pretty much agree that certain things are placebo, and the only question 
is, "What causes the effect", not, "Should I treat someone with this 
sham method, or give them an aspirin?" That clearer for you?

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> I get the feeling that there are some things acupuncture can be used for
> in modern medicine, and others that it shouldn't be used for.

The problem, as I pointed out to someone else, is that you have a *lot* 
of medical doctors doing these sorts of studies, but not all of them are 
scientifically trained. When ever you run into something like this you 
have about half the studies run by people making critical mistakes, and 
not being immediately caught doing it, often with very small numbers of 
patients in the groups. Other studies, on the same matter, end up 
contradicting them. So far, what I have seen, implies, rather strongly, 
that this is what is going on here. After all, some of these same 
doctors are noted for a) prescribing medications that are not intended 
for use X, for that, because the side effect of treating Y seems to 
produce and effect that could help X, or b) presenting other even more 
"alternative" treatments, along side the stuff they published a study on.

Point being, would you trust someone doing a study, who has no training 
in running proper studies, and also believes in homeopathy? This isn't 
always the case, which makes things even more confused, but all too 
often you find the people behind the studies are either believers in 
other quack, or funded by such. If, and this is a big if, it actually 
does do something in some obscure cases, I am still not sure that the 
unfortunate side effect of finding this out, that of having a huge 
number of people insist that it still does work for allergies, and 
pointing at non-related studies of something that it does work for, is 
worth the relatively small benefit that might be gained from it.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "We" . . . If you are speaking from medical training, I will defer to
> better knowledge of the field. Just let me know. All I know is from
> years on the patient side of things.
> 
Meant "we" in the general sense of society not accepting doctors lying 
to patients about treatments working or not.

> Yes you can. Every time a doctor gives out some antibiotics for a viral
> infection, that's a placebo. Sugar pills were found to have roughly the
> same effective treatment rate for mild depression and anxiety. So
> someone gets a mild anti-depressant for times when they are just feeling
> blue, another placebo.
> 
If a doctor is giving out antibiotics for a viral infection then, yes, 
they would be lying.. You give people anti-virals for viruses, which 
isn't the same thing. As for sugar pills... Yes, in "rare" occasions 
this has been done, but its usually with a) people that don't have 
anything wrong with them in the first place, but think they do, or b) 
... I am not sure, but its not as an alternative to *real* treatment, 
and it is an ethics issue, which, as I understand it, gets argued a lot.

And no, I am not saying that you would advocate replacement of real 
treatment with fake ones. What I am saying is that there are already 
doctors that have fallen for the quack pseudoscience and false claims of 
many "alternative" treatments, and they *do* often advocate for the 
replacement of real medication/treatments with the ones that don't work. 
This needs to be stopped, not accelerated.

> Those same fake doctors have an arsenal of things they can claim work,
> with propped up studies that back them up. Hunt them down, sure, but it
> doesn't hurt to look at their data just to see if one in a thousand of
> them might have been on to something real.
> 
That is the problem. People do look at their data, and its inevitably 
collected wrong, deals with tiny numbers of people, contains biases, 
like, "I wanted them to feel better, and they trusted me, so they told 
me they felt better, but I don't have actual proof.", and similar 
useless stuff.

That is in fact the biggest problem. You can *test* whether certain 
things have improved, you can't *test* if the patient's perception of 
their minor aches and pains have *actually* improved from some 
treatment, because the mere belief that it should improve can skew their 
own perceptions, even if the actual pain experienced is *mechanically* 
the same. In other words, if you could measure how much pain the nerves 
where generating, it would be the same, but the *perception* of the pain 
differed. This creates a real mess with this stuff, and makes even real, 
but marginal, medications problematic to test, in some cases. They have 
to have an effect that rises "over" a specific threshold of, "This could 
just be perception, not effect."

Studies on such effects, by doctors already advocating stuff that is 
just plain dumb, can't be trusted, because there is already a bias in 
perception on their part, there is almost certainly one on the part of 
their patients, who go there, probably, because he advocates nonsense 
treatments, and that *can* skew the results by 30%, due to both the 
patient exaggerating the result, and the doctor doing the same. Real 
studies, the ones that fail to find anything in such cases, generally 
try to find *direct* ways of measuring what is going on, when possible. 
Why? Because it removes both the 15% added by patient perception, and 
the 15% added by a doctor who badly wants to be helping their patients, 
and *seems* to be getting the result they expected.

