Misunderstanding Empiricism

PD,I ceased pressing you for reasons why you're skeptical only of traditional medicine and not of quackery when you strenuously denied that that was case, and I assumed that meant I was mistaken and that you didn't feel this way. But you're just resuming the very behavior that led me to these conclusions in the first place. You are treating traditional medicine far more skeptically than quackery. You seem unable to even detect quackery, for McGarey is into it big time.One of the hallmarks of quackery is the failure to produce scientifically valid evidence. As I stated above in a message you didn't reply to, there are good reasons why the positions of quackery are not supported by scientific studies. One reason is that quacks don't perform scientific studies. Another is that probably little to no scientific evidence would be found by such studies anyway, otherwise hints of the effects would have become apparent and been explored long ago.Google Books only has a dozen pages or so of the book. Please produce the appendix about the 81 cases here so we can look at them. What we expect to see is subjective self-assessment, subjective assessment (lack of objective criteria), anecdotal evidence, lack of controls, no double-blindness or even single-blindness, and no placebo groups.The mistake you're making is in thinking that the effects are real, but there just don't happen to be any scientific studies showing it. But most likely the absence of scientific studies indicates there is no effect for many of the claims concerning castor oil. While there are some appropriate medicinal uses of castor oil, the claims of McGarey are wild and extravagant. This is the first paragraph of chapter seven: Help hearing problems? Help hyperactivity? Speed healing of hepatitis? Secret healing capabilities?PD, once again I ask you, what has happened to your bullshit detector?--Percy

PD, this is the second time in this thread alone that you've done this. Please drop the sarcasm and the indignance and discuss the topic. A number of issues have been raised about the science behind McGarey's medical claims. It has been explained how one explores the world around us using the scientific method that lead to information that is probably true, and how this approach is far superior to other approaches. Please address these issues or stop posting.--Percy

PD,I'll reply to this message in the hope that a discussion of the topic can develop. Of course you don't know if it works for you until you try it. You already know I'm well aware of this principle because I told you that Tylenol doesn't work for me, but I know it works very well for many people.Everybody's body chemistry is different, and the most familiar example is different blood types. The effect any drug has will vary from person to person, including not only the intended effects but the side-effects.The mistake you're making in this case is to generalize from your personal experience about drugs whose effects are obvious (e.g., for a cold remedy, either your sinuses clear up or they don't or somewhere in between). You can't generalize from these types of experiences to more subtle effects, such as the rate of healing. For example, you cannot use a castor oil pack on your sprained ankle and then conclude a couple days later when your ankle feels better that it worked, because you have no way of knowing how well your ankle might have healed without castor oil packs.So, do castor oil packs help sprained ankles heal? The way you find out is to divide a group of people with the same type of sprained ankle into two groups. Both groups use castor oil packs and heat, except that one group has real castor oil and the other does not. And neither the patients nor the doctors know which patients have real castor oil packs and which do not. This is known as a double-blind placebo-based study.The suspicion we have of McGarey's work is that there were no objective controls, meaning that he never did anything like compare the effect of doing nothing or of using a placebo with castor oil packs. This is obvious even though we can see only the first two pages of the appendix, because he says there are 81 cases but 101 conditions. Unless most of the people in his studies had most of the conditions, he had a very, very small number of patients in each condition category.We also suspect he used subjective assessment techniques.So please produce this appendix for us so we can discuss his results. If you can't make them available on the web, just scan them in and email them to me and I'll place them in an accessible place. It depends upon what the claims are. I doubt many scientists are going to be interested wasting their time studying the effects of castor oil on hepatitis, and the NIH would be very unlikely to provide funding. Medical research is not entirely empirical. Oftentimes it only makes sense to study something if a possible mechanism can be identified. In the case of hepatitis, no such mechanism can be imagined. Same for sprained ankles. No they haven't. The Medidian Institute's only study was Systemic Aspects of Psoriasis: An Integrative Model Based on Intestinal Etiology, investigated the effects of castor oil packs on psoriasis, not the mechanisms, and they received inconclusive results, suggesting more research was necessary. The paper appeared in the Journal of Integrative Medicine ("integrating conventional and alternative medicine").A.R.E is the Edgar Cayce site. This is the site that includes personalized astrology reports and advice about how to become a psychic, remember? You referenced the Edgar Cayce site. You claim you can detect bullshit in the same message where you reference a quack site. PD, come on, make sense.--Percy

Yeah, your analysis of the study is much better. PD didn't provide a reference to the study, she just said the Meridian Institute was researching castor oil packs, and this study was the only one at their site that mentioned them. I didn't realize it was the same study you described earlier.So what's the answer here? We're describing the lack of scientific support for these views, we're describing the scientific support for some facets of traditional medicine, we're noting the incongruity of giving the greatest credence to the worst evidence, and it's having no effect other than evasion and animosity. Getting the science right while alienating the potential convert doesn't seem like a winning approach, but on the other hand, I'm becoming convinced that despite all protestations to the contrary, examining the data isn't what PD is interested in or it would have happened long before now.--Percy

I think you're confusing two different arguments here.When you raise questions of bias and malfeasance among scientists, which you've done a number of times now, the answer has always been that these are qualities of people everywhere, and that they are much easier to get away with outside science because science is tied to the real world and requires replication. So the bias/malfeasance issue is one argument, and it's been addressed.But the argument against quacks isn't that they're biased and given to dishonest behavior. The "bias and malfeasance" charge is yours against science, not ours against quacks. We haven't been using it except when you yourself raise it about science. The charge against quacks is that they're not doing science.You keep introducing the "bias and malfeasance" charge as if it were new, and you were moving toward introducing it again recently when you started inquiring about the source of financing for medical research. The next time you raise this issue you shouldn't raise it as if it were for the first time. You should instead address, finally, the rebuttal, namely that quacks are far more susceptible to this problem than scientists. But you're not a child. You're leaving unaddressed most of the rebuttals, you're failing to move forward with examination of any study or even to provide the appendix of information for the McGarey cases, then when pressed on these points you lash out. Then stop citing psychic websites and start engaging the discussion. Your original position, that anecdotal data is equal to scientific data, is bogus. This has been pointed out many times, but you have yet to take up discussion of it. You just wait a few posts, then you reintroduce your argument from scratch again as if it had never come up before. No one has unrealistic expectations about anyone changing their position. I've called this an unrealistic expectation here many times. But it is not unrealistic to expect someone to engage the discussion if they're going to continue posting. You are, as I said before, like Faith in that the more one attempts to focus attention on the core issues, the more likely you are to blow up. You are again introducing an argument from scratch as if it had never been rebutted. Please address the rebuttal and help move the discussion forward. For example, I already said in Message 131 that you can't generalize from personal experience, because there are no controls and the sample size is too tiny. Sure, it makes absolute sense to decide for yourself whether Midol works for you. But conversely, it makes absolutely no sense to conclude from your own personal experience that Midol doesn't work for anyone.Other messages prior to this have made the same point, and Nator repeats the point yet again in her reply. It is time for you to stop saying this, the things like "Personal experience is not inferior to science," as if this had not already been rebutted many times. Maybe we're wrong, but the way to show we're wrong is to address the rebuttals, not to keep repeating yourself.You could even create a website called MidolDoesNotWork.com and attract large numbers of webizens all posting to your bulletin board sharing their own personal experiences with Midol and how it didn't work for them. What would that prove?The answer is, "Absolutely nothing!" And someone else could create a website called MidolIsWonderful.com where people post their positive experiences with Midol, and that would also prove absolutely nothing.To have confidence in your findings you need a scientific approach in order to weed out self-selection problems (a biggie) and subjective assessments and biases.Now I know you understand that Midol works for some people and not for others, so let's instead focus on castor oil packs. Castor oil packs do not have scientific studies that demonstrate effectiveness. So if you put together a website called CastorOilPacksWork.com and attracted a large following, what would that prove? The answer once again is absolutely nothing. A successful website called CastorOilPacksDoNotWork.com would also prove nothing. To demonstrate effectiveness you need scientific studies.So this brings us to McGarey's cases. If you can produce the information from the appendix to McGarey's book then we can examine them and see if our suspicions are correct. If you don't want to produce this information, then pick a technical paper that's been cited in this thread and we'll go through it with you and identify the qualities that make it good or bad science and why. No, personal experience is not hard evidence. It is subjective empirical evidence. It is the methods of science as a collective enterprise that turn the personal experience of many scientists performing experiments, studies and observations into the more objective form of evidence that we might call hard evidence. If you truly want to discuss something, then stop berating and frustrating everyone and instead actually discuss it.--Percy

