Misunderstanding Empiricism

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If we could see the experiment or study first hand, there would be no problem, but we don't usually have that option. The average person is at the mercy of the interpretations of others. (experts, authority, etc.)

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But PD, we already know that for various healthcare related things like your castor oil packs, you never required that studies showing their effectiveness for what you are using them for even existed.Why do you need to see studies first hand for some things, yet simply take your Naturopath's word word for it concerning other things?

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Read the sentence, it has nothing to do with what I require. The average person does not have first hand access to experiments or studies.

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What you wrote was:

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If we could see the experiment or study first hand, there would be no problem, but we don't usually have that option.

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All I was noting was that the existence of studies showing the effectiveness of the castor oil packs didn't seem to matter to you.Moreover, when confronted with the fact that no experiement existed showing that castor oil packs could even penetrate the skin, let alone affect internal organs, you ignored that evidence and held on to your preferred initial belief.So forgive me if I don't really trust that you would have no problem giving up your preferred belief if you could see an experiment first hand. I really doubt that it would make any difference.

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We are at the mercy of the interpretations of others. We are trained to take "experts" at their word. An expert is someone who has training. MDs, NDs, Nutrionists, etc. have training. We have been programmed.

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An expert has training, yes. But what kind of training?A person trained for 50 years in Traditional Chinese Medicine who prescribes powdered rhino horn for erectile dysfunction is still a quack, despite all of those years of training. A ND with training who prescribes castor oil packs for treating the liver or the uterus or any other internal organ is still a quack, despite their training.That is because both people are not basing their treatments on scientifically determined facts, but on anecdote and tradition.We are also "programmed" these days to see past the huckster and the sales pitch, and to not think of health care professionals as gods or as people with all the answers. We have to do our homework, and we have to have our bullshit detectors fully operational if we are going to not be conned or taken in by well-meaning quacks.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Maybe I've just spent too much time in my life finding ways around brick walls to just cave because something doesn't go as planned. A study or experiment is very specific. Closing one avenue doesn't negate all the other avenues to be investigated. Did a study or experiment address my particular issue? Does it negate one avenue and leave others open?

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I have no argument at all with this approach. In fact, I think it is a great open-minded way of thinking about the evidence.But then you go and spoil it all by writing the following:

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You don't wish to take into consideration McGarey's work, I do.

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I absolutely did consider what we could of McGarey's work, and so did everybody else in that thread. I just skimmed it and it seems to me that all that we ever got to see of McGarey's work was his testimonial, and his claim that castor oil is effective because it has a "vibration" that somehow heals things in the body.McGarey found that T-cells were elevated in people using castor oil packs, but our resident chemists thought that it might be caused by the residual ricin (the poison), or even just the heating pad.

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You provided nothing that showed that castor oil packs are dangerous.

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Well, other than the possible low-level ricin poisoning.What I asked for in the OP of that thread, and you never actually provided, was to be shown that castor oil packs worked.

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What you miss is that if the packs don't work for me, I won't use them,

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How do you know if they are working?

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Just because my thinking doesn't follow the same path as yours, doesn't mean it's wrong.

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Actually, the way that you think is making it far more likely that you will be wrong. This is because you give far too much credit to unscientific and pseudoscientific healthcare workers, practices, treatments, and products.

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We've had different experiences in life which equip us with different information.

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I would put it differently.I would say that we've probably had different educations which have equipped us with different ways of thinking about nature, evidence, and human psychology.I mean, I am positive that Percy and I have had very different experiences in life, yet we've both been telling you the same thing WRT science, anecdote, and healthcare. There's a reason for that.

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Obviously I don't understand what is necessary to "show" you that something works over a written forum. In an effort to learn, you have the floor. Show me how it is done.

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Show me that Midol Menstrual Complete works.