You have to take the subjective perceptions of both out of the equation, 
as much as possible, to come up with a valid study. Most of these 
studies, sadly, do neither.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>>>> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve 
>>>>> quite a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then 
>>>>> rediscovered, often after a seriously large length of time.)
>>>>
>>>> That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really 
>>>> happened much since the invention of the printing press.
>>>
>>> Which, AFAIK, is "fairly recent".
>>
>> Yep. The first "modern" press was the mid-1400's.  There were some in 
>> China that didn't work out all that well due to the lack of an alphabet.
> 
> Hahaha! Isn't China that country that *has* an alphabet, but it's 22,000 
> characters or something absurd?
> 

An alphabet is where you combine individual symbols, which have no 
meaning themselves, to form words. What they have are glyphs, each with 
a specific meaning, and which only combine when you want to express an 
idea that is a combination of those two meanings. This is rather 
different, and why both China and Japan tend to use English when dealing 
with technologies (well, that and the French didn't invent computers). 
Its literally the only "language" where you can write something like 
dog, and have everyone in the country know what it means, yet where the 
*spoken* form can differ between 10+ versions, some of which are so 
radically different that two people, trying to talk to each other, 
wouldn't understand a single word of each others sentences. And, that 
can come close to being true even with the two "major" dialects.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 11/29/09 11:21, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Oh, I think there have always been people who truly, honestly believe
>> that every single syllable of the Bible is the Word of God, and cannot
> 
>     Every syllable? In which language?<G>

Hey, *I* know it's crazy! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> Even nowadays, it surprises me (in some sense) that religious people 
> object to the teaching of evolution here. You'd think if creationism 
> were *true* and they *really* believed it, they wouldn't be worried 
> about *science*.
> 
> Why would the church lock up Galileo if they thought his observations 
> and deductions were factually incorrect?

Putting it the other way... the scientists *do* know that they are 
correct (or at least, very nearly correct), so why are they worried 
about creationists?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> Well, anyone whose name we still know 500+ years later would probably 
>> fall under "especially famous" for me. 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I guess if you don't count Pythagoras as a famous mathematician, 
> we might get some gaps in there, yah. ;-)

Wolfram limits the number of people's names you're allowed to use. The 
list has to be short, so it's kind of arbitrary which people you choose 
to include.

Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagorus are ancient Greek. Then there's a gap 
of about 1,000 years, and then there's a huge chunk of people all alive 
at the same time - Euler, Gauss, Cauchy, Fermat, Pascal, Fibonacci, 
Netwon, Laplace, the whole shooting match. And then there's a gap until 
the present day.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> Hahaha! Isn't China that country that *has* an alphabet, but it's 
>> 22,000 characters or something absurd?
> 
> No, it's not an alphabet. It's writing, but there aren't phonetic 
> letters you rearrange to make words, which is what "alphabet" means. 
> From the greek Alpha Beta.

They're ideograms not phonograms, but I'm not aware that this 
disqualifies them as an "alphabet". It is after all a finite set of 
symbols having well-defined meanings - they just don't mean phonetics.

>> Notice the huge gap in the middle, and the much smaller gap between 
>> then and now? I'm sure other mathematicians *existed*, they just 
>> weren't especially famous... ;-)
> 
> Well, anyone whose name we still know 500+ years later would probably 
> fall under "especially famous" for me. Of course there might be a big 
> gap when you list individual mathematicians. You're not graphing famous 
> mathematicians.
> 
> http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Chron.html

Most of the people in that list, I've never heard of. And I've heard of 
people like Chebyshev that most people wouldn't recognise.

Maybe it's just that all the people who discovered stuff that you'd 
learn about in an extremely basic math course lived a long time ago? For 
example, Andrew Wiles famously proved Fermat's Last Theorum - or rather, 
proved that all modular forms are elliptic. But apparently only a few 
people alive can actually comprehend the proof, so...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>>   The placebo effect also causes measurable chemical changes in the body.
> 
> Interestingly, I've read that the placebo effect has been getting 
> measurably stronger over the last few decades. How's *that* for a 
> mind-screw?

People are becoming more gullible?

Which would seem weird, given all the conspiracy theories...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> I get the feeling that there are some things acupuncture can be used for
>> in modern medicine, and others that it shouldn't be used for.
> 
> The problem, as I pointed out to someone else, is that you have a *lot*
> of medical doctors doing these sorts of studies, but not all of them are
> scientifically trained. 

Okay, this is where we are at odds. I am not talking about a general
practitioner conducting flawed studies. Maybe I have odd doctors, but
they read peer review journals and try to keep up with new techniques
that have been researched and presented at conferences, not just ideas
that have been batted around the office. Living near a teaching hospital
has that advantage.

Yes, I know of GPs who will recommend non-traditional medicine in a
'Give it a try while we do the other major tests to find out what is
wrong.' manner as palliative care, not as a treatment.

> Point being, would you trust someone doing a study, who has no training
> in running proper studies, and also believes in homeopathy? This isn't
> always the case, which makes things even more confused, but all too
> often you find the people behind the studies are either believers in
> other quack, or funded by such.

