# Has any technique or treatment formerly labeled as "woo" been later determined to be valid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638 "2012-12-10T21:07:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/21 "2012-12-11T02:45:36Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m not sure I agree with that about bloodletting. Lots of the “excess” conditions that bloodletting used to be used to cure do, in fact, match up with the symptoms of iron overload caused by excess red blood cells (that we now use it to treat). I’d bet that it started off as an effective treatment for some few that then got expanded and used and overused where it wasn’t so useful. It’s more limited now, but I don’t see how it’s used in a “fundamentally different way”. > > Maybe even the same for lobotomies, which are so old they’re older than writing. Og had demons in the head and they caused him to jerk around, so Ugg the Healer made a hole to let the demons out. Hey, it worked! Then Ig started being a pain in the ass, and a hole in her head made her pretty docile. Hmm…I guess that “worked” for a certain sense of the term… Now we limit lobotomies (chemical, or mechanical) to a more narrow range of modern diagnoses, and we don’t think we’re letting demons out, but the basic idea isn’t so far off from Ugg - a person can’t control their actions, and a hole in their head sometimes helps. > > Leeches were used for more than bloodletting - they were also used to treat stumps of limbs lost to the battlefield and wounds which festered because they closed up too soon. Again, exactly for the purpose we use them now - to increase circulation and prevent clotting so an area of low blood circulation has time to heal. > > Really folks, these weren’t all ignorant superstitions - they just had different vocabularies, and a more limited toolbox, so they had broader applications for the fewer tools they had. Sometimes too broad, and they were ineffective, or caused harm. Without sources, that’s pretty much all pure speculation. The idea that lobotomies/trepanation were originally used for constructive applications seems especially far-fetched. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/22 "2012-12-11T02:51:06Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Maybe even the same for lobotomies, which are so old they’re older than writing. Og had demons in the head and they caused him to jerk around, so Ugg the Healer made a hole to let the demons out. Hey, it worked! Then Ig started being a pain in the ass, and a hole in her head made her pretty docile. Hmm…I guess that “worked” for a certain sense of the term… Now we limit lobotomies (chemical, or mechanical) to a more narrow range of modern diagnoses, and we don’t think we’re letting demons out, but the basic idea isn’t so far off from Ugg - a person can’t control their actions, and a hole in their head sometimes helps. You’re confusing lobotomy and trepanation. The latter is where a hole is cut in the skull to relieve cranial pressure (from a head trauma, etc.) and prevent the swelling from killing the patient. Lobotomy, despite the desires of Hollywood makeup artists, didn’t involve a large incision, cutting out a chunk of the brain, etc. Instead, it involved the probably-creepier method of sticking an icepick-like instrument through the eye socket and swirling it around to scramble the frontal lobes like cooked eggs. Yeek. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/23 "2012-12-11T03:18:40Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > \*"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus > When he said the world was round. > They all laughed when Edison recorded sound. > They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother > When they said that man could fly. > > They told marconi > Wireless was a phony. > It’s the same old cry" > etc., etc., etc.\* I’ve always hated that song. 1. Everybody knew the world was round. They all laughed at Christopher Columbus because he claimed it was smaller than what everybody else knew it was. And he was wrong. 2. They all laughed with delight when Edison recorded sound, then showered him with accolades and called him The Wizard of Menlo Park. They didn’t laugh when he claimed to have perfected the light bulb and gas company stocks fell. Sure, he hadn’t quite done it yet, but everybody knew he would soon because he had already invented so much. 3. The only reason anybody (Langley) laughed at the Wright brothers is because they were so secretive to protect their patents that they would not demo it in public. Then there was the matter of the catapult and the suspicion (probably justified) that the Flyer could not take off under its own power and that the airplane had merely been thrown a few yards. 4. I have no recollection of anybody laughing at Marconi. The late 19th and early 20th centuries was the Golden Age of Woo, when any crackpot notion was carried in the newspapers and believed the world over. Believing in radio was easier than believing in canals on Mars, and everybody believed in them. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/24 "2012-12-11T03:28:02Z")
Einstein is supposed to have said something to the effect that attempting to control atomic energy would be like “shooting for birds at night in a region where there a few birds.” That might have been before discovery of the neutron, though. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/25 "2012-12-11T03:29:45Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m not sure I agree with that about bloodletting. Lots of the “excess” conditions that bloodletting used to be used to cure do, in fact, match up with the symptoms of iron overload caused by excess red blood cells (that we now use it to treat). I’d bet that it started off as an effective treatment for some few that then got expanded and used and overused where it wasn’t so useful. It’s more limited now, but I don’t see how it’s used in a “fundamentally different way”. > > Maybe even the same for lobotomies, which are so old they’re older than writing. Og had demons in the head and they caused him to jerk around, so Ugg the Healer made a hole to let the demons out. Hey, it worked! Then Ig started being a pain in the ass, and a hole in her head made her pretty docile. Hmm…I guess that “worked” for a certain sense of the term… Now we limit lobotomies (chemical, or mechanical) to a more narrow range of modern diagnoses, and we don’t think we’re letting demons out, but the basic idea isn’t so far off from Ugg - a person can’t control their actions, and a hole in their head sometimes helps. > > Leeches were used for more than bloodletting - they were also used to treat stumps of limbs lost to the battlefield and wounds which festered because they closed up too soon. Again, exactly for the purpose we use them now - to increase circulation and prevent clotting so an area of low blood circulation has time to heal. > > Really folks, these weren’t all ignorant superstitions - they just had different vocabularies, and a more limited toolbox, so they had broader applications for the fewer tools they had. Sometimes too broad, and they were ineffective, or caused harm. Yes I’d like to see a cite on all this. Seems like retconning to me. From what little I know most of these woo “cures” were used on a whole bunch of conditions, and were totally useless if not positively detrimental for the vast majority of those conditions. Now we have found empirically that some treatments, that bear some resemblance to those woo “cures”, do actually work in some very specific cases. However, this seems to me to be more of case of “a stopped clock being accurate twice a day” than any indication whatever that the treatments ever had any benefit. Take bloodletting. I don’t know a great deal about it but a quick read on wiki suggests than when it was fashionable, it was recommended for _everything_. If it was, as it happens, occasionally used on patients with an excess of iron, that’s not because it worked for such cases but rather because if you throw darts in every direction all the time, occasionally one will hit the bullseye. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/26 "2012-12-11T03:45:07Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I often hear, from woo proponents, that the science just hasn’t caught up yet to their particular favored practice. So has the science actually caught up to anything labeled as woo, and now it’s considered valid? There’s a big difference between a new idea that seems possible, but hasn’t yet been proven, and an old idea that has been repeatedly shown to have no validity. Most beliefs in today’s woo category fall in the latter. Hahnemann’s theories about curing disease haven’t been shown to have the slightest validity in over 250 years. In contrast, the germ theory of disease was validated both in the lab and in practice in a much shorter time and evidence is accumulating yet today. One of the halmarks of a pseudoscience is that _evidence does not strengthen over time._ For that matter, a corollary would be _the longer that a theory exists without accumulating good evidence, the more likely that it is an invalid postulate in the first place._ ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/27 "2012-12-11T04:17:35Z")
Artemisinin, which is a bit of a wonder drug for malaria, has an interesting story. It was known as an anti-malarial as early as the 4th century. That knowledge was lost and likely written off as woo until the 1960s, when a Communist China military project just worked through traditional medicine texts testing everything on the off chance that something was useful. Artemisinin turned out to be astonishingly effective, but that knowledge wasn’t widely publicized for years. Finally, in 1979, the findings were published and met with great skepticism. In the 70s and 80s, access to Artemisinin was tightly controlled, and Western scientists remained quite skeptical, especially as it was developed by the Chinese military. It wasn’t until much later that it was accepted as the key component of modern malaria treatment. Until resistance develops, it is basically a silver bullet and I can personally say it most likely saved my own life. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/28 "2012-12-11T05:18:30Z")
We have so much to learn from them. Joe ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/29 "2012-12-11T05:19:31Z")
