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.'"

Comments

Homie Opethie

[negRo_slim]

How does something like homeopathy even find it's way into a traditional school?

Re:Homie Opethie

[forkfail]

Just part of our decent into a post-industrial dark age, where technology is magic to most folks.

And since it's magic, why shouldn't other forms of magic work?

Re:Homie Opethie

[Penguinisto]

Hell, I'd be happy if they just re-introduced Rhetoric and Logic as required courses. That alone would knock out at least half of the garbage we have to put up with in both media and society...

Re:Homie Opethie

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

If you look at all the homeopathic remedies available, there's an enormous number of them out there. Obviously, it's total BS, but its practitioners have made a real pseudoscience out of it, with tables of ailments and which corresponding remedy to try (the remedies themselves being some item, perhaps a poisonous substance, diluted so much into water that there's probably none left in the vial of water you're buying).

Homeopathy has been around since the early 19th century, and has been a fairly organized practice for almost the entire time, which has meant that it's been able to iterate and refine itself enough to have developed a very complex and mature (though not effective) set of doctrines.

One thing that's interesting, and surprising at first, is that homeopathy's success in the 19th century was due in large part to the fact that it worked better than many other medical practices, in that patients treated by homeopathic remedies often had better outcomes than patients treated by other methods. This seems to be at odds with the known fact that homeopathy doesn't work, but if you think about it for a bit it makes sense. Remember that ancient practices like bloodletting survived until well into the 19th century, and that scientific medicine was very immature -- the common use of anesthesia dates to the 1850s, and germ theory wasn't generally accepted until fairly late in the century. Both traditional and scientific medical practices were often harmful to the patient -- going to the doctor could kill you.

Now consider what a homeopathic doctor does. He visits you, gives you a checkup, then gives you a prescription for a lot of water with a few molecules of something else in it. Put another way, his treatment is bed rest, plenty of fluids, a nice placebo, and a little TLC. That regimen won't ever harm you, and for a lot of diseases and conditions it'll always be the preferred method of treatment. Compared with the sometimes incompetent, often misguided, and occasionally murderous regimes of other forms of 19th century medicine, it's no surprise that homeopathy was a popular and successful practice.

That says nothing about it's place in the 21st century, of course.

Using what works

[S-HubertCumberdale-F]

my favorite quote concerning alternative medicines is... "If Alternative medicine practices worked, they wouldn't be alternative any more" not sure where it came from.

What a relief

[assertation]

I started reading the title of this thread and though "please don't be the US".

After all, we have
- global climate change deniers
- anti-vaccination groups
- paleo diet followers
- raw foodism
- a museum that claims dinosaurs and cavemen lived together on the newly created 5 thousand year old Earth.

What a relief to know that the US is not the only developed country with a problem of people making up their own reality.

Re:Perhaps study these treatments scientifically?

[Savantissimo]

People (pseudo-skeptics) keep saying this, hand waving at the unspecified research they haven't read that supposedly backs them up, but the meta-analyses keep refuting their gut beliefs.

Alternative medicine in Australia

[nbauman]

Here's what's going on in alternative medicine in Australia. Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall, so I'll give you an excerpt. (It helps to understand that when you give a lung x-ray, you have a good chance of finding spots that nobody can really interpret, that usually turn out to be harmless.)

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1110812
What's the Alternative? The Worldwide Web of Integrative Medicine
Ranjana Srivastava, F.R.A.C.P.
Department of Medical Oncology, Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:783-785 March 1, 2012

Out of curiosity, an impressionable woman in her 30s attends an integrative medicine exhibition; having recently had a child, she's been sleep-deprived and wants to investigate natural remedies. At the seminar, she wins a door prize — a blood test that promises to diagnose cancer. She was considering getting a blood test anyway and seizes this opportunity for a more comprehensive workup. After all, you can't be too careful about avoiding cancer.

Weeks later, she receives a call from an apologetic but alarmed stranger telling her she has advanced cancer.

“How do you know?” she gasps.

“Your blood test is positive for circulating tumor cells.”

“What does that mean?” she cries.

He sends her a three-page report and tells her to seek immediate help. She spends a nail-biting week awaiting an appointment with the recommended integrative health expert.

Glancing at the report, the expert declares, “You have advanced non–small-cell lung cancer. You need treatment now.” The woman is petrified: Has her teenage smoking habit come back to haunt her?

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Absolutely. There are circulating tumor cells in your blood.”

Tears streaming down her face, the woman asks, “What now?”

The practitioner prescribes a 12-week course of intravenous vitamin C, at a cost of $6,000, paid up front. Without further discussion, an appointment is made.

[Gets a CT scan, which shows 2 2mm nodules. They could be lung cancer.]

The hunt for a rapid cure brings the woman to my office. Relating her story, she shifts between self-assurance and sheepishness. “I know you find this incredible, but I need your help. I am dying of cancer.”

“There's no evidence of cancer,” I reply, seeking to reassure her.