As MBG quite clearly showed, a degree from Harvard Medical School does not come with a 50 year warranty against turning into a quack. A degree from a prestigious school is not a guarantee that someone isn't a quack. What makes someone a quack is the treatments and remedies he recommends, not his degree. Around 24,000 people graduate with medical degrees every year, and if only 1% become quacks, that's still 240/year, plenty to go around. But there are a huge number of completed studies that can be examined, if someone actually was willing to do so. If they're not going to discuss the topic anyway, who cares. Good riddance!--PercyEdited by Percy, : Removed a full paragraph, I had misread what PD said.

PD, this is the third time you've done this, in just this thread alone. There was no light to see, because you never engaged the discussion. We defended you, you gave us nothing. We pressed you, you gave us nothing. We backed off, you gave us nothing. We pressed you again, you gave us nothing. You rarely addressed any rebuttals, instead just repeating the same arguments again and again, or when backed into a corner saying sarcastic things along the lines of, "You get a gold star, I'm gone."In other words, it doesn't matter what we do, you're not willing to discuss this topic. All you really seem to be seeking is some kind of validation of your pseudo-scientific fallacies, and lacking that your next choice is a dramatic exit. You're just another drama queen like Faith. Nobody wants you out if you're willing to discuss the topic, but if you're not then it's probably better if you stop posting about it. I think all we other participants in this thread are a bit fed up with all the informational research and explaining that you consistently ignore.--Percy

This strategy has already been played to the hilt by others before you, it gets no sympathy here at EvC Forum. You cite pseudo-science sites like Edgar Cayce's psychic site, then you ignore all rebuttals, and you cite other similar things again and again while ignoring the rebuttals, and finally people become so frustrated that you can rebuke them for becoming personal.You seem to think wasting all the time and effort people have put into researching information and constructing clear explanations is not anything to give any thought to, maybe you think we're just here for your entertainment. When you engage people in debate you have a responsibility to thoughtfully consider what they say and respond to it. Ignoring this responsibility is against the Forum Guidelines. Naturally this kind of behavior has a strong tendency to provoke further guideline violations, but that's your fault, not everyone else's. Provoking other people into Forum Guidelines violations is considered very bad form.--Percy

More sarcasm and drama with no mention of the topic, I see. Isn't irony wonderful!If you're going to continue to post to this thread, I think it would be appreciated by the other participants if you'd please address the topic. If it would help I'd be glad to post a summary of what I see as the key issues on the table yet to be addressed, let me know.--Percy

It isn't so much that you misunderstand empiricism as that you don't accept how different the confidence levels are between its application in anecdotal experience versus scientific method. It's sort of like timing an hour by counting seconds in your head versus using a highly precise chronometer, and in many cases it's far worse.Dr. McGarey probably used empiricism in his case studies (in other words, I'm not accusing him of making things up), but our suspicion is that he did not use the scientific method. But we'd have to have the appendix, and then if there's enough information we could determine whether he did or did not.Richard Feynman said that the easiest person to fool is yourself. It is the scientist's motto and the foundation for success for all charlatan's and flim-flam artists. The scientific method is the way we determine as best as we possibly can the true nature of the real world. One reason that it's so successful at doing this is that the replication requirement turns science into a collective enterprise. While one or a few scientists can fool themselves into accepting something about reality that isn't true, the likelihood of this happening diminishes dramatically as the pool of participating scientists expands, because in wide diversity there are no common biases and proclivities, and it is unlikely in the extreme that they could all be fooled identically while studying the same natural phenomenon.Because science is tentative, because our methods are not perfect, no suspected phenomenon can ever be categorically ruled out. Science will never be able to categorically demonstrate that natural phenomena like ESP and UFOs and Bigfoot do not exist, or that there are no health benefits from magnetic bracelets and therapeutic touch and homeopathy, not because these things actually exist or actually work, but because it's never possible scientifically to rule anything out. You've been here long enough to see Dawkin's invisible flying spaghetti monster mentioned, probably several times, and it's extremely instructive to note that science cannot categorically demonstrate that this monster does not exist. The same is true of pink fire-breathing dragons. All science can say is that the current evidence does not support the existence of such phenomena. But it can say this with great confidence.One of the characteristics of a pseudoscience is that it stays at the same state of progress for years and years, decades even. Here are some examples from science and pseudo-science:

