you actually think that "defense" of Social Text by the editor is somehow convincing and not merely the ultra-pretentious whinings of a petulant bedwetter
Interesting conclusions you jump to.
The editor's comments demonstrate that he -like a lot of "postmodern" theorists - is in serious need of a good old Zen-style smack upside the head - a time-honored cure for taking abstractions too seriously. However, that does not change the fact that the publication of Sokal's "hoax" in Social Text did not undergo peer review.
how do we, or can we trace documents and find if they are being opened or used somewhere where they weren't intended
If you want to do that, never send electronic copies.
Send only hard copies, printed on paper with a security watermark, and with a tamper-evident seal.
Actually, don't send them. Allow access to them only at your secure facility. By people who have undergone thorough background checks. And who are strip-searched before entering the viewing facility, to prevent smuggling hidden cameras in.
Or, you could just deal with the fact that information is going to get out.
I love how you just proclaim those as facts we should all just accept.
It's the same way your claim that "modern medicine has doubled life expectancies in the last 100 years" was presented.
Diet and sanitation are unquestionably important factors but if you are going to pronounce them as "more" important than medicine, public health policy, economic development, or even education you need to provide evidence.
I did not mention public health policy, economic development, or education. And neither did you in your original post: you credited medical care with all of the increase.
Some of the top ten causes of death in 1900 such a diptheria did not significantly decline until a vaccine was widely disseminated.
As explained in the report linked above, respiratory diseases are to a large degree associated with crowding and unfavorable living and working conditions. Their decline is due to many factors: the end of tenements and sweatshops, cleaner heating and energy systems, nutrition, and public health measures. Actual medical treatment is just one factor.
Frankly I think you are full of nonsensical opinions, faulty reasoning and your ideas are unsupported by actual facts.
I've given you facts; you've provided nothing but medical technofetishism. That's not science, not disciplined critical thinking based on observation: it's the cultish worship of the secondary or tertiary trappings you associate with science.
I had LASIK surgery - I'm pretty sure I couldn't see clearly more than a foot in front of my face before the procedure and I have better than 20/20 vision now. Are you seriously going to claim that a placebo cut could affect the refraction of light in my eyes in such a way as to give me 20/20 vision?
Would I bet that LASIK is more effective than a placebo operation? Yes. Is it a strongly known fact that it is better than a placebo? No, because the comparison hasn't been done. That fact that it's difficult to do such a comparison doesn't let us assume what the outcome would be.
Being a engineer or an M.D. doesn't let you make such assumptions, either. (Indeed, being a member of either profession says jack about one's knowledge of the scientific method.)
Could there be some non-specific aspect of pre- or post-surgical care that has an impact on the results? Could the belief in the effectiveness of the surgery cause visual data to be processed differently within the brain? Or cause you to use the intrinsic muscles of the eye in a different manner? Could social factors play a role such that your vision is actually unchanged, but you report it differently now? We don't know.
As Feynman put it in his Cargo Cult Science address, "if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results."
We know that non-specific or "placebo" factors play a role in surgical outcomes; therefore if they're not being taken into account, if those effects are not being ruled out, it's not good science.
It may be that we can't collect the data to do so, for ethical or practical reasons - fine. But that doesn't make it good science, it just means that a big blank spot remains in our knowledge.
If you want to prove that surgery is worthless, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I'll support your effort.
I have never asserted that all surgery is worthless. Hell, I just had cryosurgery to remove a wart.
I have stated that the evidence for any given surgery being more effective than a placebo in no case reaches the "gold standard" of double-blinded tests, and I have stated that in every case that has been tested versus a sham operation, the surgical treatment in question has proven no more effective than the sham.
And I have objected to the bias that holds that all surgery is "real" medicine with strong evidence, but "alternative" treatments with the same level of clinical evidence aren't.
Acupuncture doesn't work. It has been tested in blinded tests.
As I've been pointing out, if you apply that same set of criteria to surgery, then
surgery doesn't work.
As for these "blinded tests" of acupuncture, many used acupressure as their control, which is as ridiculous as using morphine as the control in your test of heroin. Others did not test acupuncture as it is actually applied, but used fixed point prescriptions that did not take into account the diagnostic methods of Chinese medicine - rather like testing if an antibiotic can treat sinus congestion without regard to whether the congestion is caused by an infection or not.
You kill people. That's right, people like you lead people away from proven treatments until it's too late.
Look, jerkwad, I always suggest that clients see a physician at the very first sign that they might have a serious condition. It's right there on my website: "Shiatsu can also be a beneficial form of supportive care for people facing serious illness, such as cancer; it can help relieve stress and some of the side effects of invasive treatments. Shiatsu does not cure disease, but helps support and stimulate the body's own healing potential. It is not a substitute for conventional medical treatment."
Indeed, since I spend a lot more time listening to clients than a physician does, I may be able to spot early warning signs that would otherwise be missed.
The only time I would lead someone away from a treatment would be that if the condition is not life-threatening and is not going to degrade, I would suggest trying a less invasive therapy first - so yes, I will suggest trying bodywork to relieve chronic pain before going under the knife.
Of course, that's not leading anyone away from a proven treatment.
modern medicine has doubled life expectancies in the last 100 years
Increased life expectancy has more to do with improved diet and improved sanitation than with medicine. Thank your farmer, your garbage man, and your plumber.
How about citing some double blind studies from actually reputable journals
What, Clinical Journal of Pain and Anesthesia & Analgesia, aren't reputable?
How about you citing some double blind studies of surgical techniques? That's my point: there aren't any such studies that show surgery to be useful. If you demand double blind studies of acupressure, you have to demand them of surgery also. Anything else is bias, pure and simple.
Every placebo controlled study of a surgical technique has found it no better than a placebo operation.
That might just be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
There's nothing ludicrous about it at all. It is, to use your terms, what "smart folks found when they looked into this."
The first placebo surgery test was for a treatment for angina pectoris called internal mammary artery ligation. This was at one time a popular procedure, but it's not used now because in a head-to-head comparison, 34% of those getting the surgery reported improvement, while 42% of those getting a placebo cut reported improvement.
A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the "real" surgery.
In a 2004 study of transplantation of embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, "Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," according to the researcher.
In no similar study has a surgical technique proven better than a placebo cut.
We can argue about what that fact implies, but if you want to be rational and scientific, you can't dismiss it as ludicrous: it simply is the way things are.
Wow, a quack defending quackery, what a surprise. Creation scientists cite studies too.
Ah, any evidence that disagrees with your biases is "quackery". Nice way to do science you've got there.
I'm unaware of any experimental studies done that show "Creation science" to be anything but a load of hooey. I'm aware of several studies which show that acupressure can be a beneficial treatment for some conditions, as linked upthread. If you have studies of acupressure that show it to not be a useful treatment for other conditions, please, present them - hate to waste my client's time. I know that some studies of bracelet acupressure on the Pc 6 point for motion-sickness nausea have found it to not be useful, for example, so I give people other recommendations.
With a burst appendix, a placebo means you're dead.
And the evidence for what happens with a placebo appendectomy is...whoops! None! It's never been done.
Appendectomy does not treat a burst appendix - if it's burst, it's too late to cut. It treats appendicitis, which is a condition that can lead to a burst appendix. Would the rate at which this occurs be reduced if a placebo operation were carried out? Is there some non-specific element of treatment, of pre- or post-surgical care, that would have an impact? We don't know. Certainly it seems amazing that a placebo operation would have an effect - but it would be no less amazing for appendicitis that it was for Parkinson's.
And in the category "fastest flamebait ever", I believe we have a winner.
Not flamebait, a simple fact: no surgical procedure has been proven in a placebo controlled study. If our standard for what constitutes "medicine" is controlled studies, surgery doesn't make the cut. If we want to set a different standard, fine, but then we must unbiasedly admit "alternative" treatments that can show the same level of evidence.
The same "skeptic" who demands double-blinded studies of alternative treatments like acupuncture, will go under the surgeon's knife without a second thought. It's inconsistent.
Please come back and post after you've had a punctured lung, an apendicitis, or, well, any kind of internal nastiness. I'm curious to know what form of alternative medecine you'll end up using to cure that before reverting to surgery.
Appendicitis is an interesting case in point. In the first few years of that appendectomy was used, mortality rates actually climbed. Because the operation has become standard procedure, we have little information as to how cases of appendicitis would resolve with non-surgical interventions under modern conditions - there's not an effective control to compare it against.
