This seems like a big misunderstanding of what science is.
More of my typical rant against doctors that are not empiricists and insisting every must fit into their preconceived boxes. “Got Stage 4 pancreatic cancer? Eat less and exercise more.” I’d also point out that while the first two examples could probably be excluded from science-based, that the cause of ulcers, benefits of lobotomies and light therapy were all accepted at their time as based on science.
Very off-topic for an About This Message Board thread. Don’t argue this crap here.
This topic was automatically opened after 99 minutes.
I wanted to circle back to this point for a bit.
And for context on my views, a quote on myself from upthread as well
I think part of the problem in threads of this nature is the conflict between the board ethos in “fighting ignorance” and the understanding that science isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a faith. Science is, at it’s simplest, “Trust but verify”. Or at least trust that the people doing the verification can be trusted!
The difficulty in the spawning thread is that the OP did explicitly open the door to acupuncture, which, minor aside, I have no reasons to say anyone can’t try BUT when other, verifiable options have been exhausted. And the OP of the original thread was far from that point.
Trying to not refight the points in the thread, because that’s not what ATMB is about, instead I want to get to what we as a board should expect in a thread. I do think that in almost any thread on this board, if someone were to bring up anecdotal information without any verifiable support, especially in a situation where health or other serious consequences were to exist, they would be treated… poorly.
And, entirely IMHO, this is what happened to Ulfreida. Especially after the line I hinted at upthread, which I will quote in full this time:
Note, this is the first time Ulfreida posted to the thread. That was confrontational, albeit included a qualifier. It’s also the last line of a post that had more helpful (IMHO again) information, of Pilates, or other physical action or therapy that could be helpful.
Why do I bring all of this up and risk refighting the old thread? Because since we’re here in ATMB, I wonder if IMHO should include a minor sub-rule similar to the “no political jabs” exception for "Breaking News threads in the otherwise pretty free MPSIMS forum, and often for the same reason.
Especially when it comes to medical advice, the board asks for and gets a lot of qualifiers anyway, and it’s an area in modern America where non-proven, and often actively harmful supplements, treatments, and diets are largely unregulated and puts a ton of people at risk. Which is why the Quarantine zone needed to be pretty tightly moderated. Going forward, I really do think the mods, possibly with one of our retired medically informed posters should think about if we should have some wide guidelines about such information.
I fully expect this to be an unpopular idea with all, and very possibly considered a non-issue since the number of people visiting is so small, but I personally would be concerned that people like @GailForce from the original OP would come in and see support to skip the steps to rule out a viable existing treatment and jump to an unproven one.