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Eastern medicine that works would also be labeled as just medicine. Acupuncture is growing in use and legitimacy as it is studied and implemented for chronic pa

Eastern medicine that works would also be labeled as just medicine. Acupuncture is growing in use and legitimacy as it is studied and implemented for chronic pain sufferers. Studies of Aromatherapy have found nothing statistically significant though, so that’d be down as “alternative medicine”. In the same way as “alternative facts” are not facts. “Alternative medicine” is not medicine. The nice thing about alternative medicine is that there’s a pretty clear and simple path to getting an alternative medicine to become actual medicine if it works. Have it studied and tested using the rigor of the scientific method.

rwnspace 6y ago
I'm sorry to be glib, but I've never heard of 'just medicine'. I know there are many procedures and medications that doctors are willing or trained to provide, and I know that many doctors only know or prefer a subset of these, even for common diseases. I know some doctors who are very open-minded in their recommendations and some who are conservative to a fault. Due to the replication crisis, I imagine it's actually much more difficult to get non-standard treatments in now than it was to introduce treatments last century. Not that I'm disagreeing with you - I'm fully in the Ben Goldacre 'Bad Science' camp - I just wanted to highlight that these things sometimes take generational and cultural change, and for some classes of treatments, it's not always a case of taking something from the 'not yet proven to work' bucket and putting it in the 'proven to work' bucket (both buckets are somewhat leaky anyway).
downerending 6y ago
> Eastern medicine that works would also be labeled as just medicine. That sounds a lot like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If you define "medicine" as "anything that works", then of course "alternative medicine" is crap, by definition. One big problem with being this dismissive is that a lot of medicine started out as "alternative" and then was scientifically confirmed over time.

rwnspace 6y ago

I'm sorry to be glib, but I've never heard of 'just medicine'. I know there are many procedures and medications that doctors are willing or trained to provide, and I know that many doctors only know or prefer a subset of these, even for common diseases. I know some doctors who are very open-minded in their recommendations and some who are conservative to a fault. Due to the replication crisis, I imagine it's actually much more difficult to get non-standard treatments in now than it was to introduce treatments last century. Not that I'm disagreeing with you - I'm fully in the Ben Goldacre 'Bad Science' camp - I just wanted to highlight that these things sometimes take generational and cultural change, and for some classes of treatments, it's not always a case of taking something from the 'not yet proven to work' bucket and putting it in the 'proven to work' bucket (both buckets are somewhat leaky anyway).

downerending 6y ago

> Eastern medicine that works would also be labeled as just medicine. That sounds a lot like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If you define "medicine" as "anything that works", then of course "alternative medicine" is crap, by definition. One big problem with being this dismissive is that a lot of medicine started out as "alternative" and then was scientifically confirmed over time.