We cannot rate the effectiveness of appendectomy. Note that this is not the same as saying it's not effective.
It's because out of all the possible professions they are the most efficient at saving lives quickly and effectively.
And the evidence for this is...? We are talking about "evidence based medicine". Instead of numbers and facts, you're presenting hero-worship.
I'm not saying "don't get surgery". I'm saying "the evidence for the safety and effectiveness of surgical procedures is sorely lacking". (I will also say, "if the complaint is not life threatening and is unlikely to degrade, try all reasonable non-surgical interventions with less risk of complication first; a botched surgery is a bad thing.")
and if we have any respect for our country we should obey the law
Anyone who believes that would have make a fine slave-catcher in the antebellum U.S., or a fine concentration camp warden in Germany in WWII - or the west coast of the U.S. around the same time.
Breaking the law is a disrespect for the system as a whole, not just the one law.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." - _Civil Disobedience_, Henry David Thoreau
I hate the drug laws, despise them actually. But I can't go out and start smoking pot because today it is STILL ILLEGAL....
The fact that something is illegal doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means that if you get caught doing it the state will use force against you. Regarding your specific example, about 20 million Americans will use cannabis this year; so clearly the fact that it's illegal doesn't mean people can't do it.
Agreed with the small company recommendation. I work about three days a week doing development for a tiny company (seven people) that does website and e-commerce services for antiques and fine arts dealers. I work from home and have a great deal of flexibility; it's worked out well for several years now. In fact, come to think of it it's my longest stretch with the same employer.
We did have a part-timer or two when I worked at IBM and at TRW, but in both cases I was with a highly independent group within the big corps.
You might look at these telecommuting job sites, I think an employer who's willing to work with someone off-site would also be more likely to be open to a part-time arrangement: telecommute-jobs.com and tjobs.com.
Believing bullets don't kill doesn't make the guy pulling the trigger any less a murderer.
Actually, I think that depends on jurisdiction - mens rea can be a factor.
But it's irrelevant. Shooting a bullet into someone is generally done without their consent; it's entirely your choice to buy my tiger-repelling rock or aura-aligning crystal or brain-chemistry rectifying drug or sugar pill with etheric essence of whatever.
Provided that I'm not making fraudulent claims ("I believe this rock repels tigers!" is not a fraudulent claim; "Studies at Harvard have shown that this rock repels tigers!" is), it's not the government's role to tell you what you can put into your body, or place upon it to repel tigers or bad mojo.
Re:you can thank Patron Saint Orrin Hatch for this
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It never made sense to me. If someone claims that tongue of newt cures a flu, then go get 100 people with the flu, and give 50 of them tongue of newt, and publish the results.
Who pays for the study? Who designs it? Who publishes the results?
When studies come out validating an "alternative" technique, they're often just ignored by those who worship at the Temple of the Scalpel and Pill Bottle. When studies come out showing that an "alternative" technique is not useful, they're often just ignored by those who worship at the Woo-Woo Ancient Mysterium Center.
As for DSHEA, it was passed after the Feds went a blitzkreig-raided a couple of companies for selling vitamins. I think it's a good idea to let people do what they want with their own bodies, but I'm sort of wacky that way.
GP poster's claim that it puts dietary supplements "beyond the reach of scientific proof and tests for safety and efficacy" is nonsense. Letting people make choices about their own bodies doesn't impact scientific proof in any way, and any claims made are subject to FDA review. The FDA also retains the authority to remove a suppliment from the market if it is found to be unsafe, and to mandate good manufacturing practices.
Does the FDA always live up to its role in this market? No more so than it does in the pharmaceutical or food industries. But that's not DSHEA's fault.
There's no such thing as a 'proven alternative treatment'. Once it's proven to work it's not alternative medicine any more, it's just medicine.
If proof == "medicine" and no proof == "alternative treatment", then why is massage or acupressure or dietary changes considered alternative treatment?
Medicine is an art wherein clinicians apply their skills to relieve the suffering and promote the well-being of each individual patient. Of course a good clinician will consider all available evidence to figure out what's likely to work best, but the goal is not to do what's most effective who most people, but for this single patient. You only get evidence of that via treatment.
