3 ms·

I disagree. If there is no physical plausibility for a claim it does not need experimental evidence to be dismissed. Homeopathy is essentially a claim of magic,

by neaden 4y ago

I disagree. If there is no physical plausibility for a claim it does not need experimental evidence to be dismissed. Homeopathy is essentially a claim of magic, if I claim I can cast spells on people on another continent to give them diseases you don't need to conduct a clinical trial, you can just say that I'm a fraud.

manytree 4y ago
The issue with this argument is that it’s trying to assert that “science says” something isn’t true (generally one of the most valuable things laypeople derive from science, but not the spirit of reasoning that is responsible for its original determinations) rather than observing the actual phenomena and creating falsifiable hypotheses which may be tested. As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all. I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics. The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).
- manytree 4y ago
  Pethaps a more relevant example is the assertion that it’s absurd to believe non-ionizing radiation at the levels produced by cellphones could be harmful. Dismissed by the same line of reasoning, but now an assertion increasingly being taken as a serious matter worthy of research in Europe.
lolinder 4y ago
It's certainly not on us skeptics to run trials if we don't believe in homeopathy. But if what OP says were true--if experimental evidence shows an effect--rejecting that evidence on the grounds that it doesn't fit our existing model is unscientific. I'm not saying there is such evidence, just that "it doesn't fit the model" wouldn't be grounds for rejecting it if it exists.

by neaden 4y ago

manytree 4y ago

The issue with this argument is that it’s trying to assert that “science says” something isn’t true (generally one of the most valuable things laypeople derive from science, but not the spirit of reasoning that is responsible for its original determinations) rather than observing the actual phenomena and creating falsifiable hypotheses which may be tested. As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all. I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics. The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).

manytree 4y ago
Pethaps a more relevant example is the assertion that it’s absurd to believe non-ionizing radiation at the levels produced by cellphones could be harmful. Dismissed by the same line of reasoning, but now an assertion increasingly being taken as a serious matter worthy of research in Europe.

lolinder 4y ago

It's certainly not on us skeptics to run trials if we don't believe in homeopathy. But if what OP says were true--if experimental evidence shows an effect--rejecting that evidence on the grounds that it doesn't fit our existing model is unscientific. I'm not saying there is such evidence, just that "it doesn't fit the model" wouldn't be grounds for rejecting it if it exists.