I can absolutely respect that, thank you Marley23.
I haven’t exposed any personal information whatsoever. I simply posted a link to one of your posts that is located elsewhere. Again, if you find your own words insulting, that is not really a problem of mine.
Disrespecting or even insulting someone’s post is not against the rules here. Insulting a poster in this forum is. You can say “That was the stupidest damned thing I’ve ever heard” with no mod intervention whatsoever. What you are not allowed to say are things like “You are the stupidest poster I have ever seen” in this forum. While I have happily done the former, I have yet to do the latter.
I’m not the one who used a study performed by these women as evidence to support my premise. You did. It was the very first study you linked to. The fact that they happen to be in the woowoo business themselves and perform, among other things, reiki, tarot readings and ancestral constellations (WTF?) is simply evidence that the study is not likely to be done under any sort of rigorous methodology.
I slapped on no implications. I simply showed the background of the authors of one of your studies and a post that you created elsewhere. I didn’t actually need to add any additional comment as those things spoke for themselves. If you feel I have made up anything whatsoever, feel free to point it out and I’ll retract it. I was certainly sarcastic and snide (and will refrain from such going forward at the suggestion of Marley23), but I made up nothing. Calling me a supporter of a murderer, on the other hand, with absolutely zero evidence (hell, I never spoke a single word about this) is making things up.
I haven’t exposed your personal life either, but if you find a post elsewhere by someone named DMC that a reasonable person can conclude was actually the same person as me, feel free to post it. You won’t find it, but feel free to look.
I don’t feel particularly insulted, but the only personal insult of which either of us is guillty is you claiming that I support some murderer.
I didn’t say the device had killed anybody. I was saying that drugs and devices that can be lethal are held to a higher standard than something like reiki or prayer, which don’t do anything at all. I think it’s stupid for hospitals to spend effort and money on reiki, but as long as they’re giving the best medical care, it doesn’t matter much. On the other hand if they use products that have not been properly tested, they could kill people.
I couldn’t say for sure. I do know that many studies are international. But in general a manufacturer has to be in touch with independent monitors and regulators throughout the process - they can’t run the tests and then turn the paperwork in to the FDA, for example. There are a bunch of stages to that process.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Some products are approved in Europe and the U.S. (and other countries) at pretty much the same time. Other times it is years apart. It depends on what the regulators want to see and how the companies decide to handle things.
You’re saying it’s an enormous advance over existing bariatric surgeries and I’m not sure it is. You’ve said that the FDA and the U.S. are basically neglected diabetes and obesity by not approving this device.
The bottom line is that I don’t think this company has even asked the FDA about approving its product. You can’t blame the FDA for that.
[Quote=rich200]
**I support the articles and the research methods they use. Not the authors. **
[/Quote]
[Quote=DMC]
If you feel I have made up anything whatsoever, feel free to point it out and I’ll retract it. I was certainly sarcastic and snide (and will refrain from such going forward at the suggestion of Marley23), but I made up nothing.
[/QUOTE]
As you want to get down to the nitty gritty details of this conversation. And now you want to say that you simply have no implications. No problem. I do have something you made up and needs to be retracted.
[Quote=DMC]
…you claiming that I support some murderer.
[/Quote]
Since implications are off the table for your first statement. Then this statement does not apply to you.
[QUOTE=rich2600]
If you are going to investigate each and every member of the research teams of the articles I provide, go for it. Just accept that you are also labeling yourself as a supporter of the more extreme kind within the entire realm of science, since you have failed to specify otherwise.
[/QUOTE]
[Quote=rich2600]
The only thing you have skewered is your own points of view when after all this time you have not even denied an anthrax murderer is not within your acceptable realm of science.
[/Quote]
I never directly say you support a murderer. I say you accept an anthrax murderer is within your acceptable realm of science.
[Quote=rich2600]
Sound good as reiki practitioners(or pretty much everyone) do not usually like supporters of murderer’s.
[/Quote]
Again, I never directly say you support a murderer.
Please retract.
Besides that, as quoted above, I do not support the authors, and if you would support the authors for your entire acceptance of any science, it would be a heavy responsibility for any debater.
