The anti woo thread.

[LetThereBeRock]

Can all those who don't believe in homeopathy,ghosts,talking to the dead,reading minds etc,please check in here?

There must be a few of us.

I feel as though I've logged onto allthingswoo.com rather than Mumsnet.com at the moment,and I'm not referring to this particuarly forum,but chat and AIBU?.

And if anyone says anything about how we should be openminded,I'm afraid I'll have to beat you to death with a a stick,one cut from an ash tree by the light of the first Summer moon of course.

Oh hello. Can I join please?

Excuse Grimma -- I know what you mean

Buzz sorry can't take you seriously.

Himalaya, interesting post. But it contains a number of unknowns as knowns.

For example, you state the benefit of placebo as "little". You don't know this, and it hasn't been studied enough, but yes, it's an important area of research.

Secondly, there's an implicit minimalisation of adverse events in the conventional approach. There always will be.. tis the nature of the beast. If you get the same benefit with placebo without any risk of adverse event that's obviously preferable. But again, the benefit is unpredictable, the adverse events may/will probably not materialise .. there simply isn't enough data.

Thirdly, you ignore the mutual deception that is often present. Cranial osteopathy worked well for us and I would always recommend it. But there is definitely a placebo explanaton and in fact Grimma linked a good study on homeopathy and animals(on another thread) which could apply to c.o. and babies. Many of those resorting to alternative therapies (like us with c.o.) have exhausted conventional medicine and think "well I'll give it a go". It's the equivalent of Trillian's non-deceptive deceptive placebo. You know, but you don't know, and you're ready to try it. These are not necessarily exploited people. Very often there is mutual good faith and very often some health benefit. A real health benefit, even if it is from placebo. As I say, alternative therapies are the only delivery method for placebo right now -- Trillian suggested that straightforward placebo treatment should be offered and I'm not sure that isn't a bad idea.

The first half of this thread sniggered and sneered at the stupid, brainless, silly people who believe in this stuff -- the second seems to be affecting a sort of vicarious outrage at their desperate victimhood.

The reality is somewhere in between. Only the extremes approach ludicrosity deserving scorn or mistreatment deserving outrage. The vast majority of it is a middle ground. With most practitioners acting in good faith and most customers putting their disbelief on ice for a while.

well appletrees... either you or me and killed it....

the deathly hand of cold logic

you were late to the party night

but there's one about astrology somewhere

Appletrees -

You said that alt med therapies only deliver the placebo effect, so by definition they are less effective than evidence based medicine, since effectiveness is measured against a placebo baseline. So you are backtracking somewhat if you are now going to say there isn't enough data. That is a different argument.

There is also placebo effect in 'conventional medicine' - the authoritiative doctor (preferably in tweed and a bow tie), the confident prescription to take two and call me in the morning etc.. all deliver a powerful placebo effect. The difference is there is also effective surgery and medication that go beyond placebo.

For all but minor ailments, self-limiting conditions, and those for which there is no effective treatment available, an evidence based solution is always going to better than a therapy that hasn't been proved to work.

You keep calling out the tone of people on this thread. But this is a barely regulated industry that makes unfounded health claims, which are bolstered by the increasing social acceptability of alt med (boosted by the Daily Mail, major pharmacies who should know better. I don't think it is worth defending. And I do think that a bit of humor and challenge can be educational,whether from the likes of Ben Goldacre or the MN-Anti-woo brigade, and no one else is stepping up to do this.

Great post Himalaya.

I would say though that again you minimise the adverse events of conventional medicine.

They are always minimised or ignored in these debates and I don't think they should be. Placebo effect vs conventional plus unknown side effects -- this is why alternative therapies can be attractive.

For example the book about the lady choosing alternative over conventional for cancer, and a couple of other examples on this thread. Unmentioned, possibly because it hits a bingo button, are the thousands, tens of thousands of adverse effects involved with convetional treatments and I think (I looked it up before but a bit tired now) thousands of deaths.

So you can't talk about conventional medicine as if it was risk free. In addition you can't talk about it as if the "evidence" is always clean, transparent and reliable. We know it often isn't.

But that point at the top of your post is very good.

Hima - hear hear!
and

you state the benefit of placebo as "little". You don't know this, and it hasn't been studied enough

there have been loads of studies on the placebo effect. Studies of real medicines have to show that they are effective 'above the placebo level'. True the mechanism may not be understood yet (and I'm sure is being researched) but the statistics of the placebo effect are pretty well characterized.

Appletrees - 'tens of thousands of adverse affects' and 'thousands of deaths' from real medicine - yes, that may be true, if you are talking globally. But also millions of lives saved.

