Splendid Elles

Whenever I see a new flyer about on campus that advocates classes for things debunked long ago, I worry that I will lose so much touch with reality that I’ll begin walking into walls.

Most recently, there’s been a little yellow flyer for a “Dowsing 101″ class. It’s not actually something you can register for through the college. It’s being done by the “Crypto-Science Society” and presumably you show up, pay them, and learn how to use unbent coathangers dowsing rods.

Dowsing is the skill of using one’s intuition through the use of specialized tools to locate things such as underground water, oil wells, Archaelogical sites, and gold.

Dowsing has led to the discovery of some of our most productive wells with 96% accuracy.

Inconveniently, no source was provided for that last statistic.

Dowsing has already been debunked by James “The Amazing” Randi.

Actually, that’s not the only video of water dowsing being debunked.

James Randi in Australia

Enemies of Reason

Oh, but that’s not the only shit that my splendid campus has to offer… oh no indeed…

The Metropolitan State College of Denver offers an “Integrative Therapeutic Practices” degree which involves alternative medicine. You learn about acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, and guess what? That stuff has been debunked too!

I could be more detailed about exactly why a lot of the junk that they’re teaching is just dumb, but that’s for another time and for now I have provided links to The Skeptic’s Dictionary for information on it. The point I want to make is the very definition of alternative medicine is medicine that has not undergone rigorous scientific testing.

Personally, I think that it ought to be a college’s responsibility to make sure that what they’re teaching is not going to be stuff that’s already been proven false… especially if they’re teaching that bull shit as having practical applications. And when those practical applications involve getting neccessities…

I would not trust a generation of college graduates who wanted to use dowsing to get our water, oil, gold, and artifacts for the benefit of science. I would not trust a generation of college graduates who think that their untested treatments of disease are suitable for my health. What happens if their techniques fail (and I have reason to believe that they will)? Imagine the panic, chaos, and disaster that would result from failure to find what we are searching for when we are in dire need of resources. Imagine how many people’s health may be damaged by these untested or disproven medicines. Not to mention the damage done to this generation’s understanding of science.

No, society might not come crashing down… Dowsing isn’t really a profession that they’ll train for and there are other ways of getting water besides knowing where to drill for wells. There are still students going through real medical school who will become real doctors…

But damage can and will be done by ignorant students.

But that’s why colleges, especially public universitites, need to be held accountable for what they put in the minds of tomorrow’s leaders, scientists, and thinkers.

By the way, both the Crypto-Science Society and whoever is running the “Therapeutic Integrative Practices” program are eligible for the new MSCD Paranormal Challenge.

Dear mum,

 

I’d like to start by saying that I do love you ever so much, and I do love you no matter what (well, if you were a fundie I’d have issues bringing myself to do so, but you’re not and if you were you would have brainwashed me into being a fundie anyway). Not only am I thankful that you feed me, and support me in all my endeavors, but I am especially thankful that you are an Atheist. If you weren’t, I’d have an especially hard time being faithless.

 

So, you are very rational in that regard…

 

But there are a few things that we need to talk about, eh.

 

For example, your faithful support of the Chinese government. Let’s start with the story you told me of why you ended up becoming a teacher, even though it was your dream of becoming a diplomat.

 

The Chinese government was giving you an interview to assess whether you’d make a good diplomat or not. You had the grades, the high test scores… But during the interview, they thought you weren’t willing enough to follow orders. They asked you if you would mind becoming a teacher. You said that you really didn’t want to, but if the Chinese government ordered you to, you would. This was enough for them to determine you weren’t loyal enough, and you went to Washington to study to become an English teacher.

 

I don’t know why you ended up still doing it when you became a United States resident and could choose to do something that you really wanted to do. I think that they brain washed you to the point where you believed you should do what they told you to even when you had a choice.

 

There are few things more important to me than freedom. I can’t believe that you so willingly sacrificed yours to people who wanted to control your destiny.

 

When I pointed out to you a few days ago that the Chinese government had blocked websites about the incident at Tiananmen Square in 1989, as well as my blog and several foreign news sources, you said that they didn’t know all sides of the story. When I asked you why the Chinese government did kill people at Tiananmen Square you said “They were refusing to work and disrupting the economy. What is most important is that people work in the factories and help the economy work, so that’s why the Chinese government killed them.”

