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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
by nzmsv 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
- jacquesm 5y agoAre you suggesting that we didn't adopt his methods?
- astrange 5y agoI don't think we adopted handwashing because of him. Actually, the reason people didn't believe him is interesting because they were using an earlier scientific method - he didn't have a good explanation for the mechanism, so they dismissed it with "correlation is not causation". We're better at using things whose mechanism we don't understand now, like Tylenol.
- jacquesm 5y agoThere is a whole industry in off-label use of medicine, and there are also quite a few studies that try to move off-label use to on-label use once the link is clear. What is interesting (to me) is that which we now consider to be common sense was at one point controversial.
- nzmsv 5y agoChain got too deep to reply. We did adopt his methods, but many years and hundreds of deaths too late, and not before declaring him insane for his beliefs and putting him in an asylum. What I'm saying is that authority has a dark side. Sometimes the establishment is actually wrong. Regardless of right or wrong, it always chooses to erase its critics. Some of us disagree with the erasure, even in cases where the critics are wrong.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, so you trust in the scientific method in the long term and in the expert consensus in the short term. The thing where the case you linked went off the rails for me is that there was no downside to trying his methods earlier, but ego got in the way, and ego is by definition unscientific. But people will be people, that you won't be able to fix, I'm afraid.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]