I know that some of what I - or any clinician, from bodyworkers to brain surgeons - do is the placebo effect. So what?
When I was in school, I used Apple//es. (Some with Z-80 cards running CP-M.)
Actually, that wasn't until high school - in middle school I used TRS-80 CoCos. (Indeed, it was on the basis of that that my parents bought me one - first computer I ever owned myself. Pretty much lost a whole summer to Dungeons of Daggorath.)
You call that a conspiracy? They were pretty open about what they were doing
Conspiracy: An agreement between two or more persons to do an unlawful act, or an act which may become by the combination injurious to others. -- Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
Unfortunately, the unpleasant truth is that there generally isn't a conspiracy
Generally, there isn't.
Sometimes, there is.
Back in 1605, a bunch of guys really did conspire to blow up Parliament. In 1776, a couple of rabble-rousers really did conspire to break off the American colonies from the British Empire. In 1968, during a student protest the Mexican Presidential Guard conspired to use its own snipers to act as agents provocateur and get the Army to open fire on the protesters. In 1972, a bunch of idiots from Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" really did conspire to eavesdrop on and steal records from their Democratic opponents. In 2001, a couple of nutjobs really did conspire to hijack planes and crash them into high-value American targets.
Was the Lusitania used as some sort of agent provocateur? I don't know. It's certainly not as batshit crazy as the "the U.S. government set up the WTC and Pentagon destruction with missiles and explosives" 9/11 theories.
Did Microsoft and the NSA conspire to put backdoors into Windows? I don't know. But given the track records of the two organizations in question, it's certainly conceivable.
Uh. Alcohol will prevent you from functioning in society. Getting a job, getting along with peers, etc.
Really? My, my. Guess that's why everyone I saw drinking at holiday parties over the weekend was dysfunctional, unemployed, and hostile. Oh, wait...that wasn't the case.
SSRI's will enable to you continue functioning in reality and society.
They're widely prescribed because they're far more profitable than psychotherapeutic approaches, and because they fit in with the modern mythology of neurochemical reductionism, not because they work well.
If they work for you, great. Bur be aware that there are other treatments that would probably work even better.
Blaming SSRIs is so stupid. What are they supposed to do? Let her live out her life in misery?
Gee, way to limit the options. "Leave her alone and she lives her life in misery; treat her with these ineffective drugs, and their side effects include an increased risk of suicide. If only there were other treatment options available..."
Of course, psychotherapists don't have the money and pull that Big Pharma does.
Larry Gonick has been doing this in english for a long time. His books are good.
Just wanted to second this. I have his History of the Universe (the first two collections), History of the United States, and Cartoon Guide to Sex. All excellent. www.larrygonick.com for more info.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting conclusions you jump to.
The editor's comments demonstrate that he -like a lot of "postmodern" theorists - is in serious need of a good old Zen-style smack upside the head - a time-honored cure for taking abstractions too seriously. However, that does not change the fact that the publication of Sokal's "hoax" in Social Text did not undergo peer review.
If you want to do that, never send electronic copies.
Send only hard copies, printed on paper with a security watermark, and with a tamper-evident seal.
Actually, don't send them. Allow access to them only at your secure facility. By people who have undergone thorough background checks. And who are strip-searched before entering the viewing facility, to prevent smuggling hidden cameras in.
Or, you could just deal with the fact that information is going to get out.
It's the same way your claim that "modern medicine has doubled life expectancies in the last 100 years" was presented.
I did not mention public health policy, economic development, or education. And neither did you in your original post: you credited medical care with all of the increase.
Incorrect. Diptheria deaths were on the way down (chart from this report) long before the vaccine was first widely used in 1941.
As explained in the report linked above, respiratory diseases are to a large degree associated with crowding and unfavorable living and working conditions. Their decline is due to many factors: the end of tenements and sweatshops, cleaner heating and energy systems, nutrition, and public health measures. Actual medical treatment is just one factor.
Hey, I like my doctor, she's great. But take any major city and have all the garbage collector and plumbers and janitors and handymen go on strike for a year, and it would have an impact on health much greater than if all the doctors went on strike. It has been estimated that medical treatments contributed only about 3.5% of the decline in mortality from disease in the first three-quarters of the 20th century. (Page 21 of the linked PDF.)
