Nothing is black and white anyway
No I'm not a regulator, I'm the Boffinator
QuoteNothing is black and white anywayYou say you know that, but do you really know it?You can't force regulation on one section of alternative medicine (by which I mean unproven medicine) because 'it sounds like bullshit', but not on another 'cos it sounds like it might work'. Again, too much regulation restricts innovation.Some of those old wives were pretty wise you know.
No I'm not a regulator, I'm a statistician and would like to see a body of evidence that demonstrates that something works beyond chance/randomness alone. I find the regulations that govern the work that is required to prove this to be cumbersome and tedious, but they are there for a reason and that is to protect the individuals who are involved in a study and ultimately to test whether the results could have occurred by chance alone*.
QuoteNothing is black and white anywayYou say you know that, but do you really know it?You can't force regulation on one section of alternative medicine (by which I mean unproven medicine) because 'it sounds like bullshit', but not on another 'cos it sounds like it might work'.
Again, too much regulation restricts innovation.
Some of those old wives were pretty wise you know.
Tiger penis, bear bones and all that sort of thing aren't medicines.
Sorry to butt in here,Quote from: slack---line on January 22, 2010, 11:02:17 amNo I'm not a regulator, I'm a statistician and would like to see a body of evidence that demonstrates that something works beyond chance/randomness alone. I find the regulations that govern the work that is required to prove this to be cumbersome and tedious, but they are there for a reason and that is to protect the individuals who are involved in a study and ultimately to test whether the results could have occurred by chance alone*.Statistically life on Earth shouldn't exist should it?
Couldn't it be agued that statistically, Science has been incorrect 100% of thetime ever since year 0 because it's a continously evolving form of knowledge which can never reach an end point?
And yes, the "SCIENTIFIC method" has undergone revision and refinement over the years, that is integral to the objectivity of the process itself. You will end up with far more reliable understanding of the world around you than blindly "believing" something works.
Don't you mean that they're traditional quackery?
For supposed scientists folk make a lot of sweeping generalisations. Where's the rigour?My beef with accapi is its is currently being aggressively marketed in the media I encounter daily. With a lot of pseudo-scientific bollocks as well. I've never had Homeopathy pushed on me, I am aware of it, that's all. No one has ever even suggested I try it. I 'm strongly against either being banned, or even having to prove effectiveness before being sold. Hence my dissing of accapi and defence of homeopathy - context.
Guess what Slackers, you can do both. Allowing unproven drugs on the market doesn't devalue the proven ones.On the one hand you laugh at the fact that homeopathic cures are only water, the next you insist on regulation. Since you're king of black-or-white, either allow it may work and insist on regulation, or accept it is just water and make it freely available.One of the several points I've made on this thread which folk have chosen to ignore is that of cures for nail fungus. The ones that have been researched and 'proven' by the medical companies are shit. Long term pill-taking, poor rates of effectiveness, high rates of subsequent reinfection and a catalogue of common side effects from liver damage to suicidal tendencies (nearly lost my dad to that). For whatever reason there isn't much ongoing research or development. Search the internet though, and you'll get a load of topical alternatives that actually work - Vicks vaporub being the lead contender. Should I wait until its sanctioned by the WHO?Too much control restricts innovation.
It was more a flippant comment aimed at an implication that Statistiscs are the be all and end all, sorry. But what I meant was, statistically, intelligent life shouldn't exist because 'thinking' type intelligence isn't neccessary for evolutionary survival.
Quote from http://www.execulink.com/~louisew/life.htm: 'The evidence so far seems to agree with the hypothesis that given a suitable environments, we can expect life to exist on many planets in our galaxy. The Drake Equation popularized by Carl Saigon is that intelligent life such as ours occurs regularly on a small percentage of planets that produce life. This however does not convey the uniqueness of self conscious intelligent life! Nature is more likely to produce the sea horse or the platypus duck than anything like the human brain. All of these structures are unique or exceedingly rare. Normal life in the universe consists mostly of sausage shaped organisms metabolizing simple molecules or photons. Humans are very strange creatures, there is nothing in nature that came before with abilities anything like hominids. Whereas other organisms use variations on physical themes such as swimming or more efficient digestion, Humans have been successful by thinking. This is a strange and unique ability. Yet it seems to be just a chance outcome. A creature similar to modern chimps had the need to carry stuff and throw rocks. These abilities are all that is needed to explain human anatomy. Intelligence followed much later. Try running a computer simulation that ends in intelligent life as we know it! Let us never forget that most (80%) of life on this planet is bacteria. Statistically the strangest part of all is that life in any form has persisted for over 3.5 billion years on this planet Earth without a cataclysmic event making the planet inhospitable for all life. Or even more likely, an environmental change that destroyed all complex life forms. For life to exist liquid water is required over this entire period. Life is common and cheap and we will find many planets just like Mars, where life existed at one period in time, but not for most, or even a significant fraction of these planets histories.Almost completely now. Basically all I was trying to say, in a rather convoluted way, is that statistics don't adequetely explain huge areas of the universe, or they just reinforce why something shouldn't work without adding anything insightful to explain how it somehow does work.
Trust in science is best gained by open discourse, and there is more than a touch of condescension to this kind of debate that is not productive for either scientists or the general public.
Apologies if my last post seemed accusatory