to buy all of my female relatives copies of "Bad Science" for Christmas?

[AvrilH]

I am sick and tired of them wittering on about the importance of "superfood", omega 3, manuka honey, homeopathy and whatever nonsense is being spouted by charlatans like Gillian McKeith.

So I am pondering Ben Goldacre's book (which I have not read myself) as an antidote. And out of curiosity as to how they take it... From reading his column I am assuming that they might at least learn what evidence means. The worst that can happen is that it will be like when they buy me books by self-styled experts and it will be passed on unread to a charity shop.

AIBU?

Rainy, cold and windy in Scotland, Legspinner, ach well. I miss NZ. I had 5 great years there.

Rainy, cold and windy in Scotland, Legspinner, ach well. I miss NZ. I had 5 great years there.

I've now been here for 12 years, love it, although as I'm sure you'll know Gracelo it is such a long way from the UK. Glad you enjoyed your time here. Not many jobs in science at the moment!

Not read the whole thread, sorry. But AvrilH, Bad Science is a very good book imo. Even my dp, who has mild tosh-believing tendancies, agreed.
The pharmaceutical companies don't come out well at all, btw.
At times he comes across as a little too evangelical and a little too down on non-scientists (I got a bit peed off with this) but anyone with a fairly open mind will read it and hopefully reach their own conclusions.

I'd suggest reading it yourself first. You know your friends - they might be offended or they might find it amusing. Someone gave me an astrology book once in a similar fashion, and it just helped along our (good-natured but heated) conversations so it was a great choice.

bidibidi I Love More or Less. A volume of scripts would be jsut the most perfect present.

' live near Glastonbury and I think I know woo when I see it. The place is a hot-bed of woo'

First day at Strode (college near Glasto) a staff memeber said 'hope its not too hippyuish wiorking here'

@Nah' said I- 'long as nobody ahs crystals lined up to stop their PC's creating bad vibes' LOL

Guess what they all had......

On a more general note-

my own wxperience (working with cancer patients, asd kids and parents under extrreme duress)-

if taking a complimentary medicine such as bachs etc makes you feel more relaxed no matter if that is psychological or not go ahead. Don't beleive essential oils work on actual medical stuff, DO believe that they make people feel better as does massage (with teh cabeat thatc ancer patients always get it checked by Consultant first) etc etc etc- sometimes it'sthe act of taking some time for yourslef that means everything. And there is no question that smells etc make people feel- my Psych professor was always very interested in me as I couldn't be around people wearing lynxh without throwing up after DH wore it when I had hyepremessis, and he had friends working on related projects.

BUT if you want a cure, rely on the professionals. For best results, combine what does your body good with what makes you feel good- that might be massage, buying shoes or taking every last superfood you can in order to feel you are doing your absolute best (that's something that's been evident on a recent SN thread about inpossible cures- that many of these things, if ignored by aprents, make them feel as if they are cheating their child or poor parents).

But people need to be aware of the difference between cure and comfort, although the value they ascribe to each is perhaps personal.

On the question of Chinese medicine, it is actually a bit of a post-revolutionary myth and is no older than about fifty years- it has suited the Chinese authorities to lend it some gravitas, but it actually represented a return to a pre-scientific age born from necessity when Mao pulled the resources of China into industrialising the cities and assassinated much of the middle class, including doctors. The peasants had rather enjoyed having modern medicine up until that point.

Interesting, Button, because the immune system is meant to function more efficiently when one is happy. There was some research on this only recently, too, in relation to cancer patients: I haven't studied any papers though, am very vague on it.

So what makes you happy may make you better anyway. Obvious links to the placebo effect with the added requirement of not feeling depressed about being ill.

I had a Reiki massage by accident once. Well, I knew I'd booked a massage, obviously, but it was only once I was on the table she told me she was a Reiki 'healer'. Felt faintly cheated as I wanted a proper massage.

Weird thing was, I felt heat where she was touching me - not unpleasant but not like any other massage I'd ever had.

Mentioned this to the masseur and she used a mirror to show me she hadn't actually been touching me at all - carried on with the rest of the massage, checking in the mirror occasionally, and it was true - I felt heat even with no touch. And it was jolly nice.

Still think all that talk of 'Reiki masters' is a bit overblown but it was decidedly odd. And nice.

Btw, Christie Hospital in Manchester (specialist cancer hospital) uses comp. therapies to help patients. Particularly good for needle phobia which is a serious problem for people undergoing chemotherapy, apparently.