No-one is denying that there are side-effects and adverse reactions to actual, effective drugs and other medical treatments. Sometimes the adverse effects can be fatal, but those cases are a very small proportion compared to the number of people whose lives are saved or whose serious illnesses are treated effectively.

Alternative therapies, on the other hand, save nobody's life, provide no effective long-term treatment for serious illness, and yet can also have serious adverse effects - eg the lethal 'natural' Chinese herbal remedies for skin conditions etc which have given people liver failure - or can be dangerous by being chosen as an alternative to effective medical treatment.

sorry, adverse effects

Placebo effect vs conventional plus unknown side effects -- this is why alternative therapies can be attractive.

That may be the case if you've not actually got much wrong with you. If you've got a serious medical condition, heck, you stick with real medicine even if there's sheets of known possible side effects, rather than taking a sugar pill which may not harm you but sure as heck isn't going to keep you alive. And yes there might be an unknown side effect too, but the probability of that versus the certainity of what your untreated disease will do to you leads anyone with sense to take the real pills.

yes it is quite clear that you don't take science seriously.

If you don't get on well with science, how about maths?

How many lives saved by medicine? Billions.
How many lives saved by homeopathy? None.

Billions is more than none.

oh Buzz I had to quote the BMJ at you remember?

the only thing I can say quickly about TCM is that you aren't talking about placebo there, you are talking about active ingredients and adverse events thereof

Yes we are definitely talking about non-life saving treatment -- I said about fifty pages ago that it was about treatment below the life-saving level.

However this is not insignificant. When you are talking about chronic but limited auto-immune conditions, illnesses with a psychological mechanism (what's the real name for yuppie flu can't remember ME?), pain control, and so on, you're talking about lots of people. And it's not really "not much wrong with you". They can be life changing conditions for which conventional treatments are ineffective or too loaded with side effects. The study example was IBS, a life changing condition with real physical symptoms that can be altered by non drug treatment, without even changes in the diet.

I ought to try to find research indicating placebo affects not just perception (eg pain) but changes physiology.

There have, for example, been studies showing a marked difference in cancer survival between people who mentally gave in, people who "rose to the challenge" and threw everything into the months they thought they had left, and people who carried on with their normal routine(the normal routine ones survived longest).

It's an example of an indicator of mental state affecting physiology, not just perception of the disorder .

I'm just glad this thread

eh

became an opportunity for proper discussion. I found Himalaya's post very interesting.

Yes we are definitely talking about non-life saving treatment -- I said about fifty pages ago that it was about treatment below the life-saving level.

were we - I missed that ruling. But, if you've got someone seduced by the treatment of non-serious ailments by her trusted alternative practitioner how do they know if they've got something worse?

An ethical complementary practitioner would presumably say, ooh, thats beyond me, go and get a proper diagnosis.

Some alternative therapists blithely carry on.

I wish all woo would just fuck off out of here.

Don't talk to me about:

having your aura massaged
seeing a ghost
feng shui
crystal healing
vitamin C as a cure for cancer
the angels that guard your car at night (this is courtesy of my mad neighbour who also thinks everything in The Da Vinci Code is real...)
reading chicken entrails

And, no I don't believe that the holy spirit has entered you and is causing you to speak in tongues. I just think you're bonkers. Okay?

^Sorry. I realise I have lowered the tone of the debate.

- no, a nice return to the spirit of the OP.

I don't totally want all pseudoscientific woo to FO though because I enjoy reading Feedback at the back of New Scientist in the loo.

I've only just seen this thread. Very interesting. I especially enjoyed Appletrees pissing all over it and calling other people rude.

I think Grimma has an important point.

If you turn up to your alternative practitioner woo merchant and say that you feel tired more than normal, it's hard to get up in the morning, you get up in the night to pee more than usual, an honest ethical person would tell you to go get your prostate/blood sugar checked, and come back to them if the doctor can't find anything to treat. But this isn't what will happen. They'll take your money and give you a nice placebo, which for some people will be fine but for others will be insufficient for a serious-yet-treatable disease.

Have we laughed at colonic irrigation yet?

Tooth Fairy Science

PlentyOfParsnips, I was wondering about that the other night. One of my friends swears by it but it sounds like a bunch of woo to me.

Again, colonic irrigation may or may not be woo depending on what your friend is saying.

If she is saying 'it clears out my arse' she is correct.

If she bleats on about 'toxins' then it's woo.

I think she said both She said it makes her feel more energetic and refreshed. I prefer a nap to get that effect rather than someone sticking a hose pipe up my bum. I've read that there are risks of rectal injuries as well, surely that's enough to put anyone off!

Don't get me started on toxins.

I feckin hate all that de-tox bollocks.

Personally I'm more into re-tox .