Posted: Jun 21, 2010 4:26 am
DST70 wrote:
I haven't read all of this thread so forgive me if I missed something. As far as I know though, the claims against homeopathy (or acupuncture, qi gong therapy etc) stem from (1) inconclusive/poor performance in RCTs, and (2) implausability of the proposed therapeutic mechanism. (If there are more I'd be interested to hear them.) As evidence based medicine is the dominant model these days, (2) is not a sufficient reason to discount a treatment, but (1) is.
The RCT has only become the benchmark test since the 60s after the thalidomide disaster, and it has its shortcomings, just like everything else. I think TBM has it right in saying:
"... my post pointed out the issue with evidence based, repeatable systems in that there is much that gets missed, just because its not possible to capture all of reality in a neat bundle and describe it in its completenes."
The double blind placebo trial was only invented in the 60's and medicine has been used way before then.
Few decades back it was emperical science all over the medical establishment, till the time big conventional pharma companies come over, took over the agenda of scientific community and replace emperical science by double blind studies.
So now everything would be seen from the lens of double blind. So anything which does not pass through the lens is unscinetific. So all the knowledge and wisdom of our forefathers is rubbish from the view point of conventional medicine. It's like George Bush saying, "You are either with us or against us"
Anyways Bush party lost and obama came