Latest post of the previous page:
Here's an interesting article written by Physicist John Droz, Jr. in North Carolina. He writes about the struggle against a few Green activists on the Coastal Resources Commission (NC), they wanted to impose new rules and laws based on a single bad science sea level rise report.since this thread is about good v bad science, I wonder how you decided that the report you refer to was bad science. IIRC, this case featured the NC-20's demand that only certain scientific data was allowable (if that ain't bad science, what is?), and we on TH discussed this a few months ago:geolab wrote:Here's an interesting article written by Physicist John Droz, Jr. in North Carolina. He writes about the struggle against a few Green activists on the Coastal Resources Commission (NC), they wanted to impose new rules and laws based on a single bad science sea level rise report.
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/06/f ... -carolina/
Mm, perhaps not "conclusively" disproven. What we're talking about, though, are the hypotheses that treatments a, b or c work. Research has been undertaken with the aim of confirming or disproving them. I don't think you can ever claim that the science is final and x or y has been conclusively confirmed or disproven but, for all practical purposes, various alt med treatments have been disproven. The remedy I focused on as an example (in the section that referred to "disproven remedies") was homeopathy. I think disproven is certainly an appropriate term to use for that particular remedy. We've had hundreds of papers from people attempting to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that homeopathy works and analysis of the best of these efforts suggests that the hypothesis is false.animist wrote:that is all very interesting. Maybe I could play devil's advocate and quibble about your saying "disproven": a bit like God, these techniques cannot be conclusively be disproved. And of course, if what is actually a dubious theory attains the status of a distinct branch of knowledge, whether this is theology or alternative medicine, it, as you imply, will have its own set of peer reviewers; the process is self-reinforcingjdc wrote: Firstly, it occurred to me that "peer-reviewed" doesn't necessarily equate to "credible". There are peer-reviewed alternative medicine journals publishing positive papers regarding disproven remedies. They have people like Dana Ullman, Lionel Milgrom, Michael Dixon and Harald Walach on the editorial board, George Lewith as executive editor and Kim Jobst as editor-in-chief. Here's a press release they issued: http://www.liebertpub.com/global/pressr ... ne-em/421/ "The October 2005 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which commemorates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann, the founding father of homeopathy, makes it very clear that homeopathy works and is far from dead.". I'm not familiar with the journals listed on the page the desmog blog links to so I don't know whether they can be fairly compared to journals such as JACM. It's always worth asking though, when you see "peer-reviewed", who the peers are. (Also: it wouldn't surprise me if well-regarded scientists were able to get poor papers published in even fairly decent journals from time to time simply because they have a good reputation. I'm thinking particularly of scientists who are brilliant in their own area but can't resist dabbling in other areas of science where they are less brilliant. People a bit like Linus Pauling, who was a great chemist but not so hot when it came to conducting medical research. Or a porphyrin chemist who writes quantum wibble about homeopathy.) I'd tend to be more suspicious of papers that aren't peer-reviewed, but peer-review isn't a guarantee of quality.
The point re Russian papers is one that interested me too. I took a look at some papers a while ago re research from certain countries: http://jdc325.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/ ... -research/ There was a study that looked at acupuncture trials originating in China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan – which were all positive – as well as trials published in Russia/USSR, of which 10 out of 11 were positive. Similar results were found in trials of interventions other than acupuncture. Another paper found benefit for St John's wort for depression. Although St John’s Wort was significantly more effective than placebo, this was only true when studies from German-speaking countries were examined.
BUT, there is statement that I believe to be correct, and can be made with certainty. It is this: The consensus scientific view is the best we can do at any given time, given the available data and our understanding of it. It is not legitimate and certainly of no scientific value (although there may be political value) to attack a prediction because you don’t like the consequences, or you don’t like the sort of people who are happy with the prediction, or you don’t like the people who made the prediction, or you don’t like the sort of policy responses that prediction might suggest or encourage, or even if you simply see yourself as a challenger of consensus views in the name of some ideal or other. It is only appropriate to criticize a prediction or theory based on specific criticisms of the data, methodology or the underlying theoretical framework. It is content-less to criticize a scientific prediction because you don’t like it.
