Why do people believe in things when the body of scientific evidence shows otherwise

[technodad]

This is not intended to be an attack on any denomination of belief. The aim of this thread is to try to understand why people choose to believe things, when there are far more likely explanations and why people choose to not trust the scientific opinion.

I am not particularly thinking about a discussion about religion because clearly "faith", some old books and preaching make a difference there (although, please discuss religion if it is relevant). I am thinking more about things like:

• People don't believe global is happening when the vast majority of the scientific community can provide evidence that it is.

• People believe in ghosts when their existance violates all the laws of physics and pretty much all "ghost events" (if not absolutely all) can be explained without mystery.

• People don't get their kids vaccinated (e.g. MMR), when it is clear that not vaccinating is orders of magnitude more dangerous than vaccinating.

• People think that palm reading, tea leaf reading, etc actually works...

• People believe in "alternative" medicines work, when every "alternative" medicine that actually works is now simple called "medicine"!

The rules are as follows:

1. You can say what ever you like, and I don't care if you insult me.

2. If you post something, you may have someone say something that challenges your deeply held beliefs, so please only post if this is acceptable to you.

3. No one is allowed to complain about anyone being horrible, or arrogant, based upon the fact that people will only post here if they are up for a debate (see 2).

4. There is no 4.

Maybe the water held a memory of thrush?

I'm sorry, Edam- but it was coincidence. Thrush can be a side effect of antibiotic treatment, but not of drinking water.

YY I do know that water can't give you thrush - at least, not Thames tap water.

But it does suggest the claim that homeopathy does not have side effects may be just that, a claim. People say it without checking - maybe it does cause side-effects, maybe no-one has looked.

False hope? Plenty of medicines deliver that.

The danger with complementary medicines is that a. someone might use them instead of conventional treatment - i.e. Steve Jobs. Or b. that someone might take something that interacts with conventional medicines without realising, e.g. St John's Wort/anti-coagulants. Or c. that someone is treated by an incompetent practitioner who doesn't recognise the red flags that mean this person really needs a proper diagnosis from a doctor. Or d. that they are being ripped off - anyone can call themselves a 'nutritionist' and peddle vitamin pills. I could hang up a brass plaque tomorrow and start charging people. Or any combination of the above.

Most egregious are the sort of shits who claim to peddle 'stem cell therapy' privately to people who have very serious medical conditions like MS. Thankfully that is rare in this country. But it happens in Germany (or at least, it did last time I checked a few years back) and British patients travel there to be ripped off and offered false hope.

But there are equally plenty of dangers with all medicine, conventional as well as complementary - such as something like 1/10 people who go into hospital suffering avoidable harm. Or polypharmacy. Or incompetent practitioners - look at the NMC and GMC fitness for practice caseloads.

But homeopathy can't have side effects- it doesn't have any active ingredients.

"it does suggest the claim that homeopathy does not have side effects may be just that, a claim"

Sorry, but no, it doesn't. All it suggests is that you had thrush around the same time as you were drinking magic water - correlation, not causation.

"maybe it does cause side-effects, maybe no-one has looked"

It doesn't cause side effects just like it doesn't have any effect either because it is just water and sugar pills. This is also why homeopathic "remedies" are sold over the counter, with no need for prescriptions.

""maybe it does cause side-effects, maybe no-one has looked"

They have looked! They have looked a homeopathy every possible way, and every single time it has been shown to have no effects. And therefore no side effects.

Right, find me a study that has looked at the side-effects of homeopathy, then.

I do KNOW about active ingredients. As I say, I've worked with expert reviewers of medical evidence. Sheesh, Mike Rawlins was one of my most-frequently dialled numbers for many years.

But I also know medicine is not just about numbers and hard evidence. It's about people, a therapeutic relationship between individuals, and about individual physiology - people don't all respond in the same way to the same drugs.

And medicine can be surprising - everyone scoffed at the researchers who argued that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. Every doctor believed they were caused by acid. The guy had to swallow h. pylori himself and cause his own stomach ulcer to be proved right! (And do a whole shed-load of proper research, to be fair.)

There are no effects whatsoever. Side, front, or back.

Many studies have searched for effects of any kind and failed. Except for placebo effect.

When tests were conducted to test if homeopathy worked they would surely have noticed if say 15% of the patients got thrush.

In any case since we know there was no treatment we can rule out side effects. Homeopathy doesn't involve treating anyone - not really. It's about pretending to treat people.

However, since we know about the placebo effect then if someone expected Homeopathy to harm them they might feel ill. That seems unlikely since the believers think it's a postive thing and even if it happened it wouldn't be the water doing it. It would just look like it was the water doing it.

Thrush is very opportunistic. I would imagine if you were feeling run down because of your headaches, then something like thrush could rear it's head quite easily.

Homeopathy has been tested - over and over and over. Shaking water and thumping it with a belt has been shown to do nothing - nothing at all. It doesn't alter the substance in any way.

In order for you to react to something, there has to be something for you to react to. Otherwise we're in the realm of the supernatural.

The question therefore is - did water give you thrush? Obviously it didn't.

And medicine can be surprising - everyone scoffed at the researchers who argued that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria

True. Lots and lots of hypotheses have been scoffed at initially. That cholera is spread through water is another one. People scoffed - until they saw the evidence, and then they changed their minds. That's what science does - it changes it's mind based on the evidence.

Milkhell - re. deaths caused from drugs. They're the 4th biggest cause of death.

bumbleymummy are you saying that prescribed medication is the 4th biggest cause of death.

Oh never mind I see that you are.

Yep. Side effects obviously. I was quite surprised too!

Was also quite surprised to learn how ineffective some drugs are. Yet, they're still prescribed because they might work and/or there's nothing else to try.

This thread is brilliant - an actual debate between informed people!

World Health Organisation Top 10 causes of death

I don't actually believe it's true and nor does the W.H.O.

I was just now looking at the causes of death in the UK.

Top 5 killers are:
Heart disease
Stroke
Cancer
Lung disease
Liver disease

Here is the complete data.

Wonder where the guy was getting his info from. He was from a pharmaceutical background so I don't know why he would be saying drugs were a bigger killer than they were!

Ah... in the US

Although I'm pretty sure he said it was one of the leading causes of death in developed countries... He was talking about it in relation to pharmacogenomics...

I'm afraid they might have some sort of agenda. There are a number of sites quoting it though some are really talking about drug abuse. Some are making it sound like people are taking aspirin and dropping dead while quoting figures that include heroin overdoses and such. I can't quite get to the bottom of it.

Even if they are not all doing it purposely sometimes medical reports get misunderstood by those writing about them. You'll see in some newspaper that (making the number up) 40,000 people died of heart disease. Next week it will say 40,000 died of lack of exercise or obesity. In fact those might be the same 40,000 people whose deaths were contributed to by heart disease, lack of exercise and obesity.

What sort of agenda could a pharma company have for advertising the fact that adverse drug reactions are a major killer?

Do we have any references for this 4th biggest killer stat?

Don't have the slides from the presentation otherwise I could check but from googling I found this

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