• Computers: Babbage's computing machine, WW-II computing machines, Eniac, IBM/360, Intel 8080, Pentium.
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• ESP: no progress
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• Astronomy: Galileo's telescope, Lick Observatory, Mount Palomar, Hubble.
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• UFOs: no progress
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• Space exploration: balloons, Sputnik, Telstar, Mercury missions, Apollo moon landing, space shuttle, space station.
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• Bigfoot: no progress
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• Medicine: early surgery, germ theory of disease, anesthesia, vaccines, antibiotics, modern surgery, joint replacements, organ transplants.
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• Faith healers: no progress
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• Straight chiropractic (subluxation theory): no progress

Because of the lack of progress in the pseudosciences, "research" from decades ago is as "relevant" today as it was then, and one of the common qualities observed from advocates of pseudoscience is citing very old "research".Advocates of those like Edgar Cayce and William McGarey are apparently unable to distinguish between the scientific application of empirical methods of study and anecdotal observations. This quality is widely shared among the general population, and it is why it is so easy for con-artists and flim-flam men to fleece the public.Concerning medications, some have a relatively instant and obvious impact, such as headache medications, and so personal experience plays a big role in deciding whether to use them. In most cases, they either work for you or they don't. Scientific studies of such medications add value by determining safety, proper dosage levels, side-effects, long-term impact and drug interaction issues.But many medications do not have a relatively instant and obvious impact. What is the effect of mega-doses of vitamin C? Anecdotal evidence is when you take it for a year, then try to remember whether you had greater or fewer colds the previous year. Or perhaps you kept track of all your colds so you know whether the number of colds you had went up or down. But that's just you. And it's just for one year. Maybe there were more cold viruses in the environment in one of those years. Maybe a vacation destination was a factor. Maybe the visit of a relative with their young children was a factor. And I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg here with the factors that have to be corrected for.Scientific studies enumerate all the various factors and provide corrections for them (or I should say, the better the study, the better job of this it does). Anecdotal stories in books or at web sites can't even come close, not even remotely. There's no comparison. Science raises empiricism to a high art, and that's why it is so superior to anything else.--Percy

We've never talked about things that can't be measured in this discussion. What we've talked about is the inadvisability of drawing conclusions from anecdotal data. The anecdotal data derives from observations that are subjective and inexact, in other words, of things that can absolutely be "measured", to use your term, but that have been measured very poorly. I can only give the same answer I've given to this many times already, along with the same qualifier.The answer hasn't changed. When anecdotal or poor evidence is all that's available and a decision has to be made now, then that's what you go with.The qualifier I've always added hasn't changed, either. Personal experience is highly subjective and unreliable. If you apply a castor oil pack to your sprained ankle and in a couple days it feels better, how do you know how the ankle would have felt without the castor oil pack? The answer is, you don't have any idea to how your ankle would have responded. You've learned nothing.So if you then proceed to tell a friend with a sprained ankle that castor oil packs worked for you, you're giving them useless information, because in reality you know nothing about the efficacy of castor oil packs.The title of this thread shouldn't be "Misunderstanding Empiricism" but "Misusing Empiricism," because that's what people are doing when they reach conclusions based upon the incredibly poor evidence presented in books by people like Cayce or McGarey or based upon websites of shared anecdotal experiences.Any particular weird belief you want to hold, there are books and websites out there that will provide empirical "evidence" to support you in your belief. Believe the world is flat? There's books and websites for that. Believe the US brought down its own buildings on 9/11? For that, too.! Believe the Apollo moon landing never took place? That, too! Believe in UFO's? Sure! Pyramidology? Yep. ESP? Of course! Elves and leprechauns? You bet! Existence of Bigfoot? Natch! A 6000 year old earth? That, too!You're also ignoring the "guilt by association" claim. We all like to be fair and not judge until all the evidence has been scrutinized, but there is far more nonsense out there then could ever be scientifically examined. People should take an "I'm from Missouri" approach and be skeptical until the evidence demonstrates the true nature of the phenomenon. This is the approach of science, the approach that has the only record of continuous success.The question to be asked about anything purported phenomenon of the real world is always the same: what is the quality of the evidence. Science has raised the answering of such questions to a high art.--Percy