 

No, the economy is not the most important thing. At least, it’s not when it comes at the expense of people’s lives and freedom.

 

I do highly doubt that the Chinese government will bother trying to arrest me if they do read this (at least I don’t think that the secret police is still around), but if they do, what blind statement will you make to defend them when I’m rotting in some prison cell?

 

“Well, my daughter shouldn’t have said such stupid things…”

 

Your vehement support of Chinese medicine whenever I express doubts is simply absurd.

 

Granted, there is some truth in Chinese medicine claims… Some of their herbs work. Acupuncture has also been shown to release endorphins, chemicals which naturally relieve pain in the body, so it works sometimes. But, really, you don’t need an acupuncturist to do some crazy stuff with yin, yang, and the twelve meridians or whatever… The concept that makes acupuncture work occasionally is simple enough that all you really need is the knowledge of where a certain nerve cluster is. The Vulcan neck pinch probably works just as well (and is cheaper than) an acupuncturist.

 

But every time I ask you to prove that certain Chinese medicine cures work (a scientific test would be fine, except alternative medicine by its very definition has not been tested), you say something like “It’s been around for thousands of years. That’s all the proof I need.”

 

Oh come on! There are loads of things that have been around for thousands of years that don’t work. Astrology has been around for thousands of years… if it were wrong you think we would have disproven it by now. Are you going to start reading your daily horoscope? How ‘bout we blow all your savings on getting a professional psychic to do your astrological profile? Tarot has been around for a while. So has palm reading!

 

For a long time before modern medicine, bloodletting was a common practice. Patients would often die, if not from blood loss, from infections caused by the knife the doctors used. Mercury was also commonly used, and it cured the disease… and unfortunately, also the patient… but it seems that they stuck around long enough to pay the medical bill. They didn’t get rid of these practices for a long time. This is why homeopathy seemed to work. It was so dilute that, for once, the medicine didn’t kill the patient… however, sometimes they’ll die from not actually getting the disease cured.

 

But I don’t care if my own nationality came up with it, and I don’t care if it has been around for thousands of years. If it doesn’t stand up to the test, it doesn’t work, and it won’t work no matter how long it has been here.

 

You have a high blood pressure problem, which you are treating with some sort of flower-based Chinese medication. I don’t know how strictly the Chinese government regulates medication, but I know that this is not mainstream and if it’s not mainstream it’s because it hasn’t been tested. When I asked you how you knew that it works, you said “I haven’t died yet.” That was enough to make me afraid for you. At the very least, ask the people who sold it to you for a scientific study showing that it works better than a placebo. If they don’t, then please invest in medicine that was made after the Dark Ages. Like I said, I love you very much, and it does me no good if you die from high blood pressure. I don’t want you to die. Can you understand my plea?

 

This morning, when Deepak Chopra was interviewed on BBC World, I turned to you to try to explain why what he said was utter tosh. He went off on some jargon-filled explanation about how when you have a “subjective state of euphoria, your body releases dopamine, and serotonin, and these function as anti-depressants and help your immune system.” Basically, he was saying that if you’re happy it’ll counteract depression… But then he also said that a strong immune system will kill cancer. He said that we would all get cancer if we weren’t happy because then our immune systems won’t be strong to kill cancer cells.

 

I can only assume this idiot hasn’t studied medicine at all. Cancer is caused by cells with DNA that causes it to multiply unstoppably. This DNA could have been inherited, or it could have been altered by certain toxins or radiation. I don’t care how happy you are, if you inhale a bunch of radon gas, you will get lung cancer.

 

You told me that I was being too egotistic in calling him an idiot. But, mum, this is basically the same ancient “wisdom” that you’re basing your belief in Chinese medicine on. He said explicitly that his ideas were from Asian medicine ideas.

 

There are already plenty of people in this world living in the Dark Ages. Please… step into the light of the 21^st century. Please.

 

That said, I love you and I hope you can open your eyes.

 

Your loving daughter,

 

Elles

So, all I can do is respond to the occasional comment.