Per this article the perception of the efficacy of [psychodynamic psychotherapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychodynamic_psychotherapy), of which Freud’s psychotherapy was variant, was borderline woo(ish) in the minds of many researchers, but has recently improved substantially. [Talk Therapy: Off the Couch and into the Lab - Researchers gather evidence that talk therapy works – and keeps on working](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=talk-therapy-off-couch-into-lab) ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/30 "2012-12-11T05:25:04Z")
People laughed at the calming effects of the first, steam powered, female vibrator. [Cite.](http://gizmodo.com/5466997/the-steam+powered-vibrator-and-other-terrifying-early-sex-machines-nsfw) Chugga-Chugga WOO! WOO! ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/31 "2012-12-11T07:18:34Z")
Perhaps a bit late to the party, but: > [@Voluble](#): > > The part I have trouble with is how they arrived at a chlorinated solution over just plain water for instance? Trial and error? Were the midwives already using it? According to the story, Ignaz Semmeweiss got the idea from a dialog with a knacker. The use of bleaching powder - calcium hypochlorite - was apparently a well-known trick among knackers to get the smell of feces off their hands after work. Thus, to Semmelweiss, bleach powder seemed a very strong cleansing agent and it was natural to try it. And chlorine is an even better disinfectant than alcohol. I guess you’d rather disinfect your toilet with bleach than with Everclear 😉 ---
**Author:** ![av8rmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@av8rmike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/av8rmike)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/32 "2012-12-11T17:59:17Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I often hear, from woo proponents, that the science just hasn’t caught up yet to their particular favored practice. That’s because they’re invoking the Special Pleading fallacy, also known as the [Shyness Effect](http://www.skepdic.com/shynesseffect.html). ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/33 "2012-12-11T18:25:43Z")
This is the first I’ve read of “woo”, so this probably doesn’t fit within the definition, but would [the bacterial theory of peptic ulcers count](http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/peptic_ulcer.pdf)? (Pdf.) An easier, briefer [note](http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.one.html#anchor07). ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/34 "2012-12-11T18:33:57Z")
I’m not sure to what extent people ridiculed Dr. Kellogg’s claims, but I don’t think is then-radical ideas were popular at the time. Eating whole grains and vegetables, exercising, quitting drinking and smoking! The very idea! To be fair, he also had some pretty crackpot notions about the health-giving properties of electricity, but still. ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/35 "2012-12-11T19:48:57Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > This is the first I’ve read of “woo”, so this probably doesn’t fit within the definition, but would [the bacterial theory of peptic ulcers count](http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/peptic_ulcer.pdf)? (Pdf.) An easier, briefer [note](http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.one.html#anchor07). I actually raised this question with Dr. Steven Novella, who gave a talk at The Amazing Meeting 10 about how to identify woo practioners. He stated that someone who claims something completely different than the current best knowledge is often woo. It’s what happens AFTER the claim that matters. Unusual claims _should_ be tested, and if they show positive results, continue testing them until we understand them. So the H. Pylori proposal was (my words) “candidate woo” at the time because it was a radical proposal going against all experience up to that time. Testing, however, showed it to have promise, and over time results then became stronger and stronger that the hypothesis was actually true. J. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/36 "2012-12-11T21:01:11Z")
What about electric shock therapy? It was discredit, but has made a comeback as a treatment for depression. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/37 "2012-12-11T21:20:25Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > I’d say that the question is only meaningful if restricted to cases where something was proposed, investigated or tested to the limits of then-current science, rejected, and some significant amount of time (10+ years) discovered to be valid or correct. Agree - and I’d add the qualifier that the rejected therapy has to be taken up by “alternative” practitioners who proclaim its virtue during the years before it is ultimately validated. By those standards it is difficult to come up with any validated woo. The OP’s question is sort of like the one about whether any conspiracy theories were true (obviously there have been many conspiracies, but virtually none where a brave band of amateur