No, I wouldn't true a flawed study. Quackery is a separate problem from
non-traditional medicine, even if some quacks are pushing
non-traditional cures.

> If, and this is a big if, it actually does do something in some obscure cases, I am
still not sure that the unfortunate side effect of finding this out, that of having a
huge number of people insist that it still does work for allergies, and pointing at
non-related studies of something that it does work for, is worth the relatively small
benefit that might be gained from it. 

That I have to disagree with. People claim and believe that new drugs do
all sorts of things that they just can't, and we let those individuals
promote and sell the drugs to doctors! If a treatment works, knowing
about it is worth the fact that some people out there may try to spin
things their own ways. Unfortunately, that happens, but it will happen
with any treatment, new or old or rediscovered.

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Yes you can. Every time a doctor gives out some antibiotics for a viral
>> infection, that's a placebo. Sugar pills were found to have roughly the
>> same effective treatment rate for mild depression and anxiety. So
>> someone gets a mild anti-depressant for times when they are just feeling
>> blue, another placebo.
>>
> If a doctor is giving out antibiotics for a viral infection then, yes,
> they would be lying.. You give people anti-virals for viruses, which
> isn't the same thing.

Never taken a child to the doctor for a cold, or seen a mother who is
convinced that a green runny nose and a 100.1 F fever is grounds for
emergency rooms? Most head colds, sinus infections, ear infections, and
so on, are viral and not bacterial. Yet family doctors still hand out
scripts for simple antibiotics.

>As for sugar pills... Yes, in "rare" occasions
> this has been done, but its usually with a) people that don't have
> anything wrong with them in the first place, but think they do, or b)
> .... I am not sure, but its not as an alternative to *real* treatment,
> and it is an ethics issue, which, as I understand it, gets argued a lot.

There was a study on the effectiveness of anti-depressants on mild
depression. I can dig that up if you like. The sugar pill test was in a
double blind study, not open treatment. However, if the drugs are only
as useful as a sugar pill, why not skip the side effects?

> And no, I am not saying that you would advocate replacement of real
> treatment with fake ones. What I am saying is that there are already
> doctors that have fallen for the quack pseudoscience and false claims of
> many "alternative" treatments, and they *do* often advocate for the
> replacement of real medication/treatments with the ones that don't work.
> This needs to be stopped, not accelerated.

Agreed, but getting rid of "alternative" therapies will not do that. I
can picture it now: "Oh no, my super secret acupuncture tricks are so
useful, that the drug companies lobbied to have my license revoked!" I
mean, if we are talking about quacks, lets pick the very fringe of them.

> That is in fact the biggest problem. You can *test* whether certain
> things have improved, you can't *test* if the patient's perception of
> their minor aches and pains have *actually* improved from some
> treatment, because the mere belief that it should improve can skew their
> own perceptions, even if the actual pain experienced is *mechanically*
> the same. In other words, if you could measure how much pain the nerves
> where generating, it would be the same, but the *perception* of the pain
> differed. This creates a real mess with this stuff, and makes even real,
> but marginal, medications problematic to test, in some cases. They have
> to have an effect that rises "over" a specific threshold of, "This could
> just be perception, not effect."

Morphine works the same way, it doesn't stop the pain from occurring at
the site, it just blocks it on the way to the brain. Modern narcotics
don't even dissolve into the body and are metabolized into pain killing
alkaloids.

And there is a method to measure the amount and types of endorphins in
the blood. So, testing the means by which pain is reduced is not all
that difficult. Testing the amount of pain reduced in the brain versus
the amount reduced at trauma site is difficult but, when comparing it to
the standard analgesics, that isn't an issue.

> You have to take the subjective perceptions of both out of the equation,
> as much as possible, to come up with a valid study. Most of these
> studies, sadly, do neither.

Which studies do neither? Maybe we are reading different studies.

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Darren New wrote:
>>>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>>>> Invisible wrote:
>>>>>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But 
>>>>>> now scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical 
>>>>>> changes in the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as 
>>>>>> that sounds...)
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It is nonsense.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical 
>>>> doctors can stop looking into it now.
>>>>
>>> Yep.. 
>>
>> <long 100% nonsequitur rant deleted>
>>
>> Wow. OK, I think I'll just give up now.
>>
> Sigh.. Not a rant, but an explanation. As I said, your "medical doctors" 
> are almost universally not trained scientists, they are a sort of 
> technician.

I completely understood what you said.  It was entirely unrelated to what 
*I* was saying.

> That clearer for you?

I completely understood and even *agreed* with what you said. That doesn't 
make it any more related to what I was saying. If it's a non sequitur, it 
doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Wolfram limits the number of people's names you're allowed to use. The 
> list has to be short, so it's kind of arbitrary which people you choose 
> to include.

Right.

> Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagorus are ancient Greek. Then there's a gap 
> of about 1,000 years, 

You mean, "And then I chose a gap of about 1,000 years."