I've given you facts; you've provided nothing but medical technofetishism. That's not science, not disciplined critical thinking based on observation: it's the cultish worship of the secondary or tertiary trappings you associate with science.
Would I bet that LASIK is more effective than a placebo operation? Yes. Is it a strongly known fact that it is better than a placebo? No, because the comparison hasn't been done. That fact that it's difficult to do such a comparison doesn't let us assume what the outcome would be.
Being a engineer or an M.D. doesn't let you make such assumptions, either. (Indeed, being a member of either profession says jack about one's knowledge of the scientific method.)
Could there be some non-specific aspect of pre- or post-surgical care that has an impact on the results? Could the belief in the effectiveness of the surgery cause visual data to be processed differently within the brain? Or cause you to use the intrinsic muscles of the eye in a different manner? Could social factors play a role such that your vision is actually unchanged, but you report it differently now? We don't know.
As Feynman put it in his Cargo Cult Science address, "if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results."
We know that non-specific or "placebo" factors play a role in surgical outcomes; therefore if they're not being taken into account, if those effects are not being ruled out, it's not good science.
It may be that we can't collect the data to do so, for ethical or practical reasons - fine. But that doesn't make it good science, it just means that a big blank spot remains in our knowledge.
I have never asserted that all surgery is worthless. Hell, I just had cryosurgery to remove a wart.
I have stated that the evidence for any given surgery being more effective than a placebo in no case reaches the "gold standard" of double-blinded tests, and I have stated that in every case that has been tested versus a sham operation, the surgical treatment in question has proven no more effective than the sham.
And I have objected to the bias that holds that all surgery is "real" medicine with strong evidence, but "alternative" treatments with the same level of clinical evidence aren't.
At least Social Text wasn't a peer-reviewed publication. IEEE doesn't seem to have that excuse.
Certainly not if it was lossless compression (which I don't know if it is).
I suggest you google for placebo surgery. Placebo techniques have given individual patients relief from angina pectoris, Parkinson's disease, and osteoarthritis of the knee. One patient in the Parkinson's study had not been physically active for years before surgery, but following placebo surgery she resumed hiking and ice skating.
It's clear that you are the one here who does not know what a placebo is. I suggest you start here.
I love reading a good book, but I don't think that it can reduce depression and hostility and increase NK cells and lymphocytes in cancer patients, or help with migraines.
As I've been pointing out, if you apply that same set of criteria to surgery, then surgery doesn't work.
As for these "blinded tests" of acupuncture, many used acupressure as their control, which is as ridiculous as using morphine as the control in your test of heroin. Others did not test acupuncture as it is actually applied, but used fixed point prescriptions that did not take into account the diagnostic methods of Chinese medicine - rather like testing if an antibiotic can treat sinus congestion without regard to whether the congestion is caused by an infection or not.
Better blinding, such as that used by John J.B. Allen et. al., compares two geninue treatments, one for the condition in question, the other for an unrelated complaint. This study of major depression found acupuncture more effective than the control.
Look, jerkwad, I always suggest that clients see a physician at the very first sign that they might have a serious condition. It's right there on my website: "Shiatsu can also be a beneficial form of supportive care for people facing serious illness, such as cancer; it can help relieve stress and some of the side effects of invasive treatments. Shiatsu does not cure disease, but helps support and stimulate the body's own healing potential. It is not a substitute for conventional medical treatment."
Indeed, since I spend a lot more time listening to clients than a physician does, I may be able to spot early warning signs that would otherwise be missed.
The only time I would lead someone away from a treatment would be that if the condition is not life-threatening and is not going to degrade, I would suggest trying a less invasive therapy first - so yes, I will suggest trying bodywork to relieve chronic pain before going under the knife.
Of course, that's not leading anyone away from a proven treatment.
Increased life expectancy has more to do with improved diet and improved sanitation than with medicine. Thank your farmer, your garbage man, and your plumber.
What, Clinical Journal of Pain and Anesthesia & Analgesia, aren't reputable?
How about you citing some double blind studies of surgical techniques? That's my point: there aren't any such studies that show surgery to be useful. If you demand double blind studies of acupressure, you have to demand them of surgery also. Anything else is bias, pure and simple.
There's nothing ludicrous about it at all. It is, to use your terms, what "smart folks found when they looked into this."