conspiracy-fighters exposed them over official resistance). Semmelweis’s handwashing and the discovery of H. pylori are cited _ad nauseaum_ by alt med enthusiasts as evidence that their woo will one day be widely accepted. I am unaware of any woo underground that was practicing hand-washing/sterile technique before Semmelweis. And it’s an altie fantasy that the H. pylori theory was laughed at/suppressed by the Evil Pharma Establishment. _“One might expect that if scientific medicine had dogmatically rejected Warren and Marshall’s hypothesis, there would be scant references to their reports for the several years after the initial publications. The opposite is the case: the biomedical world was abuzz with Campylobacter pylori (subsequently known as Helicobacter pylori) from the start, as is demonstrated…by the number of papers listed on PubMed, the online database of the National Library of Medicine, as a function of the calendar year throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The rate of increase after 1983 is nearly exponential… Within a couple of years of the original report, numerous groups searched for, and most found, the same organism. Bacteriologists were giddy over the discovery of a new species. By 1987—virtually overnight, on the timescale of medical science—reports from all over the world, including Africa, the Soviet Union, China, Peru, and elsewhere, had confirmed the finding of this bacterium in association with gastritis and, to a lesser extent, ulcers. Simpler and less invasive diagnostic methods were devised (Graham et al. 1987; Evans et al. 1989). The possibility of pyloric campylobacter being the cause of gastritis or ulcers was exciting and vigorously discussed, even as it was acknowledged by all, including Marshall and Warren, to require more evidence… The New England Journal of Medicine, the most widely read medical journal in the world, offered this editorial: “Further unfolding of the details [of the possible etiologic role of C. pylori in peptic ulcer disease] will be enhanced by the development of an animal model, by epidemiologic studies, and by identification of the source and the virulence properties of specific serotypes of C. pylori. The prospects are exciting, intriguing, and promising” (Hornick 1987).”_ > **[Bacteria, Ulcers, and Ostracism? | Skeptical Inquirer](https://skepticalinquirer.org/2004/11/bacteria-ulcers-and-ostracism/)** By the way, artemisinin is not a “silver bullet” for malaria. It is a useful drug, but one that malarial parasites are unfortunately developing resistance to. There are plenty of plant-based drugs that have entered general medical practice, once their value was discovered/confirmed by adequate testing. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/38 "2012-12-11T22:36:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Many “herbs” have interesting pharmacological properties, and every so often someone scientifically figures out what those properties are, as well as what compound in the herb is responsible, and how to get that compound into a more effective form. As they say–you know what you call alternative medicine that works? _Medicine_. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/39 "2012-12-11T22:49:59Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > So the H. Pylori proposal was (my words) “candidate woo” at the time because it was a radical proposal going against all experience up to that time. Testing, however, showed it to have promise, and over time results then became stronger and stronger that the hypothesis was actually true. That might be stretching it a bit to call it “candidate woo.” What was proposed was not an unknown, undetectable force. Sure, it went contrary to established thinking about ulcers, but we knew bacteria existed and caused similar symptoms. What had to be determined did not require uprooting of all medical science to be true, and indeed, the evidence strengthened as tests progressed. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638/40 "2012-12-12T00:52:28Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > I’m not sure to what extent people ridiculed Dr. Kellogg’s claims, but I don’t think is then-radical ideas were popular at the time. Eating whole grains and vegetables, exercising, quitting drinking and smoking! The very idea! To be fair, he also had some pretty crackpot notions about the health-giving properties of electricity, but still. As I understand it, Kellog’s purpose in this was not general good health, but to cool sexual appetites. As such his theories remain woo. Semmelweis’s theories weren’t woo. He was just ignored and his ideas went untested. Real woo is something like aromatherapy that lots of people try and some claim it works, but any effect is has is placebo. What sometimes happens (as with leeches) is that some treatment is widespread, discarded as woo (or worse, dangerous) and then turns out to actually be useful but only in a very limited context. The poster child for this might be willow bark which contains aspirin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-any-technique-or-treatment-formerly-labeled-as-woo-been-later-determined-to-be-valid/643638.md?page=3)