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OK.The three active ingredients in Midol Menstrual Complete are acetaminophen (pain reliever), caffeine (stimulant), and pyrilamine maleate (diuretic). Here's my pub med search results for acetaminophen. In reading over the abstracts, it looks as though the randomized double-blind testing has shown it to be more effective than placebo for the relief of pain from primary dysmenorrhoea, but not as effective as other OTC pain relievers like ibuprofen. Here is the NIH information page for acetaminophen. Here's my pub med search results for caffeine as it relates to primary dysmenorrhoea. It seems that there is a body of literature demonstrating that caffeine acts as "analgesic adjuvant" and "enhances the efficacy of paracetamol" (the European version of acetaminophen). Caffeine is also a diuretic.However, caffeine is also indicated in making severe PMS symptoms worse, so should probably be avoided by those women who have severe PMS. Here's the drug information page for pyrilamine maleate as included in Midol. I ran into some difficulty finding studies related to use of this product as a diuretic for menstrual bloating. The issue here may be that Midol has been on the market for a very long time, before today's stricter standards for efficacy.OK, so now we have some information with which to work to determine if the ingredients in Midol are effective for thir intended use. My conclusion is, based upon my 20 minutes of online searching is:Acetaminophen--Yes, it is more effective than placebo, but not as effective as other NSAIDS like ibuprofen.Caffeine--If a woman has severe PMS, she might want to avoid caffeine as studies seem to indicate that caffeine makes symptoms worse, but as it seems to enhance the effectiveness of acetaminophen, it can be considered to work better than placebo.Pyrilamine maleate--unknown effectiveness given the lack of information at this time.Here's the drug information page for pyrilamine maleate as included in Midol. I ran into some difficulty finding studies related to use of this product as a diuretic for menstrual bloating. The issue here may be that Midol has been on the market for a very long time, before today's stricter standards for efficacy.OK, so now we have some information with which to work to determine if the ingredients in Midol are effective for thir intended use. My conclusion is, based upon my 20 minutes of online searching is:Acetaminophen--Yes, it is more effective than placebo, but not as effective as other NSAIDS like ibuprofen.Caffeine--If a woman has severe PMS, she might want to avoid caffeine as studies seem to indicate that caffeine makes symptoms worse, but as it seems to enhance the effectiveness of acetaminophen, it can be considered to work better than placebo.Pyrilamine maleate--unknown effectiveness given the lack of information at this time.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Scientists, focused as they are on the methods and weapons, often leave the other parts of the picture unexamined.

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I think you need to support that assertion.

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the scientific consensus would be skewed by the public policy

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Can you please demonstrate how a scientific consensus is skewed by public policy?

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What gets you to the top in science is having a big theory and getting results. Nobody's impressed by someone who just goes around falsifying theories.

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Actually, careers in science are made precisely when long-held paragigms are overturned.That's often what a "big theory" is, you know; an idea that stomps all over the theories that came before it.

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That's just the way it is. And if you combine a big ego with a wrong theory, you can find that research in a field can get skewed for years.

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Examples, please.(hint-aren't you forgetting replication in peer-review?)

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You've shown me that it should or could work given what you found on at least two of the active ingredients, but you haven't shown me that Midol does work.

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I don't understand what your objections are, PD.If I've shown you that the active ingredients in Midol work as intended, then why are you balking at the idea that Midol works?At any rate, even if you are able to explain a valid objection, showing that two out of three active ingredients are effective for the symptoms they are intended to relive is far, far more positive evidence of efficacy than anything you were able to show for any of the dozens of conditions and symptoms castor oil packs are supposedly good for.Remember, according to several "natural cure" websites I visited, castor oil packs are supposed to be effective against things like epilepsy, toxemia, appendicitis, and cirrhosis of the liver!Epilepsy!AbE: I've just found out that although castor oil has been used as folk medicine for a long time, the most recent popularization of them is due to a number of psychic readings that Edgar Cayce gave on health and healing.Edgar Cayce!!I've also just e-mailed a Naturopath about the claims she makes on her website. Here's the text of my e-mail: Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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The response to the BSE epidemic here was skewed by a need not to panic people into avoiding beef (and so destroying the domestic beef market). The scientific consensus remained more conservative than it might otherwise have done because it was politic for it to do so.

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Well, was that the scientists or the politicians fault?

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Nobody's impressed by someone who just goes around falsifying their own theories.

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A good scientist tries to do this in every publication, actually.

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If you've worked in academia you must have seen some of this, surely? It makes all the honest academics steaming mad that the one who gets all the attention and all the praise is the one with the big mouth and the hide like a rhinoceros. They always get caught out eventually, of course, but they can last a surprisingly long time.

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I dunno. There's plenty of opposition to lots of big name people all the time. And I still don't get how, when replication is such an important part of building scientific consensus, that a "big mouth" can be anything more than that unless their peers are able to replicate their work. No single study or group of studies from a single lab is going to be influential at all unless other scientists are able to both replicate the findings and springboard from those findings into related aread of research.

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If you've done any cutting edge work, you'll know that it's possible to bamboozle people for quite a while because no one is an expert and everyone is a bit over-excited because it's all new.

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Well, no, I don't think that's really how it works at all.Look what happened to the cold fusion guys. Lots of international attention, but then, when nobody was able to replicate their work......nothing.Please don't confuse the attention paid certain scientists by the popular media as some sort of indication of how other scientists view those media darlings' work.Science is naturally conservative in the rate of acceptance of new ideas, and replication of findings by peers is a big reason why.And are you suggesting that a "big mouth" scientist is actually lying to his peers and everyone else? That's what "bamboozle" means, right? That's a very serious accusation to make of a scientist, you know. Furthermore, you've also implicated all of the other scientists who have reviewed that one's work for publication, collaborated with him, or been a graduate student or post doc working in his lab. All of them have to either be really terrible scientists whom are unable to see the fraud going on, or they must all be in on the fraud.Is this really what you intend to accuse scientists of?

