Posted: Jun 11, 2010 4:29 pm
Dudely wrote:There are a few problems with that kind of thinking.
There is no reason why a very convincing, unexplained event is proof of anything. It could very well be a fluke or a mistake. The ONLY things that matters are those that you can repeat- if I said there were gnomes in my garden you would expect that you could come over and see them yourself- if you can't then what's to say I'm not lying, crazy, or simply mistaken?
The most convincing and bizarre personal experience in the world is still not proof or even evidence. Sometimes, however, it can be a very good clue to something that that could be proven, or evidence that has yet to be found. But without that evidence it is no better than claiming the moon is made of cheese.
So in regards to medicine it doesn't matter who says they were cured by some strange means, how convincing their experience was, or even their reasoning for why it happened. What matter is if it can be repeated.
Hi, I would agree with you in most cases that that's common sense. But what do you do in cases where it isn't so easy to pop over to someone else's garden to confirm or otherwise?
I think it's useful also to recognise that those criteria are most important to the professional community but maybe less so to others. Non-repeatability obviously raises problems for scientific acceptance. But if you're ill and suffering, a one-off cure would still be pretty welcome, fluke or not.
Overwhelmingly convincing personal experience told us the earth was flat. Science told us it was spherical. Which was more reliable?
Science was. But examining and validating experience is not as straightforward as pointing to ships disappearing on the horizon. Obviously science is not uniformly comprehensive at telling us what's going on, solely by being 'science'.
Just some thoughts.