The first placebo surgery test was for a treatment for angina pectoris called internal mammary artery ligation. This was at one time a popular procedure, but it's not used now because in a head-to-head comparison, 34% of those getting the surgery reported improvement, while 42% of those getting a placebo cut reported improvement.
A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the "real" surgery.
In a 2004 study of transplantation of embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, "Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," according to the researcher.
In no similar study has a surgical technique proven better than a placebo cut.
We can argue about what that fact implies, but if you want to be rational and scientific, you can't dismiss it as ludicrous: it simply is the way things are.
Ah, any evidence that disagrees with your biases is "quackery". Nice way to do science you've got there.
I'm unaware of any experimental studies done that show "Creation science" to be anything but a load of hooey. I'm aware of several studies which show that acupressure can be a beneficial treatment for some conditions, as linked upthread. If you have studies of acupressure that show it to not be a useful treatment for other conditions, please, present them - hate to waste my client's time. I know that some studies of bracelet acupressure on the Pc 6 point for motion-sickness nausea have found it to not be useful, for example, so I give people other recommendations.
And the evidence for what happens with a placebo appendectomy is...whoops! None! It's never been done.
Appendectomy does not treat a burst appendix - if it's burst, it's too late to cut. It treats appendicitis, which is a condition that can lead to a burst appendix. Would the rate at which this occurs be reduced if a placebo operation were carried out? Is there some non-specific element of treatment, of pre- or post-surgical care, that would have an impact? We don't know. Certainly it seems amazing that a placebo operation would have an effect - but it would be no less amazing for appendicitis that it was for Parkinson's.
Not flamebait, a simple fact: no surgical procedure has been proven in a placebo controlled study. If our standard for what constitutes "medicine" is controlled studies, surgery doesn't make the cut. If we want to set a different standard, fine, but then we must unbiasedly admit "alternative" treatments that can show the same level of evidence.
The same "skeptic" who demands double-blinded studies of alternative treatments like acupuncture, will go under the surgeon's knife without a second thought. It's inconsistent.
Appendicitis is an interesting case in point. In the first few years of that appendectomy was used, mortality rates actually climbed. Because the operation has become standard procedure, we have little information as to how cases of appendicitis would resolve with non-surgical interventions under modern conditions - there's not an effective control to compare it against.
We cannot rate the effectiveness of appendectomy. Note that this is not the same as saying it's not effective.
And the evidence for this is...? We are talking about "evidence based medicine". Instead of numbers and facts, you're presenting hero-worship.
I'm not saying "don't get surgery". I'm saying "the evidence for the safety and effectiveness of surgical procedures is sorely lacking". (I will also say, "if the complaint is not life threatening and is unlikely to degrade, try all reasonable non-surgical interventions with less risk of complication first; a botched surgery is a bad thing.")
Anyone who believes that would have make a fine slave-catcher in the antebellum U.S., or a fine concentration camp warden in Germany in WWII - or the west coast of the U.S. around the same time.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." - _Civil Disobedience_, Henry David Thoreau
The fact that something is illegal doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means that if you get caught doing it the state will use force against you. Regarding your specific example, about 20 million Americans will use cannabis this year; so clearly the fact that it's illegal doesn't mean people can't do it.
Agreed with the small company recommendation. I work about three days a week doing development for a tiny company (seven people) that does website and e-commerce services for antiques and fine arts dealers. I work from home and have a great deal of flexibility; it's worked out well for several years now. In fact, come to think of it it's my longest stretch with the same employer.
We did have a part-timer or two when I worked at IBM and at TRW, but in both cases I was with a highly independent group within the big corps.
You might look at these telecommuting job sites, I think an employer who's willing to work with someone off-site would also be more likely to be open to a part-time arrangement: telecommute-jobs.com and tjobs.com.
Good luck!
Actually, I think that depends on jurisdiction - mens rea can be a factor.
But it's irrelevant. Shooting a bullet into someone is generally done without their consent; it's entirely your choice to buy my tiger-repelling rock or aura-aligning crystal or brain-chemistry rectifying drug or sugar pill with etheric essence of whatever.
