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> As opposed to what, speculation-based medicine? Well, yes. The idea is that "speculation-based medicine" (better known as "alternative medicine") is, despit
by Crito 13y ago
> As opposed to what, speculation-based medicine?
Well, yes. The idea is that "speculation-based medicine" (better known as "alternative medicine") is, despite the name, not actually medicine.
Hence the Tim Minchin joke: "You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? ...Medicine."
- dllthomas 13y agoI wasn't under the impression that alternative medicine was the only thing that was not "evidenced based" - that while clearly it's an extreme example, there is plenty of traditional medicine that doesn't make the cut. Wikipedia seems, at a skim, to concur: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine
- Crito 13y agoEvidence-based techniques can become discredited when the state of the science advances, and I would agree that those techniques would not then become "alternative medicine"... unless perhaps they remain in practice. Unless somebody is still doing it, I'd just call it "discredited". Things like psychoanalysis do not typically get the "alternative medicine" label, but they probably should.