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"Magical thinking detected." I didn't interpret his post as containing any magical thinking or handwaving, per se. Rather, I think's saying that there are inte
by jonnathanson 14y ago
"Magical thinking detected."
I didn't interpret his post as containing any magical thinking or handwaving, per se. Rather, I think's saying that there are interactions and compounds in drugs we use that we don't (yet) fully understand. Where you and he differ is that he advocates the use of compounds that seem to work, but whose mechanism of action we don't fully comprehend -- whereas you appear to take a more cautious view of said compounds.
Personally speaking, I sort of fall in between your two positions. There are a lot of treatments in modern medicine that are effective, but whose precise workings science does not fully comprehend. I support the use of these treatments, so long as longitudinal data shows them to be safe and effective, and their benefits to outweigh their drawbacks. However, I don't support remaining ignorant about them -- I believe we should keep striving to fully understand what's going on underneath the hood, so to speak.
"Meh. Alcohol gets you drunk. The main difference in effects you'll see between different types of alcohol is how concentrated it is, how fast you drink it and how much you take down. Drunk is drunk one way or another."
The same quantity of alcohol does, indeed, have different effects on different people. This is correlated with gender, body weight, the liver's ability to metabolize the alcohol, individual neurochemistry, etc. There is a panoply of systems within the body that react to the presence of something like alcohol, and that differs from person to person.
In a macro sense, yes, alcohol gets everyone drunk. But the rate at which it does so, and the quantity needed, and the long-term damage, can be quite variable.
"We do, what we don't need to embrace is stuff that hasn't been shown to work, contains all sorts of stuff in all sorts of unknown quantities."
Agreed. We may be living in a golden age of snake oil. The unregulated supplement industry is enormous and growing. Much of the unproven stuff is useless, some of it is dangerous, and more of it will probably be shown to be dangerous in future studies.
- Nursie 14y ago"Where you and he differ is that he advocates the use of compounds that seem to work, but whose mechanism of action we don't fully comprehend -- whereas you appear to take a more cautious view of said compounds." I certainly advocate the use of things for which there is evidence that they work, even if we have no idea how. I'm just very cautious about hailing these things without investigation, or elevating the natural above the artificial (whatever that means) because of some vague belief in plant synergy. I like the aspirin example here - aspirin can be produced from salicin in willow bark. Willow bark itself can be used in much the same way, but contains tannins that can damage liver and kidneys over time. So I think we absolutely should use and investigate 'natural' remedies that seem to work, but we should never assume that they're better or that we can't do better.
- jonnathanson 14y ago"So I think we absolutely should use and investigate 'natural' remedies that seem to work, but we should never assume that they're better or that we can't do better." No argument here, or at least not from me.
- carbocation 14y ago> Rather, I think's saying that there are interactions and compounds in drugs we use that we don't (yet) fully understand. Unless there is evidence to support that position, that's indistinguishable from magical thinking rephrased to sound scientific.
- jonnathanson 14y agoErrr, no. Examples abound in the history of medicine of breakthroughs that were deemed effective before they were fully understood. Penicillin was shown to be an effective antibiotic agent long before science had a complete grasp on exactly why. Even basic sanitation (washing hands between surgeries) was a breakthrough that occurred before the germ theory of disease, and was originally believed effective for entirely different reasons. Today there are several classes of widely prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics that work, but we don't really know why. Magical thinking is the belief that there is some fundamentally unknowable-to-man mystique underlying the workings of drugs. That's not what anyone's saying is the case here. Rather, they're saying that certain drugs work, and that the reasons are potentially knowable to science, but in many cases may not be known yet. (Or fully known yet).
- carbocation 14y agoSo the argument is that because there are historical examples of the active ingredient of an herb being extracted into a useful drug, therefore the OP's personal belief that "constellations of chemicals in these concoctions which, in concert create an altogether particular and unique effect" is now a scientific claim? There is no scientific basis for that. It's just one guy's opinion. Could he investigate it in a scientific fashion? Sure. Could he convince me? Easily. Does asserting it to be scientific make it so? No.
- jonnathanson 14y agoThat's not at all what I'm saying, and to whatever extent you think it's what the OP is saying, I guess we are interpreting him very differently.