"It's like this: science requires a tolerance of failure. If your shiny, happy hypothesis fails to stand up to rigorous scrutiny, you drop it and move on. If instead of a true, disposable hypothesis, you have a fixed belief that will not change based on the data, you are delusional. Boosters of alternative medicine prefer the term 'maverick' to 'lunatic' but in the two are often the same.It is nearly impossible to get someone to abandon a belief in alternative medicine, no matter how strong the evidence against it. Study after study has failed to validate homeopathy as anything other than bullshit, yet it's strongest supports hang on hoping, perhaps, that someone will find out that we were wrong about physics and chemistry all along (you know, regional changes in physical constants and all that). Not all alternative medicine boosters are cynical thieves. Some really do believe that they are doing science, when in fact they are deceiving themselves about the meaning of data. When this type of thinking occurs in medicine, rather than leading to a paper retraction, it leads to quackery and sometimes death."
-- PalMD, surprising even me with this straight talk - it's so rare - though, I guess, that's what should be expected from The White Coat Undergroud.
"It's like this: science requires a tolerance of failure. If your shiny, happy hypothesis fails to stand up to rigorous scrutiny, you drop it and move on. If instead of a true, disposable hypothesis, you have a fixed belief that will not change based on the data, you are delusional."
ReplyDeleteWhat if my fixed belief is that there is a New Age-Wiccan-Buddhist-Islamic-Democrat conspiracy to take over the world and because of that I constantly get laughed at and booted from science blogs?
What do I do then? I've invested way too much time and energy into my paranoid fantasies to drop them and move on.
I don't know where you got the impression "I constantly get laughed at and booted from science blogs" - you got any proof to back that up?
ReplyDeleteYou must like living through your assumptions, which would mean I'm smarter than you are. Another assumption is that my ideas have been proven wrong because someone disagrees with them. I dare you to defend that one - especially considering the political make-up of the online science "community". Many of them drank the Kool-Aid before they even got into medicine, so what you saying?
And what, exactly, are you defending? Why do you care what I do, Mr. Anonymous? Why don't you "move on" - as the NewAgers always suggest?
You're a hypocrite and a fool.
Many of them drank the Kool-Aid before they even got into medicine
ReplyDelete---------
Of course they "drank the Kool-Aid" (whatever that means).
Conspiracy theorists ALWAYS have an explanation for why nobody buys into their silly theories.
Your hypothesis can't be disproven, that's the whole point.
Anyone who doesn't even understand the meaning of the phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" has no reason to be debating cultism.
ReplyDelete"Your hypothesis can't be disproven, that's the whole point."
Jesus, you're a doofus. Not only could you look and see all the posts I've done on "projection" (to see I understand the concept) but then you, insultingly, try to use it on me. Plus, there's a double-insult in there because you, not only, assumed I'd fall for it but that I'd be slow enough to accept it coming from some anonymous idiot over the internet. That one statement, above, has so many layers of stupidity in it, I honestly think you need to stop pursuing this:
I'm a complex man, and you're just waaay too dumb to be speaking with me.
"Drinking the Kool-aid" is a partisan rhetorical taunt that has nothing to do with the scientific method, or with logic.
ReplyDeleteIts a way to head off rational discussion of the facts at the pass, a thought-stopping phrase meant to derail serious examination - nothing more.
"If you don't believe that Obama/Glen Beck/Ron Paul/Mickey Mouse/whoever is the last best hope of our nation, then you must have drank the Kool-Aid..." etc.
It's meaningless - a phrase used by people who need an excuse to forgo objective assessment.
"partisan rhetorical taunt"?
ReplyDeleteIs not. What's wrong with you?