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I know you're going to ask for examples, but I'm afraid it would be considered libel, and we have pretty draconian libel laws here. (Hows that for a get-out clause

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If you say so. Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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But you haven't shown me that all the ingredients together as Midol do what they are supposed to do.

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Actually, yes I did for acetaminophen and caffeine, although I apologize that my links to my search results on pubmed didn't work. This study shows exactly that.

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So from what you've shown me Midol should work, but does it work?
How does one show that it does work?

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Early forms of Acetaminophen/Paracetamol have been studied as far back as the late 1800's, and a purified form has been marketed in a similar way as it is today for about 50 years. It has been studied extensively. We understand a great deal about what it does in the body, its interactions, side effects, etc. The wiki is a good page. I'l direct you to the references at the bottom of the page, and also to the "Mechanism of Action" section of the text.Given this 5 decades of study, can you give me any good, reasonable explanation for why you are finding it difficult to accept that Midol works better than placebo at relieving cramps?

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Am I correct in assuming that in an acetaminophen test, women in pain are given the drug or placebo and then asked if the pain has been relieved?

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Yes, roughly. The evaluation of pain is pretty structured in trials so as to get the most accurate results possible. The acetaminophen relived pain better than placebo.Now, can you provide anything regarding the effectiveness of castor oil packs that's even close to anything I've given you for midol?Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

You know, I'm going to stop jumping through hoops for you until you answer my question that Percy reminded me that I asked you in Message #35: Lemme ask you, PD. When your ND prescribed castor oil packs, did you similarly demand to see the studies showing that they worked for precisely the conditions you were going to use them for?Did it even occur to you to inquire about efficacy studies before you started undergoing the treatment?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Am I really saying anything controversial? I'm just saying that science is done by humans, not by saints. I'm not claiming that science is uniquely corrupt, just that it's like any other human institution.

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Accusing scientists of fraud, and other scientists of incompetency, is controversial.

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Company finances are as carefully regulated as scientific research,

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Hardly!That is such an obviously inaccurate statement as to be absurd.

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but people still manage to defraud the system. Why would you expect it to be any different in science? Of course, in the long-term the fraud and bamboozlement (a term I'm using to cover activity that doesn't quite break the rules, but isn't entirely honest either ) will hit the brick wall of reality, but in the meantime, there's still pain.

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No other profession punishes even mildly shady practices as harshly as science.That's why it is so rare.

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False. You don't actually know what I did or didn't do.

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OK, correct me then.What did you actually do?

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False. I never claimed a need to see studies first hand.

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Then what did you mean when you said the following:

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Watching the experiments or studies first hand, would be hard evidence and would probably leave little to the imagination. Unfortunately the average person doesn't have that option. The average person is at the mercy of the interpretations of others. Personal experiences factor into how we deal with those interpretations.

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It certainly seems to me that you were saying that, ideally, we would all be witness to the experiments and research to REALLY be sure of something. Otherwise, we need to rely on experts.This seems to imply that you think that scientific testing for safety and efficacy are a good thing.Now, my point is that you seem to have a double standard. It seems to us that you are very skeptical of some healthcare practices, but not of others.I guess what we wonder is what makes you decide to apply skepticism to some practices and not to others?I also wonder why you quoted Brittanica to me about remaining calm and detached. I haven't gotten personal, and I haven't gotten upset. Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Hey Petro, if I started a thread on mind reading, would you be willing to discuss your claim?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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I'm saying that there's some fraud and some incompetence in science, as in any other field of human endeavour. Is that controversial?

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No.However, incompetence is weeded out very quickly, contrary to your claim,, since incompetent scientists won't have a very easy time getting funding, or getting their papers published, or in attracting graduate students, or earning tenure. In fact, I would say that most incompetence in science is self-selected out, as people who can't handle Doctoral level work don't ever earn one.Are there scientists with greater and lesser talent and skill? Of course. But incompetent scientists surviving professionally for a long time? That's unlikely simply due to the nature of the profession. You might have heard the expression, "publish or perish"?Dishonesty is rarer still, for the reasons I've already explained. Science can only function if the published research is reported honestly, since all science is based upon the work of others. An academic scientist who falsifies data and is caught (which will probably happen as soon as someone tries to replicate their work) will, quite literally, end their career.Are there frauds in science? Yes, of course. My contention, however, is that they are far, far less common than in most other professions, and are most rare among high-profile scientists, since their work is the most scrutinized.

Yup. Mentioned them already.