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Whenever I see something like "a physician who focuses on alternative medicine" used as a source, I'm ready to dismiss the article as rubbish. What "alternative

Whenever I see something like "a physician who focuses on alternative medicine" used as a source, I'm ready to dismiss the article as rubbish. What "alternative medicine"? There is no alternative medicine. Medicine is a science. What people call "alternative medicine" is something that is specifically not a science; it means that whatever is practiced or claimed, is not founded on evidence gathered using the scientific method. "Alternative medicine" suggests there would be some other, alternative way to make science than systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses [0]. The minute something in "alternative medicine" can be substantiated with repeatable findings that stand the trial of other, competent people looking at what was done, it is just "medicine". Nothing alternative about that. This does not mean that science wouldn't err. But please, speak of witch-doctors or dissidents or whatever, but not "alternative medicine". [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

dragonwriter 12y ago
> There is no alternative medicine. Medicine is a science. A fairly typical definition of medicine (and the one Google shows if you ask it to define medicine) is "the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude surgery)." And the "practice" part is a lot older than the "science" part. And, in any case, even excluding alternative medicine, the practice of modern Western medicine is (though this varies a lot from practitioner to practitioner) a lot more intuitive and less science-based than many people would like to think, and efforts by institutions with concerns about improving that are often controversial in the field.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> There is no alternative medicine. Medicine is a science. A fairly typical definition of medicine (and the one Google shows if you ask it to define medicine) is "the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude surgery)." And the "practice" part is a lot older than the "science" part. And, in any case, even excluding alternative medicine, the practice of modern Western medicine is (though this varies a lot from practitioner to practitioner) a lot more intuitive and less science-based than many people would like to think, and efforts by institutions with concerns about improving that are often controversial in the field.