NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/med/21397

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 1.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news
From: [e-mail] (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: RFD Alternative Medicine - need definition
Date: 23 Nov 1992 09:50:01 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: peaches.cs.utexas.edu
Summary: How I wish!

-*----
In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Dyer) writes:
> Chuck's problem is not that he's strident and extreme, it's that he has
> a single axe to grind, and uses selective snippets from the literature
> to prove its edge.  This is not science, ...

I tend to agree that it is not science; however, I have seen much
the same thing (though in a more sophisticated fashion) in
respected, refereed journals.  It is left up to critics to point
out the bias in the snippets.

> ... As Gordon points out, for every study which "proves" his
> point (i.e., that people can't and should not lose weight
> with current techniques because it's futile) there are
> studies which contradict this, often in the same journals.
> That's because scientific "truth", such as it is, is often to
> be found only by wrestling intelligently with the cacophony of
> contradiction found in current studies.

True, but how does one marshall a case from a "cacophony of
contradiction?"  It can be done, but it requires hard work,
especially to be put into writing.  (I am underimpressed with most
meta-analyses I have seen, some of which seem little more than
bogus statistical play that tries to make respectable fields such
as parapsychology where decades of experiment have failed to find
the phenomeon under question.)

>> (Of course, Steve Dyer and I have our strident days, also.)

> Yeah, so what?  That's not the point--neither of us says
> dumb things.

For myself, I would be satisfied not to stick tightly to the
dumb things I do say.

Russell