Also offer therapies for relatives which helps them cope with the stress of supporting someone with a serious and lengthy disease.

That's an extraordinary claim BoF. On what grounds do you make it?

mmrsceptic, personal experience is anecdote. Hope you went to bed at a reasonable hour.

You can't mean that Chinese medicine is no older than fifty years. You mean it was abandoned for modern medicine and then taken up again under Mao?

You can't have a Reiki "massage". The word massage means to manually manipulate, to rub/knead/touch the skin and muscles. By definition you cannot have a massage without being touched.

The blurring of language in this way is part of what legitimises such things. If you believe reiki works, fair enough, but you need to accurately describe it and let it stand by itself.

Chinese medicine no older than 50 years? I think not. Perhaps you mean that ancient techniques were revived at a time that modern medicine became less available, indicating though that there must have been a large bank of at least informal knowledge of the old ways in order to revie them so extensivly around the world?

BoF - DH was just telling me the same thing, about Chairman Mao and traditional chinese medicine but couldn't remember where he had heard it.

no, I didn't

I don't get what you mean. You accept my point about personal experience being valuable? You seem to be ignoring it in favour of highlighting a tautology (which is obviously easier than addressing the point!), but it would be interesting to hear what you think.

btw i am without husband or children right now which is my excuse for all this

poo - you are wrong. People clearly can have a Reiki massage, even if you personally think that's a poor description.

I booked a massage, turned up and was told it was a Reiki massage. Not my description or choice of words, am merely reporting what happened to me.

voila

athough it's certainly being going for a century in Singapore in its current form

One of the things Goldacre is really good on IMO is the awesome power of the placebo- he goes into it in some depth. The whole book really is worth a read.

To a certain extent I agreed that if it does no harm and gives a person a sense of agency and control over their health issues then CAM can be seen as a very positive thing. However, it is unregulated, infested with cynical opportunists (fancy reiki healing from genocidal nut Karadzic, anyone?), and very often does harm people. An estimated 25% of Chinese and Indian herbal medicines are adulterated with either heavy metals or by the deliberate addition of pharmaceuticals such as steroids, Viagra, or banned amphetamines. "Therapies" such as Hopi ear candling not only fail to have any impact on ear wax, but quite often drip scalding wax and permanently damage people's hearing. And there are countless heartbreaking stories of cancer patients who hand over thousands of pounds and put desperate faith in charlatans profiting from their false hopes- sometimes at the expense of continuing their medical treatment.

So it's not really accurate or fair to take the position that "if that's what people want to believe and it helps them, where's the harm. Because there is harm, often enough, and there are certainly plenty of people being ripped off by unscrupulous "practitioners" which correspondance course qualifications at best, quacking all the way to the bank.

My point about Chinese medicine is that not even the Chinese kept waffling on about the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years once they'd caught a whiff of proper tested anti-biotics, for example. You can make the argument about folk healing being better than none, but CAM is a four billion pound industry in the UK, and people are handing over cold hard dish for this stuff, not taking it because there are no qualified doctors in the wilds of Surrey.

edam, you miss my point. It doesn't matter if they call it a massage, if they don't touch you it simply isn't a massage, end of. they need a different name for it.
Its the same thing as if I said I would give you a hair cut, you arrive and I don't use the scissors, I just blow dry it. Thats not a hair cut, is it, no matter how much I advertise it as such? You might like you hair, you might be very happy with the experience, but you haven't had a haircut.
Labels matter. Language matters. You might say its just semantics, but IMO its very important. If you have to appropriate an inaccurate word, it suggests a lack of confidence in your product, don't you think?

I don't think you have to take a position on "one side or the other" - there seems to be an assumption that if modern medicine isn't infallible then this makes the "woo" OK. I don't take an "all science good, all woo bad" stance, I try to consider each case on its merits.

Of course I think that good nutrition is important, but I don't think that it is necessary to supplement a healthy diet with all sorts of expensive and unproven pills in order to achieve this.

I also think that the media need to employ more science journalists who try to interpret studies accurately rather than "to sell more papers" but I think this might be asking for too much.

Have you seen this project?
thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com/

It's trying to sort into groups the things that the Daily Mail says cause cancer as opposed to the things it says cure it.

I think that's a good position golgi.

On nutrition: I agree we should get what we need from food. The problem is that so much food is stripped of nutrients by refinements and processing. Supplements can replace those nutrients.

In addition, people have different requirements: seems like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but they do. So it is possible to have different needs which can be met by supplements.

I don't know how this can be described as woo woo.