Of course it's a fallacy. I didn't say that "guilt by association" should lead to automatic rejection. I said you should take an "I'm from Missouri" approach, treating all claims skeptically pending valid scientific evidence, but that "guilt by association" can tell you a lot about where best to direct limited time to serious examination of claims.But I was making an extremely valid point, one you don't want to miss. I said, "We all like to be fair and not judge until all the evidence has been scrutinized, but there is far more nonsense out there then could ever be scientifically examined." So let's say someone has cancer and their doctor, a cancer specialist, says they need chemo right away before it spreads, while a website that also promotes prophecy and ESP says that they should begin a regimen of laetrile and vitamin B17. Which approach deserves to be treated more skeptically? If you don't find the answer simple and obvious, then this brings us back to your bullshit detector again. What authority arguments? If you're referring to my Message 154 that you're replying to, there were no authority arguments.So just to make things clear, I didn't argue that guilt by association automatically makes something false. I argued that it tells you where best to direct your skepticism. And I didn't make any arguments from authority.So now addressing your other extremely brief comments: You're just repeating your position without engaging the discussion again. Was my example of using a castor oil pack for a sprained ankle invalid? Misapplied? Misdirected? What? If you're not going to engage the discussion, PD, but just repeat your position, then please stop posting.--Percy

Replies like this are really unconstructive. Please stop posting if this is to be your approach to discussion.--Percy

Geez, thanks PD. And in return may I say that it's good to know that you don't abuse your children. Now we're even, since we've both expressed relief about things the other never said. This is a red herring argument, but so misguided I've got to address it. Have you never sprained anything more than once? Do you somehow believe that every sprain of a joint involves the same ligaments to the same degree and damages the joint capsule to the same degree? Every sprain is different.Follow a basketball team for a few seasons, because basketball is a sport where ankle sprains are endemic. You'll quickly learn how varied the recovery from a sprained ankle can be.So you're absolutely wrong, the individual in no way can know how long it would take a sprain to heal. You have to take ankle sprains on a day-to-day basis. Yes, you can tell a mild sprain from a severe one, but the timetable will still vary.Beyond that, there's the question of how one determines when a sprain is fully healed. A farmer who sprains his ankle in the winter might think it's fully healed after a week because it feels pretty good as he tends to minor chores, but had it been spring and he went out and tried to walk his fences he might discover it wasn't as healed as he thought.In other words, recovery time from a sprain is not only highly varied, it is also highly subjective if an individual is deciding for himself when it is healed. There really can't be any doubt about this. Except that it often isn't hard evidence, as I've just demonstrated. By my count, this is the fourth time you've claimed something like this in this thread alone. You seem to have some odd belief that only overtly expressed opinions are allowed to be addressed, while the opinions inherent in arguments are off-limits. Everyone who debates here is defending their personal opinions. If you don't want to do that, don't participate.The very arguments you're making indicate that you either reject or don't understand the arguments that Nator mentioned. If you don't want to address this apparent contradiction in your position then stop posting, but please, no more one-word responses. Do what you did in this post, quote something somebody said and respond to it.--Percy

Thank you for this detailed misstatement of my position.The issue is and always has been the gross error of granting equal validity to conclusions arrived at through scientific study versus those arrived at through anecdotal and/or casual observations. Both approaches employ empiricism, but experience has demonstrated over and over and over again that scientific approaches lead to increased knowledge and progress, while anecdotal approaches remain mired in the same misunderstandings for decades, even centuries.PurpleDawn, and also LindaLou, just cannot believe that people getting together and sharing their experiences with one another do not often lead to valid and useful conclusions, that in fact the opposite is the case, they most often lead to wrong conclusions. Were this not the case then the world would not have had to await the development of scientific approaches before the rate of progress exploded.--Percy