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Growth of Pseudoscience Harming Australian Universities
wired_parrot writes "The international credibility of Australia's universities is being undermined by the increase in the 'pseudoscientific' health courses they offer, two academics write in a recent article decrying that a third of Australian universities now offer courses in such subjects as homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine, which undermines science-based medicine. 'As the number of alternative practitioners graduating from tertiary education institutions increases, further health-care resources are wasted, while the potential for harm increases.'"
These "pseudo science" articles indicate that pseudo science works better than science seems to indicate. :vulgar language)
Plecebo works better than the real thing (warning
Accupunture works, doesn't matter where
Accupunture works
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Alternative therapy is outside the domain of science because science
Utter rubbish.
measure stuff with a physical instrument (human perception not being good enough).
Again, utter rubbish.
A trial (simplified): give people (a) a placebo and (b) homeopathic treatment. See which get better and which don't. Doesn't even require anything more than perception. Do I percieve this person as dead yes/no?
The results: homeopathy is no better than a placebo.
If it doesn't make you better, then by what reasoning or intuition is it doing any good at all?
So science has immediately disqualified itself from judging alternative medicine, yet still the science fundamentalists continue pushing their doctrine outside of its bounds.
More tosh. Simplifying, either medicine makes you better or it does not. Science can tell you if it does.
Please, in future learn *something* about science before dismissing it out of hand. And if you don't have the inclination to do that, then please carefully consider your comments about "fundemantalists".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think you'll find that it's so roundly rejected *because* it's already been researched properly and didn't hold up.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Science is not opposed to homeopathy or alternative medicine per se. If the course of treatment cannot be measured by physical measurements, that is perfectly fine. However, if the treatment does not have an effect on outcome of the patient, it is rightly labeled as ineffective. For example, clinical trials of massage and acupuncture have proven the effectiveness of these treatments for specific conditions. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/ and http://nccam.nih.gov/health/massage However, homeopathy specifically the serial dilutions of compounds or extracts in water, has never been proven effective in any clinical trial and goes against basic precepts of chemistry and biology.
Well there's this bit from Tim Minchin's storm - "Do you know how they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine."
Whoa, whoa wait a second. Art history is a non-serious field, on par with a course on Star Trek? Having you been smoking the straw man teaching your philosophy class?
The saddest example I see of pseudoscience is in the birth communities, medical technology has taken us out of the tragic "good old days" when 1 in 10 babies and 1 in 100 mothers didn't survive a birth. But suddenly everyone thinks it's a great idea to run away from hospitals and doctors and use untrained homebirth attendants, even for high risk pregnancy. In Australia death rates are four times higher for homebirth babies.
Having recently been pregnant and seen the "trust NATURE" mantras thrown at me again and again in online communities, I'm so afraid of who else is being mislead. But the consequences are unimaginable.
spacefem.com
There are things about the human body and mind that science does not understand yet.
Name five.
You might have to to give a bit more in the way of parameters for this but off the top of my head: