These people always vanish as soon as they have said that, disappear back into the crowd. Anyway, in terms of the stuff you talk about here, have a look at this site, in terms of unproven, unscientific, anecdotal nonsense, this site is quite something! Still disagree with you about vaccination though. That’s another conversation though…. I just thought you’d enjoy this link, might make your blood boil!!

I do love this argument that climate change is a scam cooked up by the New World Order in order to enslave the world’s population (David Icke’s line). Oh yes, that explains really well why Bush denied its existence for his whole presidency, why Exxon and others actively funded bogus research and scientists have been vilified and rubbished. Really stands up well to scrutiny. Mad buggers.

I’m not going to repeat Graham here as I think he’s more than capable of defending his position on science – but I will pick up on a few points.

Anna said:

“I am arguing that, while rigorous scientific method is important, it is also important to balance this with being open to the unexplainable”

This is of course true, but I think there is a danger here in the implied meaning: that ‘science is important’ but it cannot explain everything in the universe and we have to allow for knowledge outside of scientific understanding. It’s important to realise that this is fundamentally a point of belief. Pretty much all the scientists I know and have read, believe that there’s no such thing as ‘unexplainable’ – but rather unexplainable ‘at the moment, with current knowledge’. The idea being, that as the little pieces of the puzzle are discovered, less and less phenomena are unexplainable. New Agers are likely to criticise this view as coldly rational as they themselves believe that not everything is explainable by the rational deductions and experiments of science, and that there is some inexplicable force/knowledge/power etc

So there is a difference between being open to the unexplainable in the scientific way – patiently waiting for more data; and in the New Ager’s way – believing in the intrinsically inexplicable nature [to human understanding] of the universe.

Anna also said:

“My other point is that there are different types of knowledge, and in a heated discussion, where people feel the need to be right, intuitively felt knowledge can be hard to put into the right words, and hard facts win the day, even if they may not contain the whole (as in holistic) truth”

Your blog entry talks about ‘fast’ knowledge and ‘slow’ knowledge – but again I suspect there is a mystical edge to your thinking. You essentially argue against ‘fast’ knowledge in your blog [and in the context of tree felling, maybe that's justified], but to imply that there is a difference in knowledges just fudges the issue. ‘Slow’ knowledge is just lots of ‘fast’ knowledge carefully compiled and evaluated. The only difference between the two is down to quantity and timescale. We don’t chop the forest down now because we know lots more about it. And how do we know more now than previously? How have we come across this ‘slow’ knowledge – intuition? Maybe partly – but largely down to the accumulation of those countless little experiments and observations that long forgotten botanists, biologists, foresters, etc have done in the name of science.

Hi Anna Thanks for your post, some nice comments. I think you miss the point about placebos: the way you test something like homeopathy in a clinical trial is by “double-blinding”- the trial group is randomly split into two, one group gets the remedy, the other a placebo, but neither group, nor the homeopath or doctor knows who gets what until after the results come in. This has been done literally hundreds of times and the overall results show that both groups get well on average as much as each other- this clearly shows homeopathy is no better than placebo. It might be worth spelling out what this means: if you replace the remedy with a sugar pill or just water it will work just as well- there is nothing special about “homeopathy”! It would be easy to do the same with chickens- the point is, properly conducted trials do give us some useful data and interesting results; anecdotes really tell us nothing. This may be of benefit to the individual patient in a given time, but as you correctly point out, there is ritual and placebo benefit in proper medicine as well. But we have to balance this against the necessary deception- these are important ethical issues that doctors are well aware of, and Ben discusses usefully on his blog. What is at stake here really is a culture that is not easily deceived, that can think for itself, that cannot be manipulated easily. As for crop circles- give me a break! To say they are unexplainable is simply a failure of the imagination- no one has ever given any reputable evidence that they are not made by people. Rob’s comments on my original woo woo blog show how naive he is: http://zone5.org/2007/10/28/no-place-for-woo-woo-in-permaculture/ -a similar and more worrying naivety is expressed on the MMR debate above. The real point is this: people who explain things with their beliefs, based on faith, self-delusion, wishful thinking or a desire to deceive, tend to be dogmatic and uninterested in evidence; good science is the opposite to dogma, and will always be open, cautiously, to new evidence. And I take exception to your defence of Alanna Moore’s position: she threatened me with legal action for pointing out she has no evidence for her claims, while finally agreeing with me by stating that “no one gives a rat’s arse about scientific credibility anyway”! What is required in these issues is not just evidence and rigorous methodology but intellectual honesty, something frequently missing from the New Age side of the debate. For those interested in a genuine scientific approach to consciousness studies I recommend Dr. Susan Blackmore: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