Instead, her tone sharpens: “But I have circulating tumor cells! How can you say that?”

Incredulous, I try to explain too many things. The blood test is a long way from being validated for clinical use. It was unscrupulous even to offer it. Does it make sense to her that it was sent to an unheard-of overseas laboratory for processing? Why did no one recommend that she see an oncologist?

[Demands a PET scan. PET scan clear, the 2 nodules on the CT have disappeared. Probably transient foci of inflammation. Srivastava tells her, "There is no cancer." Woman still insists she has lung cancer. Demands to see a surgeon. Surgeon refuses to see her.]

Homeopathy and holistic medicine

[PrimalChrome]

It's worth noting that the handful of homeopathy practitioners that I've met over the years have a holistic approach to their medicine. I'll try to provide an example :

Western Doctor visit : You sit in the waiting room for an hour before being taken back to a room. They spend 2 minutes to weigh, measure, and get your vitals. Doc walks in and you complain of headaches. He nods, looks you over, and prescribes Tylenol 3 and ushers you to the payment processor.

Homeopathy practitioner visit : You sit in the deserted waiting room for 5 minutes before going back to a room. The practitioner comes in and gets your measurements/vitals and asks you what's wrong. You say you're having headaches. They ask more questions about activity cycle, diet, stressors, and your social situation. They prescribe you a placebo, tell you to quit playing League of Legends until 2am, and get another 2 hours of exercise per week.

There are positives to the methodology that contribute to the observed successes in those that believe.....but the actual treatments are not one of them.

Re:Fundamentalists

[Tom]

There are lots of things that work without the benefit of science

Name five.

lots of things that science is not yet able to measure,

Do you mean "measure" or do you mean "quantify"? Because measurement is not as important in science as many non-scientists believe. It is important, yes, but not so important that you couldn't do science without.

lots of things that science does not yet understand

Depending on your definition of "understand". Do you mean entirely, completely, know-everything-about? Then yes, pretty much everything falls into that category. But on almost everything that scientists have ever bothered to have a few looks at, we have at least a general idea of how it works. And - that is the important part - we are continually improving them.

Science basically works like this: Imagine the fact, law of nature or whatever you have is a number between 1 and 99. Instead of writing a book about how god made the number 42 special and everyone who says otherwise needs to die, scientists will figure out an experiment that tells them if the number is less or greater than 50. It takes ten years to build. They still don't know very much, but now they have a better idea than anyone else. Turns out it is less than 50, so the religious fanatics who wanted to kill all the scientists when they started the experiment may be right. Of course they now celebrate their "victory".
The scientists continue to work, and manage to come up with an experiment that can tell them that the number is +/- 10 of any number they choose to test. It is horribly expensive, so they only get funding to run it three times. Since they know it's But they are getting a pretty good idea.

So yes, we have many fields where we still don't know what the number is. But in almost all of them, we are much closer to it than guesswork, and on many, we already know the first 20 decimal places and are trying to figure out the 21st and 22nd.

Then why can't you accept that some real things may exist outside of the bounds of current scientific dogma.

Name five.

Do they really know EVERYTHING?

You don't seem to have any issues using a computer connected to a global network, neither of which has come into existence through homeopathy, praying or interpreting ancient mystical texts.

So here is the $1 mio. question for you:

If you trust scientists enough to put your life into their hands every time you take a plane - because, just in case you didn't know, planes don't fly because of acupuncture or Genesis - then what is your criterion for picking the areas of your life where you trust science, and where you doubt science?

Based on what wisdom and higher understanding do you decide which things fall into the bounds of science and which ones don't?

And, the $10 mio. bonus question: What does it take to convince you that you are wrong?

fundamentalists scientists

You really want to look up "fundamentalist".

Re:This is the danger...

[Tom]

Some "traditional medicines" are bupkus. Some are not.

Name them. The ones that aren't.

Just because science has not discovered something does not mean it doesn't exist.

Science will gladly investigate the working treatments that you name above, I am sure of it. All of the commonly named examples have been examined - and found to be lacking.

One thing that most people aren't aware of is that the comparison against a placebo is only the very first step of investigating a treatment. It is to establish whether the thing has any effect whatsoever. That doesn't mean it will become a treatment. Because it will then be compared against the best treatments currently available. Because, quite honestly, if you already have something that can save 80% of the patients from an otherwise deadly disease, why would you want to give them something else instead that saves only 60%?
(and before you yell, yes of course that is simplified, factors such as side-effects, cost, availability, etc. are also considered. That's why there are different treatments available for many diseases, because some may be less effective, but also have fewer side-effects, etc.)

I can think of quite a few things in my life that science cannot (or at least does not at present) explain.

Don't leave us guessing! Give us examples. Pics or it didn't happen.

There are things about the human body and mind that science does not understand yet.

Name five.

I keep repeating myself, because there are probably 50 comments all saying that there are such things, but none of them actually say what they are.