Pseudoscience - Anti Vaxxers, Creationists, Anti Nuclear/GM fanatics, and other charlatans.

[Thelostcup]

So the thing about homeopathy is that for whatever reason people group in all alternative medicine with it even though it refers to a very specific subset. Alt. medicine itself is not completely bullshit, and many things such as herbal remedies and acupressure actually do have a legitimate scientific basis. Most "homeopathic medicines" are really just herbal supplements or vitamins with a fancy label.

 

[A-Stump]

So the thing about homeopathy is that for whatever reason people group in all alternative medicine with it even though it refers to a very specific subset. Alt. medicine itself is not completely bullshit, and many things such as herbal remedies and acupressure actually do have a legitimate scientific basis. Most "homeopathic medicines" are really just herbal supplements or vitamins with a fancy label.

Yeah except herbal medicine isn't useful for treating illnesses. Medicine itself is often just the useful compounds in plants that has been focused to the point of usefulness. A guy named James Randi once compared herbal medicine to a 'A drop of good in an ocean of uselessness'. That is, and he was referring to all Homeopathy, the very fact that it is all bunk. Hogwash. Just something charlatans do to get your money.

 

[Marvin]

Fluoridated water conspiracies. Heh, or all the people hopping on the gluten free bandwagon.

 

[AnimuGinger]

The official term in medicine for homeopathic medicine is "Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)." It encompasses nearly anything that isn't a mainstream medical treatment. This includes yoga, supplements that aren't a vitamin or mineral (fish oil), acupuncture, and all range of shit.

Some of this stuff has evidence to suggest that it helps ALONGSIDE mainstream western medicine. Chiropractic treatments and acupuncture both have evidence in their favor for treating certain kinds of muscular skeletal pain. Supplements can help in limited cases for specific conditions.

Then you get idiots who think that you can completely replace western med. with homeopathic treatments. If you take it overboard, throw all of your faith into it, you won't get very far, because all of your bullshit will eventually kill you. Which is exactly why the Church of the Christian Scientist has seen dwindling numbers over the years. Their members die off when they get an infection you can treat with antibiotics.

 

[Descent]

Look what Cracked linked to today: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/01/07/top-ten-reasons-sandy-hook-was-an-elaborate-hoax/

WHY WON'T THEY RELEASE NAMES AND AUTOPSY PHOTOS OF DEAD SIX YEAR OLDS!?

 

[A-Stump]

WHY WON'T THEY RELEASE NAMES AND AUTOPSY PHOTOS OF DEAD SIX YEAR OLDS!?

I love how one of the 'evidence' points was that someone who weighed 120 pounds couldn't possibly carry around equipment. Spoiler alert for the supposed 'expert'; There was a war in Southeast Asia in the sixties where children were armed with grenades, assault rifles, homemade mines, and jury rigged artillery. The human body can do these things

 

[Marvin]

The official term in medicine for homeopathic medicine is "Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)." It encompasses nearly anything that isn't a mainstream medical treatment. This includes yoga, supplements that aren't a vitamin or mineral (fish oil), acupuncture, and all range of shit.

Some of this stuff has evidence to suggest that it helps ALONGSIDE mainstream western medicine. Chiropractic treatments and acupuncture both have evidence in their favor for treating certain kinds of muscular skeletal pain. Supplements can help in limited cases for specific conditions.

Then you get idiots who think that you can completely replace western med. with homeopathic treatments. If you take it overboard, throw all of your faith into it, you won't get very far, because all of your bullshit will eventually kill you. Which is exactly why the Church of the Christian Scientist has seen dwindling numbers over the years. Their members die off when they get an infection you can treat with antibiotics.

But, shouldn't it still have some effect on its own?

I don't know, I see the science as monolithic. There are fuzzy areas that we're still working on, of course, but ultimately I believe there should be an answer to exactly why something works and how much it works. It's how I felt about medical marijuana, actually. I love weed and all, but it took me quite awhile before I was convinced marijuana had some medical application (not that I wouldn't take advantage of a medical card, if I got one... ).

 

[The Knife's Husbando]

I say let 'em go with it. Use whatever hippy-dippy-smile-on-the-flowers-Facebook-meme bullshit they want. The sooner they die, the better off humanity as a whole is.

My favorite bit is when they use the classic "Well, I guess we can't have different opinions on 'X'" argument.

Sorry. "Orange juice is nasty" or "Metalica's first album is great" are opinions. Spreading deliberate scientific misinformation is absolute bullshit, and it's the duty of every rational, logical person to fight it.

 

[AnimuGinger]

But, shouldn't it still have some effect on its own?.

The problem is that a lot of things can be difficult to run a true study on, so we can't tell if there's a placebo or not. You can't do a true randomly assigned double-blind study with faith healing as your treatment. The bulk of CAM "evidence" is based around case studies. Which tend to be bullshit.