Anna.

Well I’m inclined to agree with Graham with his ‘alternate is unproven – proven becomes mainstream’ synopsis. I’ve been a Pharmacist for the last 15 years and I have to say that some comments on here [and elsewhere] really do the healthcare community a great disservice. Whilst I in no why want to defend ‘Big Pharma’ who I am highly suspicious of, I do want to highlight the fact that much medical intervention nowadays is approached from the minimizing of drug therapy, maximizing of lifestyle change, perspectives. There is a significant problem in that many people can’t or won’t change their lifestyles and demand drug therapy – it will take a long time to change people’s perspectives [and yes, the medical profession are to blame for that dependence in the first place].

I have witnessed first hand the skeptical, scientific approach of Drs and Pharmacists when assessing drug therapy, whose bottom-line reasoning is risk/benefit analysis [and yes, cost]. There is a ready acceptance that the drug companies don’t tell them everything and a lot of effort is put into to the reading of the available literature. However, here there is a major problem in that drug companies do not have to publish all data [as was the case with Vioxx], and it’s this that allows them to ‘hide’ less than ideal results – this is the job of government legislation – there’s no sign of that yet, strange eh?!

As for ‘alternate’ therapies – Graham is absolutely right in that anything that can be proven does become incorporated into mainstream medicine. However, it is important to understand that the nature of double-blind trials is not equally suited to all therapies and not all experiments are equally well designed so there is room for doubt along the way as we receive conflicting results. It’s also important to remember that to fully grasp the results of a paper it’s not always sufficient to have a ‘grasp’ of science but to fully understand the nature of the underlying problem – and we are not all experts in everything.

The difficulty that science has with ‘alternate’ therapies is partly due to a weakness within science itself – in that it can measure small things well [just read the odd PhD abstract for the average level of detail], but there can be great difficulty in areas of overlap and as most areas [particularly with drugs etc] are funded by business, we don’t always have all the data.

I think that is is this perceived weakness that ‘New Agers’ latch on to. They see a conflicting report [for example - just how much wine a day is healthy? The goal posts are constantly changing] and harp on about science not being able to see the whole picture, themselves failing to understand that science IS looking at the bigger picture , by looking at a LOT of little pictures and that this takes time – a lot of time.

I think homeopathy is a lost cause, but it is a cause a lot of people desperately want to believe in because they see it as a link to a more ‘natural’ world. I find this delusion, both frustrating and bizarre, but I can’t blame them for it as the NHS still funds homeopathic hospitals and therapies [in the absence of any reasonable data]. The idea that it’s natural is just so much marketing hype and I’m always given to smile when asked, ‘does this interact with anything?’ Well of course not – there’s nothing in it!

I think that there are likely to be discoveries along the way that puts much of this into a different perspective. I think that there are potentially huge issues with the scientific approach to ‘micro’ health and the drug companies’ background funding – so we should all be skeptical EITHER WAY and not put science on a pedestal it doesn’t deserve and certainly don’t hang on to superstitions-as-cure belief systems [which is essentially what some alternate treatments are]. I also think it’ll be interesting to see how drug therapies change in light of powerdown, and how society responds, not everyone will cope, or, dare I say it, survive.