Alternative medicine conference hoists self

[tualha]

Some readers (do I have more than one left?) may recall the 1996 Sokal Hoax, in which a physicist submitted a patently ridiculous paper to a postmodernist literary journal and had it accepted, thereby demonstrating the journal's lack of objective standards and rationality

Comments

[morgan_starfire]

Oh, please. You've lobbed everything that's labelled "alternative medicine" together -- would you do that with everything that falls under allopathic medicine and tell would-be patients to beware of everything in allopathic medicine?

Do you know anything about clinical standards in any of the fields that get lumped under "alternative medicine"? Do you know anything about evidence-based practices or research in any of those fields?

And yet here you are, blithely saying that b/c this guy was able to get one article into one journal, and thus get himself invited to one conference in one sub-field, the entire field of "alternative" medicine is hogwash.

What hogwash.

[tualha]

There's a reason to lump it together. I quote from Tim Minchin:By definition, 'alternative medicine' has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work?

Medicine.
If you know of some particular kinds of alternative medicine that pass rigorous tests of efficacy and still aren't recognized as real medicine, by all means, name them.

[morgan_starfire]

What bullshit. I am honestly shocked at you. I thought you had more intellectual honesty than that

[tualha]