And yeah, sometimes shit works and we don't know exactly why it works, but it work. Pepto-Bismol is one of those things where we don't know why it keep you from having , but it does. But there's a difference between testing something against a placebo, and doing the whole "MAY THE POWER OF THE LORD COURSE THROUGH YOU AND HEAL YOUR HEADACHE!" and then saying it worked.

Studying this shit makes you boring when you talk about it. But at least I don't sound like an ass when I do.

 

[StallChaser]

But, shouldn't it still have some effect on its own?

I don't know, I see the science as monolithic. There are fuzzy areas that we're still working on, of course, but ultimately I believe there should be an answer to exactly why something works and how much it works. It's how I felt about medical marijuana, actually. I love weed and all, but it took me quite awhile before I was convinced marijuana had some medical application (not that I wouldn't take advantage of a medical card, if I got one... ).

My take on it is that the positive should outweigh the negative. In the case of medical marijuana, the negative effects are small enough that it should be allowed over the counter. This is why I think it's a bad idea for states to limit medical use to extremely severe diseases. People joke about using it for supposedly minor things like insomnia, but it really works. Tylenol is more likely to kill you.

A couple pseudoscience pet peeves of mine:
Global warming denial. It's happening. I always hear stupid arguments like "It snowed at my house so there's no global warming," as if a single cherry-picked data point means anything.

Anti-GMO. There are some valid concerns like insects gaining pesticide resistance and weeds gaining resistance to roundup, but those are matters of how the technology is used and not the technology itself. Whenever it shows up in politics, it's always some stupid shit like GMO labeling, which doesn't really tell anyone anything.

 

[Hyperion]

Yeah fuck the mainstream medical shit. These are the people who insisted that diet and exercise had no impact on overall health for years and years.

 

[Yawning Bulbasaur]

My mom still believes that vaccines cause autism, and she also had me on the gluten-free/casein-free diet as a kid as well as chelation therapy. Nothing changed.

 

[Thelostcup]

Yeah except herbal medicine isn't useful for treating illnesses. Medicine itself is often just the useful compounds in plants that has been focused to the point of usefulness. A guy named James Randi once compared herbal medicine to a 'A drop of good in an ocean of uselessness'. That is, and he was referring to all Homeopathy, the very fact that it is all bunk. Hogwash. Just something charlatans do to get your money.

You seem to have missed my point. Herbal medicine is largely snake oil, even though distinct herbs such as garlic, ginger, and many types of tea leaves do have proven health benefits. It's just that cons will use the logic of "it's natural so it must be good for you!" to push herbal extracts that don't actually do anything. My point was that medicine itself was derived from finding the active ingredients in these plants and isolating them, as you said.

Homeopathy refers to a type of alternative medicine has nothing to do with anything beneficial. Homeopathy is the belief that toxins diluted to some absurd (often physically impossible) amount will somehow cure ailments in the body. True homeopathy is when people sell vials of what amounts to cheap liquor (water + 40% grain alcohol) and claim that it's a preservative solution for the medicinal powder. Anyone with a knowledge of high school chemistry can spot that it's bullshit right away. The effect of the liquor is meant to enhance the placebo.

I've been contemplating selling some product that's essentially bottled distilled water and claiming that it heals with a proven psychological effect (placebo) for a while.

 

[John Titor]

Anybody seen the movie "What the BLEEP do we know?"

I' so glad I dropped out of that English class even if I wasted a semester.

 

[TheRedRanger]

Yes. She now claims that Austim is curable too and that she cured her son of autism!!!111!11!!

Or, ya know, he just grew up and learned to deal with it like I did.

 

[Scribbler]

Anybody seen the movie "What the BLEEP do we know?"

I' so glad I dropped out of that English class even if I wasted a semester.

Watched it on YouTube, though the guy who posted would interject every so often to explain why whatever the person just said was bullshit...

I'm sorry your English professor bought into that stuff.

 

[Hummingbird]

Here's one that's just as creepy, The Clinical Textbook of Biblical Psychiatry. Not only are they telling you that demons are the ones making you mentally ill, but to avoid shrinks and medications. Some meds do more harm than good, but totally ignore science and give into ignorance is another.

 

[Night Terror]

Fuck anti-vaxxers. Causing death for thousands of people because of one bullshit study that's been debunked a million times.

 

[OtterParty]

Creationism isn't necessarily pseudoscience, it's just an alternative theory to evolution.

nah creationism is complete bullshit and you should feel suicidally ashamed for calling it an "alternative theory"

 

[Marvin]

Creationism isn't necessarily pseudoscience, it's just an alternative theory to evolution.

In the same way that the existence of the tooth fairy is an alternative theory to the nonexistence of the tooth fairy.

Part of the problem is that Darwin's theories have been warped: the original idea was that some animals adapted certain characteristics to help them survive (bird's beaks, for instance), not that we evolved from single celled organisms or whatever. The "hijacked Darwin" isn't new: a century ago, the "survival of the fittest" idea was used to justify racism.

But isn't that what Darwin's theories would imply?