yabbut nobbut…. proponents of homeopathy say its proper use can reduce healthcare costs (and there is a placebo effect to be argued about, which the big pharma biys are happy to exploit when it suits them). And, bizarrely, dowsers can and do find oil wells. Johnny Lu, whom you met, has had recourse to a few in his day. The Chinese use astrology all the time in private business economics (just wait until you get to Singapore…0.
But, yes, really, I agree with you, 98%. Science is the best way forward in lots of situations, but capitalism is ruthless, messy, and inconsistent, like most human endeavours. Big cap is ruthless in perpetuating its own dominance, and profit focus is part of that but not the whole.
I am not a fan of homeopathy (unscientific nonsense: yes I’ll eat my hat when proven otherwise).
If homeopathy is the best placebo for a certain situation, then there may be a case for using it, but as the current gold standard of clinical trials is to test against placebo, double-blinded, we’d have to do something equivalent between placebos to find out which is the most effective. I’d be happy to see that funded with my money, but until it is, I would steer away from it except in “nothing else has worked” situations, where there is an argument that one has to be a little more empathetic and a little less scientific.
And capitalism is clearly rubbish (but maybe the best of some pretty bad lots that we’ve tried so far). But I liked the idea that if any activity should give a clear advantage to an organisation, someone would have tried it.
for me the interesting research would be accepting that fact and looking at peoples’ electrical potentials and seeing if they married up to homeopathic sensitivity or not. I would expect a correlation. and we would learn something about individual differences 🙂
yabbut nobbut…. proponents of homeopathy say its proper use can reduce healthcare costs (and there is a placebo effect to be argued about, which the big pharma biys are happy to exploit when it suits them). And, bizarrely, dowsers can and do find oil wells. Johnny Lu, whom you met, has had recourse to a few in his day. The Chinese use astrology all the time in private business economics (just wait until you get to Singapore…0.
But, yes, really, I agree with you, 98%. Science is the best way forward in lots of situations, but capitalism is ruthless, messy, and inconsistent, like most human endeavours. Big cap is ruthless in perpetuating its own dominance, and profit focus is part of that but not the whole.
I am not a fan of homeopathy (unscientific nonsense: yes I’ll eat my hat when proven otherwise).
If homeopathy is the best placebo for a certain situation, then there may be a case for using it, but as the current gold standard of clinical trials is to test against placebo, double-blinded, we’d have to do something equivalent between placebos to find out which is the most effective. I’d be happy to see that funded with my money, but until it is, I would steer away from it except in “nothing else has worked” situations, where there is an argument that one has to be a little more empathetic and a little less scientific.
Dowsing seems pretty post-hoc to me.
And capitalism is clearly rubbish (but maybe the best of some pretty bad lots that we’ve tried so far). But I liked the idea that if any activity should give a clear advantage to an organisation, someone would have tried it.
Some people are wired to respond and others aren’t: no point having a dingdong about it 🙂
Certainly true.
For a moment, I thought you meant respond to Facebook, and was horrified. Thankfully you weren’t and I’m not.
😉
for me the interesting research would be accepting that fact and looking at peoples’ electrical potentials and seeing if they married up to homeopathic sensitivity or not. I would expect a correlation. and we would learn something about individual differences 🙂