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My mom is an alternative medicine advocate and doctor. While I believe that some of the things she advocates for might have some merit (acupuncture) some things

My mom is an alternative medicine advocate and doctor. While I believe that some of the things she advocates for might have some merit (acupuncture) some things are total bunk (homeopathy). I have always leaned hard on "show me a study from a reputable journal about this" and occasionally she'd send me something from some source that mostly looked like a published paper. The thing that is killing me is that the "good science" done by "good scientists" is increasingly being found to be bunk science done by people who have incentives misaligned with their actual studies. I'm rapidly losing faith in the reliability of published studies and their authors because more and more "good" work is being debunked.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago
Individual papers are never supposed to be reliable truth so it's good to lack faith in them. It's a pity so many are fraudulent but even when they're not, they're still often wrong. They're there for researchers to communicate between each other, not for the general public to make personal life choices from, nor for companies to remove their products from sale because of.
somenameforme 2y ago
In medicine there is billions of dollars to be made by having studies turning out one way, and millions of dollars to be lost by having them turn out the other way. Wiki has a limited section on medicine on their page [1] on the replication crisis, including: --- In a 2012 paper, C. Glenn Begley, a biotech consultant working at Amgen, and Lee Ellis, a medical researcher at the University of Texas, found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[79] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings. --- One of the most interesting things in modern times is that China now has a higher life expectancy than the US, yet working conditions can be difficult, Traditional Chinese Medicine is still widely practiced, there is extremely widespread poverty, and access to modern healthcare is relatively limited. I'm certainly not appealing to that traditional medicine, homeopathy or anything of the like. Rather I'm appealing to some sort of nihilism - that I think we know far less than we think we do. SSRIs would be the best example of this - as the actual experimental evidence for their efficacy leaves them comparable to placebos, yet people treat them as the bleeding edge of treatment for the plethora of disorders they're proscribed for, to say nothing of their tremendous side effects. When we look back in time at all the stupid things people did, we often forget that those things were also seen as the bleeding edge of expert treatment at the time. No less than JFK's sister [2] was lobotomized as was the latest treatment for psychological issues at the time, with the result one could expect. And that was scarcely ~80 years ago. It seems quite arrogant to imagine people 80 years from now will not be looking back at us with similar bemusement. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy
triyambakam 2y ago
I don't really see how you can believe in acupuncture if you also don't believe in homeopathy. They're nearly the same thing.
- fnordsensei 2y ago
  Surely you’re joking. They have virtually nothing in common.
  - callalex 2y ago
    Well, they have “no stated mechanism of action” in common…
- surfingdino 2y ago
  Why? It is possible to believe selectively and even hold contradicting beliefs.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I don't believe in neither, but I can admit that if we ignore placebo effect. The homeopathy has zero change of doing anything. On other hand with acupuncture you could technically hit something that would have some sort of effect... At least you have tiny amount of physical effect on body. Where as with homeopathy it is either sugar pill or water without anything in it.
surfingdino 2y ago
When access to health care is limited and expensive, alternatives abound. Quacks, herbalists, homeopaths, etc. fill in the void created by lack of access to good quality health care. Other factors increasing interest in alternatives to medicine are high-profile cases of fraud such as pushing vaccines, medications that turn out to be ineffective or untested, or event known to be harmful with no consequences to the people or the companies responsible.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

Individual papers are never supposed to be reliable truth so it's good to lack faith in them. It's a pity so many are fraudulent but even when they're not, they're still often wrong. They're there for researchers to communicate between each other, not for the general public to make personal life choices from, nor for companies to remove their products from sale because of.

somenameforme 2y ago

In medicine there is billions of dollars to be made by having studies turning out one way, and millions of dollars to be lost by having them turn out the other way. Wiki has a limited section on medicine on their page [1] on the replication crisis, including: --- In a 2012 paper, C. Glenn Begley, a biotech consultant working at Amgen, and Lee Ellis, a medical researcher at the University of Texas, found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[79] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings. --- One of the most interesting things in modern times is that China now has a higher life expectancy than the US, yet working conditions can be difficult, Traditional Chinese Medicine is still widely practiced, there is extremely widespread poverty, and access to modern healthcare is relatively limited. I'm certainly not appealing to that traditional medicine, homeopathy or anything of the like. Rather I'm appealing to some sort of nihilism - that I think we know far less than we think we do. SSRIs would be the best example of this - as the actual experimental evidence for their efficacy leaves them comparable to placebos, yet people treat them as the bleeding edge of treatment for the plethora of disorders they're proscribed for, to say nothing of their tremendous side effects. When we look back in time at all the stupid things people did, we often forget that those things were also seen as the bleeding edge of expert treatment at the time. No less than JFK's sister [2] was lobotomized as was the latest treatment for psychological issues at the time, with the result one could expect. And that was scarcely ~80 years ago. It seems quite arrogant to imagine people 80 years from now will not be looking back at us with similar bemusement. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

triyambakam 2y ago

I don't really see how you can believe in acupuncture if you also don't believe in homeopathy. They're nearly the same thing.

fnordsensei 2y ago
Surely you’re joking. They have virtually nothing in common.
- callalex 2y ago
  Well, they have “no stated mechanism of action” in common…
surfingdino 2y ago
Why? It is possible to believe selectively and even hold contradicting beliefs.
Ekaros 2y ago
I don't believe in neither, but I can admit that if we ignore placebo effect. The homeopathy has zero change of doing anything. On other hand with acupuncture you could technically hit something that would have some sort of effect... At least you have tiny amount of physical effect on body. Where as with homeopathy it is either sugar pill or water without anything in it.

surfingdino 2y ago

When access to health care is limited and expensive, alternatives abound. Quacks, herbalists, homeopaths, etc. fill in the void created by lack of access to good quality health care. Other factors increasing interest in alternatives to medicine are high-profile cases of fraud such as pushing vaccines, medications that turn out to be ineffective or untested, or event known to be harmful with no consequences to the people or the companies responsible.