Watch:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, ...

Wow! Look at that big gap in the prime numbers!

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> They're ideograms not phonograms, but I'm not aware that this 
> disqualifies them as an "alphabet".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet

In short: Yes.

> Most of the people in that list, I've never heard of.

And, as we know, you have an *excellent* mathematical education. ;-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Though I am no Buddhist myself, I prefer the Buddhist view (which might even 
be true): some questions about life and the universe are unanswerable.

> Putting it the other way... the scientists *do* know that they are correct 
> (or at least, very nearly correct), so why are they worried about 
> creationists?

I am not worried by the idea of creationism itself, but I am worried by the 
creationist movement. I am very worried by religious people with a mission - 
no good did ever come from zealots, whatever the god they pray to. If you 
believe a god created this world, big bang, evolution and all, this is 
entirely your affair. But there is no real evidence for this. So why should 
a mere belief be taught at school? Belief is for church, not for the world.

I have never heard of a scientist publicly burning a Christian (or a 
Creationist) for his beliefs at the stake, applauded and urged on by a crowd 
of fellow scientists. The reverse situation has been true only too often. So 
why do you wonder about scientists being afraid of Creationists, especially 
Christian ones? If people should be starting to believe in these unprovable 
"theories" (which are no theories at all, just mere beliefs), then the next 
inquisition, witch hunts and crusades will soon be at hand. So any sane 
human should worry about the Christian Creationist movement. One of the few 
things Karl Marx was right about: religion is opiate for the masses. People 
can be controled more easily if they believe.

If you are a true Christian, a true believer, then this can lead to terrible 
conclusions and horrible deeds, which are nonetheless completely logical and 
justified. My favourite "pearl" of applied Christian wisdom:

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." - "Kill them all, the Lord 
will recognise His own." (Arnaud-Amaury, papal legate, when ordering the 
slaughter of many thousand men, women and children - "Heretics" and 
"Christians" alike)

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:05:35 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Even nowadays, it surprises me (in some sense) that religious people
>> object to the teaching of evolution here. You'd think if creationism
>> were *true* and they *really* believed it, they wouldn't be worried
>> about *science*.
>> 
>> Why would the church lock up Galileo if they thought his observations
>> and deductions were factually incorrect?
> 
> Putting it the other way... the scientists *do* know that they are
> correct (or at least, very nearly correct), so why are they worried
> about creationists?

Because there are those who think that what should be taught in schools 
is decided by popular vote rather than through the application of common 
sense.

That's how you end up with "Creation Science" being taught as a part of 
*science* curriculum in some of the more backwards states in the US as an 
"alternative theory to evolution".  When you have people who have zero 
expertise in science dictating what should be taught in science classes, 
then progress is retarded.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Putting it the other way... the scientists *do* know that they are 
> correct (or at least, very nearly correct), so why are they worried 
> about creationists?

If scientists know there are no demons, why are they worried about being 
burned at the stake?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

>> Most of the people in that list, I've never heard of.
> 
> And, as we know, you have an *excellent* mathematical education. ;-)

Fun thing: Grab 10 random people on the street, ask them if they know 
who Euclid or Euler was. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

On 12/01/09 03:43, Invisible wrote:
>>> Most of the people in that list, I've never heard of.
>>
>> And, as we know, you have an *excellent* mathematical education. ;-)
>
> Fun thing: Grab 10 random people on the street, ask them if they know
> who Euclid or Euler was. ;-)

	Be prepared to dodge their blows.<G>
	
-- 
Why do so many foods come packaged in plastic? It's so uncanny.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> If, and this is a big if, it actually does do something in some obscure cases, I am
still not sure that the unfortunate side effect of finding this out, that of having a
huge number of people insist that it still does work for allergies, and pointing at
non-related studies of something that it does work for, is worth the relatively small
benefit that might be gained from it. 
> 
> That I have to disagree with. People claim and believe that new drugs do
> all sorts of things that they just can't, and we let those individuals
> promote and sell the drugs to doctors! If a treatment works, knowing
> about it is worth the fact that some people out there may try to spin
> things their own ways. Unfortunately, that happens, but it will happen
> with any treatment, new or old or rediscovered.

I did say "small benefit" right? If it was a huge one, I would say 
"weather the storm, until the clueless mostly disappear." The problem 
is, its hardly clear that the benefit is *large enough*, or couldn't be 
gained some other, less abuse prone, way.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Actually, I believe this device could really be useful : think to WHO really
carry bombs and weapons... Mostly fanatics, often pretty stupid - stupid enough
to carry guns and bombs anyway. So they may pretty much be stupid enough to
believe this device to work.
This only goal of this device is disuasion. It might actually work well this
way, it USA doesn't prove to everyone how useless it is...

Post a reply to this message