The statement of dropping acouple links of authors within the articles I mention has no substantial relation to this topic. Please provide to me how the authors personal lives effect the scientific methods used and documented within the test.
This type of argument is often called "Have you stopped beating your wife?" I will be charitable and assume you don’t realize how disingenuous and insulting this tactic is, but you should stop using it regardless. No one ever said anything in support of Ivins directly or by any kind of implication. (It also goes without saying that what he did was not science. He used some scientific techniques to commit murder.) If people have ignored your comments about him, it’s because they don’t deserve a response. This is not an argument that is used by people who are interested in a serious discussion.
Then point it out.
Spare me, word games don’t work in this forum. In fact, you implied that my wife supported a murderer. Feel free to explain how else one could parse that.
I don’t care if you support the authors or not, you linked to their study as an example of the fine research done on Reiki. I simply showed who was doing the research. If you feel the authors are quacks who accidentally did some wonderful research, I’ll accept that. If you think the study is bogus and accidentally included it, that is also fine. Why don’t you let us know what you think of the study and its authors?
It wasn’t their personal lives. I didn’t link to their facebook page, but to their business website, which is directly related to the focus of the study. Their business profits from various woowoo methods, including reiki, emotrance, singing bowls, family constellations, and kinesiology. If two Phillip Morris executives author a paper claiming that first and second hand smoke from Marlboros is actually beneficial, I’d probably find it a bit suspicious.
rich2600, some truly friendly advice coming up.
Look at the date each of us joined. Now, I’m not implying that that is an indicator of very much beyond how long each of us have been here, as we have wonderful newbies as well as crackpot old hands. What is does imply is that I probably have a pretty damned good understanding of how this forum works, as well as what is or isn’t allowed. I know where the line is and I know how close I can get to it without stepping over it. No one gets in trouble on this board for having weird ideas, no matter how much you might feel you are being ganged up on. People get in trouble for not following the rules.
Keep fighting the fight, but keep an eye on the method you choose in that battle. Also, keep in mind that this board and this forum in particular, attracts a different breed than the typical internet hangout. Poor arguments, no matter how verbosely composed, don’t cut it here.
Marley23,
Thank you for the information.
I’m going to tread lightly on this as I know that with my excessive defense in this topic, I know that I am not wanted, respected, or thought seriously of, here.
If you are going to go and start making additions to my arguments. While they are in pure form, and then claiming my arguments are ignored and don’t deserve a response.
Then you have to consider that since the move from In My Humble Opinion, you have not commented on a single persons post, while they are using consistent argument techniques which have the same disingenuous and insulting properties.
For example, Musicat.
He is a perfect example of “Inconsistency”
Yet you have not provided this in context within any part of the argument.
And then all of this information underneath a Moderation tag.
I’m sorry sir but it begs the question. Are you using your position as an administrator to negate my arguments?
If so, this is a Conflict Of Interest within a debate, and breaks your validity as you are using your position of authority to sway the readers, and contributors.
I’ll wait for your response before proceeding with this discussion.
Continuing with my inconsistency, please tell me how you differentiate between what works and what does not? The scientific method is not available to you, because
Then what standards do you use?
I have not commented on other posts individually, but I have issued two mod notes that applied to everyone who was arguing against you. That said, you are new here and posters with more experience have a better understanding of what’s allowed here and what isn’t. I maintain what I said about your comments regarding Ivins. No one said anything in support of him; they simply ignored your comments because they weren’t relevant. It does you no credit to suggest that anyone supports what he did, which was not scientific and was simply murder. It indicates you’re attacking people personally and not making a serious argument.
I have read the rules, and I saw nothing that indicates that the argument style of “Have you stopped beating your wife?”, as a rule.
That does not negate your conflict of interest. You did comment on my post individually and you are now claiming that I did not know the rules. Maybe I overlooked it. Therefore, please provide to me the rule entry where it lists the argument style of: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” as a rule applicable in all debates.
If there is no rule for this, then you have performed a conflict of interest. And I request a new moderator for this topic so that this debate can have proper moderation, as well as so you can contribute to this debate personally.