Provided that I'm not making fraudulent claims ("I believe this rock repels tigers!" is not a fraudulent claim; "Studies at Harvard have shown that this rock repels tigers!" is), it's not the government's role to tell you what you can put into your body, or place upon it to repel tigers or bad mojo.
Who pays for the study? Who designs it? Who publishes the results?
When studies come out validating an "alternative" technique, they're often just ignored by those who worship at the Temple of the Scalpel and Pill Bottle. When studies come out showing that an "alternative" technique is not useful, they're often just ignored by those who worship at the Woo-Woo Ancient Mysterium Center.
As for DSHEA, it was passed after the Feds went a blitzkreig-raided a couple of companies for selling vitamins. I think it's a good idea to let people do what they want with their own bodies, but I'm sort of wacky that way.
GP poster's claim that it puts dietary supplements "beyond the reach of scientific proof and tests for safety and efficacy" is nonsense. Letting people make choices about their own bodies doesn't impact scientific proof in any way, and any claims made are subject to FDA review. The FDA also retains the authority to remove a suppliment from the market if it is found to be unsafe, and to mandate good manufacturing practices.
Does the FDA always live up to its role in this market? No more so than it does in the pharmaceutical or food industries. But that's not DSHEA's fault.
"Fraud" suggests deliberate untruth, which I don't think is the case.
If proof == "medicine" and no proof == "alternative treatment", then why is massage or acupressure or dietary changes considered alternative treatment?
I do shiatsu acupressure, and I can cite studies on its effectiveness.
And why is surgery considered "medicine"? Every placebo controlled study of a surgical technique has found it no better than a placebo operation.
Why is giving SSRIs out like candy considered "medicine", when they work no better than a placebo for most categories of patients?
Medicine is an art wherein clinicians apply their skills to relieve the suffering and promote the well-being of each individual patient. Of course a good clinician will consider all available evidence to figure out what's likely to work best, but the goal is not to do what's most effective who most people, but for this single patient. You only get evidence of that via treatment.
I know that some of what I - or any clinician, from bodyworkers to brain surgeons - do is the placebo effect. So what?
When I was in school, I used Apple //es. (Some with Z-80 cards running CP-M.)
Actually, that wasn't until high school - in middle school I used TRS-80 CoCos. (Indeed, it was on the basis of that that my parents bought me one - first computer I ever owned myself. Pretty much lost a whole summer to Dungeons of Daggorath.)
Conspiracy: An agreement between two or more persons to do an unlawful act, or an act which may become by the combination injurious to others. -- Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
A conspiracy need not be completely hidden.
Generally, there isn't.
Sometimes, there is.
Back in 1605, a bunch of guys really did conspire to blow up Parliament. In 1776, a couple of rabble-rousers really did conspire to break off the American colonies from the British Empire. In 1968, during a student protest the Mexican Presidential Guard conspired to use its own snipers to act as agents provocateur and get the Army to open fire on the protesters. In 1972, a bunch of idiots from Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" really did conspire to eavesdrop on and steal records from their Democratic opponents. In 2001, a couple of nutjobs really did conspire to hijack planes and crash them into high-value American targets.
Was the Lusitania used as some sort of agent provocateur? I don't know. It's certainly not as batshit crazy as the "the U.S. government set up the WTC and Pentagon destruction with missiles and explosives" 9/11 theories.
Did Microsoft and the NSA conspire to put backdoors into Windows? I don't know. But given the track records of the two organizations in question, it's certainly conceivable.
Really? My, my. Guess that's why everyone I saw drinking at holiday parties over the weekend was dysfunctional, unemployed, and hostile. Oh, wait...that wasn't the case.
SSRI's are little better than placebos for treating depression, and have been linked to increased risk of violence or suicide.
They're widely prescribed because they're far more profitable than psychotherapeutic approaches, and because they fit in with the modern mythology of neurochemical reductionism, not because they work well.
If they work for you, great. Bur be aware that there are other treatments that would probably work even better.
Gee, way to limit the options. "Leave her alone and she lives her life in misery; treat her with these ineffective drugs, and their side effects include an increased risk of suicide. If only there were other treatment options available..."
Of course, psychotherapists don't have the money and pull that Big Pharma does.
Just wanted to second this. I have his History of the Universe (the first two collections), History of the United States, and Cartoon Guide to Sex. All excellent. www.larrygonick.com for more info.