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University of Toronto: Anti-vaccine Homeopathy Course Is Fine
The University of Toronto recently undertook an investigation of one of its courses, a bachelor-level health class that taught both anti-vaccination materials and the "science" of homeopathy. The investigation was undertaken because of complaints from professors and other scientific and medical experts. Surprisingly, the university concluded that the class was just fine. "Students taking (the course) ... are in their final year of study and are expected to approach controversial topics with a critical lens. The instructor reports that she provides these readings as the students have already seen the other side in previous courses." The course's syllabus is available for reading. It contains quotes like this: "There are broad concepts that bind various 'alternative' medical modalities together. Among these is the assertion that the human organism, which developed as an integrated unit in its formation, also functions as an integrated unit; that mind, body, and spirit are inextricably linked. Disorder or disturbance in any one of these areas can cause disease in another area."
Update: 07/13 14:14 GMT by S : Reader Gallenod points out that the University has now decided that the course will not be taught during the 2015-2016 academic year, or over the summer.
Update: 07/13 14:14 GMT by S : Reader Gallenod points out that the University has now decided that the course will not be taught during the 2015-2016 academic year, or over the summer.
I have no problem with a course teaching about what anti-vaccine supporters claim if it helps doctors debunk it in person and helps them dismantle it in person. I hope this is what it is about.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
"Question the priorities and approaches of mainstream western medicine through the lens of a more holistic approach to health."
"Understand the connection between body, mind, energy, and spirit and how the interplay between these impact health and disease."
"Intelligently address the concerns of those afraid of alternative medicine or skeptical about its efficacy. "
Wow, this sounds like a nice university...
Indeed and it's not fine.
It's not being fair, that's being unfair. It's unfair to those who hold themselves to a higher standard of truth and realistic accuracy that someone with a handful of internet links can waltz in and be given the same platform. Why bother actually researching anything when you can just complain you're not being given an equal voice and have it handed to you because you poor little thing being left out in the cold by the big bad mean people.
But hey diversity is always a good thing right?
Dear University of Toronto, please remove your head out of your ass. Homeopathy should not be given any legitimate platform, nor should any other form of ridiculous pseudoscience. If you want students to have a critical lens, then teach them more rigor about the scientific method and drawing proper conclusions. Teach about flawed experiment designs, fabricated data, and the dangers of pay to publish journals.
Sometimes I don't even know why I bother.
Remember, it isn't "magic" if you say it's "quantum mechanics".
No it does not.
And as part of the "course goals":
Bullshit.
It's called the placebo effect.
No it's not. Theology doesn't study the natural world, and offers zero testable hypothesis. It's definitely useful knowledge, if one wishes to understand motivations of large groups of people, but it's no science.
Most MDs I know would agree with the basic premise behind the statement that the human organism, which developed as an integrated unit in its formation, also functions as an integrated unit; that mind, body, and spirit are inextricably linked. Where they draw the line is on pseudoscientific nonsense. They freely admit that we do not know everything about why and how teh human body reacts to certain things, but we do know when certain things simply do not work and fall into the realm of quackery. I am all for understanding the arguments the other side makes so you can refute them, just don't make the mistake of giving them some legitimacy because they are "taught at University."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
There's a reason those diseases are exceedingly rare. You anonymous idiot.
Absolutely, and not only is it giving undue volume to a bunch of nutters, it's legitimizing a viewpoint that kills people. Desperate folks eschew actual medicine, some of which may actually save their lives. It gives false hope to the terminally ill and inflates huckster's wallets. This garbage is truly despicable.
UoT says it's okay because "they are expected to approach controversial topics with a critical lens". So how exactly will they be graded on the course if they are indeed skeptical about the voodoo explained? If the examinator asks "How does dilution works?" Can you answer "well it doesn't because it's BS and proven to be so in Clinical Trials". Does that get you an A+ in the course?
The instructor, Beth Landau-Halpern, is married to Rick Halpern, the dean of the campus where this course is taught.
I am Audience.
Oranges may be natural medicine, but they're not homeopathy.
The theory of homeopathy is that you cure a disease with a drug that reproduces the symptoms of that disease (that's the prefix "homo" in homeopathy-- "same"). So, oranges would only be useful as a homeopathy remedy if eating oranges gives you the symptoms of scurvy. ...and then homeopathy takes that drug and dilutes it until not a single molecule originating in an orange is in the drug. The homeopathy cure for scurvy would be "take a drink of water from a glass of water that was filled from a glass of water that was filled from a glass of water that had one drop of orange juice in it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Fortunately, wiser heads have finally prevailed:
http://www.provost.utoronto.ca...
From the article:
=====
The UTSC Health Studies Program has indicated that the course in question will not be taught in the 2015-16 academic year, or over the summer term.
As Provost of this academic institution, I must at all times respect the diversity of opinions and views of academic colleagues and sessional instructors. However, I do note with respect that the Deans of the University’s Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health have released a statement commenting on the education of their students regarding vaccinations. It includes the following:
“As deans of two of the health sciences faculties at the University of Toronto, we teach our students that vaccines are safe, effective and vital to children’s health. Vaccines are one of history’s most important and significant achievements in public health and medicine. The best evidence that science can provide proves that the health benefits of vaccines far outweigh their potential side effects, and we instruct our students accordingly.”
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TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Theology, when taught from a neutral viewpoint, is a real science.