And finally, I implied that he accepted the research scientist murderer as an acceptable scientist. Since I have been in this thread, I have now reported two you twice implications and snide comments that you saw as none of those as insults OR personal attacks. And now you are addressing an implication I have posted to 1 user, as a personal attack. This is selective observation and specifically a moral segregation of my own comments. Therefore you have performed again, a conflict of interest.
For this reason alone, I humbly request a new moderator for this thread.
Again, I will not proceed with this discussion until you respond.
What I was hoping for was some description of what standards CAM uses to determine is some treatment is valid and useful, or not.
Well, if you can’t or won’t describe the standards that CAM uses to determine if something is useful or not, and won’t mention any place where those standards have been actually applied, I don’t see how anything can be determined. And therefore your request for proof from “alternative science” isn’t really stating anything at all.
Then what standards do they use? If any.
Yes, it actually does. If you cannot produce any reason to validate what you claim, then CAM isn’t disproven, but it sure isn’t proven to be successful either.
Reiki doesn’t seem to be proven by any standard of traditional science. You don’t seem to be able to describe any standards by which it has been proven by “alternative science”. The PubMed cites I have been able to dig up say mostly that the studies that allege to show anything by traditional scientific standards are mostly poorly designed and therefore not valid. And the others don’t seem to be based on anything concrete at all. Since you decline to point out anywhere that those standards have been used in instances other than reiki.
What it appears to boil down to is that we should just take your word for it, and buy a lot of anecdotes. That’s a problem, because there are lots and lots of other similar claims for other kinds of CAM that turned out to be bullshit of the purest sort.
Reiki hasn’t been disproven, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that it works, either by the standards of scientific medicine or your amorphous, undefined “alternative science” either. Since you seem so unwilling to say what those amorphous standards are at all, or how they have ever been applied in the past.
The thing is, if Reiki works, then it should work by the standards of traditional science. If it doesn’t work by those standards, why can’t you explain the standards by which it does?
We already know about things like placebo and selective reporting and coincidence. And so far at least, nothing has been produced that cannot be explained solely by those already well-understood factors.
Maybe there is something to Reiki. But so far, you have not been able to point to anything to show that there is.
Got anything like that? Either an explanation of why we should believe you, or real evidence that others have been convinced by objective standards?
Regards,
Shodan
There is no rule against moderators moderating a thread they are posting in. I believe I’ve been fair here and I am trying to keep this argument on track on both sides.
If you have any more comments or questions about the rules, post them in the ATMB forum or ask me by private message.
Supporters of alt med just did a massive communal facepalm over this statement.
It does however have a ring of truth, at least in the alternative reality inhabited by alternative medicine proponents. Craving acceptance by the world of science (for personal validation and to impress the [del]marks[/del] customers who purchase their goods and services), they’ve expended considerable effort getting studies of woo published in various, mostly lower-tier journals like the one rich2600 has repeatedly cited, the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. When the poor quality and lack of reproducibility of such studies are criticized, and lack of efficacy for their modalities is documented by systematic reviews and other good science, they splutter variations on the theme of “Your science can’t measure my woo” - pretending that the scientific method is inadequate to address their beliefs and that we must settle for anecdotes, testimonials and the like.
The scientific method, you see, is only acceptable if it comes to the proper conclusion (that alt med works).
