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Growth of Pseudoscience Harming Australian Universities

Posted by Soulskill on from the my-horoscope-said-the-same-thing dept.

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.'"

4 of 566 comments (clear)

  1. Fundamentalists by Aguazul · · Score: -1, Troll

    Fundamentalists exist in science as well. Alternative therapy is outside the domain of science because science insists on being able to measure stuff with a physical instrument (human perception not being good enough). So science has immediately disqualified itself from judging alternative medicine, yet still the science fundamentalists continue pushing their doctrine outside of its bounds.

    1. Re:Fundamentalists by Aguazul · · Score: -1, Troll

      ROFL. Yes, it's dreadfully inconvenient that scientists insist that something actually work.

      There are lots of things that work without the benefit of science, lots of things that science is not yet able to measure, and lots of things that science does not yet understand. That includes many things that we take advantage of daily -- even before we start on the stuff which is ridiculed by people like you. Do you really believe that Science explains everything? No? Then why can't you accept that some real things may exist outside of the bounds of current scientific dogma. Are scientists representatives of God? Do they really know EVERYTHING? I told you -- fundamentalists scientists -- not much different to any other fundamentalist.

    2. Re:Fundamentalists by Aguazul · · Score: -1, Troll

      I think you're missing a piece - the measurement of the health of a human is well within the realm of human perception and instrumentation. The goals of standard medicine and alternative medicine are the same: improve the health of a human. If standard medicine works and alternative medicine doesn't, well, you should be able to figure the rest out from there.

      Wow, so confident that alternative medicine doesn't work. So how do you explain all the intelligent people using it? I can only think that you have never tried it, or set it up for failure if you did try it. Then it is easy to doubt. Science is good at measuring things when they are really serious. Not so good at measuring things just starting. Human perception when trained gives very good information, but until a scientist can get in your head with you and see your perceptions, science will never move forward into this domain. I find this really frustrating because I am trained as a scientist and I use that model to understand what I perceive. So I use scientific principles in a domain that science rejects.

    3. Re:Fundamentalists by Aguazul · · Score: -1, Troll

      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".

      I am not dismissing science. I trained as a scientist, and I used scientific principles to judge the effectiveness of things that I observe through human perception rather than physical instruments. This seems entirely reasonable to me. You seem very confident that science can measure whether a treatment makes you better or not. Science is very good at measuring things that are badly wrong, not so good at measuring precursors or things just starting to go wrong. I can't speak for homeopathy because I've never tried it or studied it, but the stuff I use daily is proven beyond doubt in my world-view through careful observation of cause and effect. The only thing missing is a physical instrument to measure the results -- but why should I wait until one is invented when I have direct perception providing observations to work with. What I don't understand is the fundamentalist bile coming from people who think that they know everything, when science has never claimed to know everything.