“If you had bothered to read the entire book, The Hundred Year Lie,
and not just the Introduction, you would not have drawn such
strange and outlandish misrepresentations of the book as you
did in this blog entry.”

You’re quite right. I did not read the whole book… yet. I’d like to think that I didn’t deny that. And you’re right. I did assume that the Introduction contained the thesis of the book. As you may recall, what got me reading the Introduction of the book anyway was the comments I had heard about it from my mum’s office mate, so that may have biased my inferences of what the author was saying.

“To make such statements as “This guy seems to think that modern science should be thrown out the window” …and…”he begins by blaming prescription
drugs on weight gain and tumors” (among at least a dozen examples I could cite)”

Well I was genuinely curious about the connection between prescription drugs and tumors. However, I would like to point out that I was not arguing against his claims about potentially harmful chemicals being around us. The main point of my post was that while he was talking about going to see chiropractors to get your kidneys realigned, I think we should improve science in the areas that appear to be causing harm, if they are causing harm. I didn’t argue against that part because, like you said, I didn’t read the whole book and, therefore, could not have seen whatever evidence was to be presented. However, I can point to evidence for many alternative medicine cures that says that they don’t work. Ooh… I hope it doesn’t seem like I’ve generalized too much there (my over-generalizing would appear to have caused this vicious response). Of course I don’t think that all alternative medicine doesn’t work. But if you’re going to point to a problem that appears to be caused by lack of scientific testing and you recommend that we solve it by using stuff that has been tested even less… Get it now maybe?

“… calls into question your sense of fairness and discernment.”

Wait… did I just check the approval box on this comment?

A while back (being several moons ago), I had an encounter with my mum’s office mate, who my mum had told about the group I’m trying to start at my school, and how I believed that science (empirical evidence and myths like that) is probably the best way of knowing what the world is truly like. She confronted me and told me about a book called The Hundred Year Lie that had convinced her that science causes more problems than it solves. Oh great… another anti-scientist.

A few moons later (today), I read the introduction of The Hundred Year Lie. Its thesis is basically that modern science and medical technology is making people sicker than they were before. Makes you wonder why the life expectancy has basically doubled in the past 150 years…

Anyway, he begins by blaming prescription drugs on weight gain and tumors that befell his family members. However, he doesn’t explain exactly how the prescription drugs were linked directly to these ailments. I can only assume that he used the post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy (this happened because this happened). He then goes on to scare people by talking about how chemicals are in everything (well yeah… water is technically a chemical so maybe he ought to elaborate on what his definition of a chemical is). He doesn’t bother to tell us exactly what the health risks are, just that they come from factories and pesticides.

Granted, pesticides and toxins should probably not be ingested, and even in minute, harmless amounts they should not be allowed to accumulate in your body, but he didn’t provide any evidence directly linking toxins ingested through foods to cancer, obesity, and everything else he was trying to link to chemicals that modern science had produced.

However, even if the market really is flooded with toxic foods, we found out about it (I assume that he had more evidence than the four or five articles from scientific journals) through a method known as… that’s right… modern science. Since I haven’t had the time to do research between now and when I read the introduction, let’s humor him and say that we do have a problem with harmful chemicals getting into our food. Obviously, there’s a problem in the way chemicals are disposed of in this country and I propose that the best way of solving it is to gather a bunch of scientists, and figure out a new method of disposing of them properly.

This guy seems to think that modern science should be thrown out the window, and that we should return medicine to a time when we only went to nature for cures (there are many examples of this… including the Dark Ages).

He recommends that we seek “Alternative Medicine” to treat our diseases instead. He talks about a visit to a chiropractor who gave him a massage and some other scientific-sounding things to “re-align” his kidney. I didn’t know that kidneys could fall out of alignment!

But look, if there really are poisons everywhere in our foods, then obviously EPA, the FDA, and all those government organizations have failed to test our lakes and foods carefully enough, and more rigorous scientific testing should be conducted. And what’s the definition of “Alternative Medicine”? Medicine that has not undergone rigorous scientific testing. Some of Alternative Medicine is genuinely harmful, some genuinely harmless, but the genuinely harmless ones often cause harm when people don’t get proper medical treatment (resulting in intense pain and/or death). I think that there’s a major fallacy here somewhere…