Someone who agrees with rich2600 on this point is Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the force behind the creation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a dark hole down which hundreds of millions of tax dollars are poured annually. Harkin, while instrumental in assuring that the money keeps flowing, is quite disappointed that NCCAM has not fulfilled what he sees as its mission to validate woo. As this article notes, Harkin revealingly told a Senate panel:
***"One of the purposes of (NCCAM) was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short. I think quite frankly that in this center and in the office previously before it, most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving."**
Note what Harkin first says here. He doesn’t say that the purpose of NCCAM was to investigate alternative approaches and determine if they work or not, regardless of what the results turned out to be. Rather, he states plainly that the purpose of NCCAM was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. His concept for NCCAM is that it would prove that his favored woo works. That’s why he’s so disappointed that the vast majority of the studies coming out of NCCAM are actually negative. Moreover, he clearly doesn’t understand how science works. Hypothesis testing involves designing experiments or clinical trials that can be falsified; i.e., “disproved.” If an experiment or clinical trial can’t falsify the hypothesis that is being tested, then it is not really science. Falsification (attempting to disprove the hypothesis) is at the heart of how the scientific method works. But Tom Harkin does not want NCCAM to work by the scientific method. Not really. He has claimed that he does, but his statements above make it very clear that he only likes the scientific method when its results are what he wants them to be. Under NCCAM, many studies have been performed by believers under conditions quite favorable to producing apparently “positive results”; yet few and far between are any results resembling anything postive when it comes to NCCAM-funded studies, and they’re firtually nonexistent for studies funded by NCCAM for the major favored CAM modalities, such as “energy healing,” acupuncture, therapeutic touch."*
So even NCCAM, under political pressure to do so and with leadership weighted towards the woo-friendly, has not validated reiki as a useful health modality.
More friendly advice for rich2600: if the goal is to gain a respectful hearing for one’s ideas, I can’t imagine a worse strategy than to personally attack other posters (instead of their ideas), ignore appropriate questions and rebuttals, demand that others peruse voluminous source materials while refusing to discuss how they may be relevant or useful to the debate, bizarrely change the subject to matters that have nothing to do with what’s under discussion and then boast of personal victory (hint: that’s something for forum readers as a whole to decide, not something one can unilaterally declare without looking ridiculous).
As you have provided now 2 forms of conflict of interest, you have not been fair.
Because of this I cannot trust your moderation and I cannot trust your judgement. I will not be replying in this thread til there is resolution of this issue.
How convenient. How surprising.
OK, not the second.
Regards,
Shodan
“I’m out of order? You’re out of order! This whole thread is out of order!”
“He stomped out…in a terrible jangle of vibrations.”
- James Thurber
Because any medical intervention has risks. That is why the risk vs. benefit principle exists. Would it be better for morbidly obese people with other life-threatening conditions to die a certain death of heart problems and diabetes, or for them to have a reasonable chance of survival and improvement in health and quality of life?
There are much more radical procedures that are widely accepted by the medical community, because although risky, they serve an important part in treating disease. Hemispherectomy is my favorite example. Though not exceedingly common, it is a good illustration that even something as dangerous as removing or disconnecting half the brain can cure or help manage epilepsy.
As long as they conform to the standards of the FDA, I am sure that they would be accepted. From what I can find, the device you’re linking to hasn’t applied for FDA approval. As mentioned upthread, they do not preemptively approve or reject medicines or devices that have not submitted an application. And from documents I’ve read about drugs (my field of medicine, I assume devices would be similar), not only are rejections publicly available, but specific information is provided to the applicants regarding reasons for denial or requests for clarifying studies.
While the second just seems like an invitation to DNFTT, here are links to 3 approved devices, the StomaphyX, the LAP-BAND, and the REALIZE Band. Because I don’t have access to any major medical journals, I’ll assume these news folks did a fair job in profiling stomach balloon devices, concluding that
. The article goes on to mention that there have been significant safety risks in the past as well, including leakage and disintegration of the balloons.
We discussed this before, CAM is not big on denying the effectiveness of even the most esoteric therapies. Just like kindergarten, everyone gets a gold star and a smile.
(bolding mine)
And, to touch only briefly on this, since everyone else has gotten to it already, this is everyone’s problem with these studies. We are very firmly grounded in scientific principles, the concepts of repeatability, limiting variables, objectivity, etc. The idea that we can have studies that blatantly fly in the face of all of this, yet still are proclaimed as “science” is utterly ridiculous.
Furthermore, that definition of “alternative medicine” drives home the important point that we’re all trying to make. If reiki worked, it wouldn’t be called alternative medicine at all. It would just be medicine. Penicillin is medicine. Dialysis is medicine. Reiki is unmeasurable, unprovable magic.
Oh. Well, I wasted my time anyway. Is there a Latin term for “winning a debate by default because the other side got butthurt”? If so, Latin me up and let’s grab a beer.
chaoticbear, Rich2600 has left the building.