No it is not. The neutrality of one's viewpoint is irrelevant to whether it is a science or not. It concerns studying concepts that are by definition not falsifiable. Therefore it cannot be science. Theology is basically the earnest study of a work of fiction as if it were real. You can have a scientific study of the psychology of theology. You can study anthropology, history, sociology, etc as it relates to religion. But theology itself is not and cannot be a science. It makes no predictions about the natural world that can be tested and reproduced.
It is trivial to observe that the placebo effect occurs with a sugar pill or with a homeopathic remedy. If there is "quantum mechanics" involved, it is almost certainly not the mechanism described by homeopathy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Describe the mechanism for "filtering of photons based on time of emission" and there is a Nobel Prize waiting for you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I teach physics at a liberal arts college, I am totally on board with exposing students to cross-disciplinary ideas that go against accepted norms. So as I'm reading through the syllabus, I'm fine with things like this:
Sure, no problem, let's do a compare-and-contrast, it's popular enough that we need to be familiar with it whether we think it's baloney or not, and considerations of how states of mind affect states of health are real and useful. But then we hit page 2:
No. The author has no idea what quantum physics is, and is using it as a magic wand made of pure bullshit. Uttering the phrase "quantum physics" is, of course, a pretty common and cliched way to sound impressive without knowing anything, but it demonstrates that the "honest intellectual inquiry" thing is just a disguise, and the professor is here to sell snake oil.
Get the hell out of my ivory tower.
Actually, the placebo effect is something we DO understand, quite well in fact. Many studies have been done on it in quite some detail.
The placebo effect is merely a name for something we don't understand.
No. No it isn't. If this is the starting point for your argument then you are already wrong before you say another word.
Welcome students, to this course delving deep into all the science that is the foundation of homeopathy.
Let's start.
No questions?
I have a question:
Assuming I've understood the concept correctly, and it's about water remembering, wouldn't the water coming out of the tap have once in it's life been in a continuous body of water that has already come into contact with every single possible contaminant, and therefore should cure every disease known to man?
You're confusing the study of beliefs with the beliefs themselves.
I'm afraid I'm not confused in the slightest. Theology is by definition "the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God's relation to the world ". Since god(s) existence and relation to the world (if any) are by definition not known or falsifiable, any "study of their nature" is in essence a study of a work of fiction and most definitely not science. You can study other sciences as they relate to the effects of theology (including beliefs) but theology is not a science itself.
You have a deep misunderstanding of the subject, which is probably why your reaction here is visceral and not rational.
I described what a science is and what it isn't and how theology does not fit the definition of a science. If that isn't rational I'm afraid you do not understand the meaning of the word. If you understand the topic then by all means show me how theology fits the definition of a science. Show me what predictive value it has in describing the world. Show me testable and repeatable hypothesis theology has ever made that have been shown to be true by objective evidence.
I have no problem with a course teaching about what anti-vaccine supporters claim if it helps doctors debunk it in person and helps them dismantle it in person. I hope this is what it is about.
That was exactly my hope. I could see the legitimacy of inoculating students to all the half truths and outright lies that alternative fruitcakes are trying to pitch the public. It's even important to have our medical students versed in some of it just so they can be prepared to counter the fear mongers.
Regrettably, the course outline reveals otherwise. It goes as far to say the course will delve into a quantum physics’ understanding of disease. So it's a course teaching the very worst of the lies. The instructor is listed as Beth Landau-Halpern. Here's an undercover video CBC caught her and others in where she tells the parent that vaccines are causing allergies and other stupidity that is entirely counter to scientific evidence. She even has a blog post here confirming it was her and pleading that her advice was devoid of context, as if there is some context in which suggesting vaccines like that for MMR is really far worse for a child than a homeopathic placebo she was willing to sell...
This is as about as bad as it can get. We have the U of T willing to run a course taught by someone this loony, and then to review the course material and find it acceptable even! Of course, they are not going to be offering the course next year, and hopefully never again. But for it to get this far is a sign of some very, very deep rot in institutions that seriously needs to be cleaned up.
> Yet, many social sciences teach that self-identification should be the only factor and to suggest anything else is discrimination.
I don't think that is an accurate characterization when there has been some evidence found for a biological role in some aspects of gender identification. In fact, a specific region of the brain in transsexuals has been found to be typical of their identified gender rather than the one their chromosomes would predict. Additionally its even been found female to male transsexuals experience "phantom limb syndrome" for the penis they never had.
So really, evidence points to, we are actually talking about people with what appears to be a congenital birth defect, in the one organ we are pretty shit at tampering with directly....the brain. So yah, I would say that expecting them to express the same gender identification as someone without their condition is about as discriminatory as asking a man in a wheelchair why his lazy ass can't walk up the stairs.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I could explain that gender is mostly a social construct, or a mental one (as opposed to biological sex, which has some fuzzy boundaries but is otherwise more clearly defined). I could explain transsexualism in terms of foreign hand syndrome, where your brain is telling you that your body is wrong and the difference between your mind and body is a continual torment. I could tell you about years of secret anguish and desperate struggles against one's self, as often as not leading to suicide.
But I'm pretty sure you have an unshakable faith in a baseless opinion. I'd wish some dire situation on you for your close-mindedness, but I can't actually think of a worse curse than being willfully ignorant and without compassion.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.