I get what your saying, and tend to agree, but P&T go after the low-hanging fruit with excessive zeal. It’s not “This idea is crazy, listen to this person’s crazy explanation and you’ll see”, it’s more like “This idea is crazy, see how this crazy-looking, crazy-acting inarticulate person struggles to explain it”. But if I have a crazy-looking, crazy-acting inarticulate person explain, say, quantum physics, it shouldn’t discredit physics.
There’s also a tinge of self-righteousness that I find annoying: the message seems to be “people believe stupid dumb things because they are crazy wackos, so don’t believe this idea because if you do, you are a crazy wacko” instead of any sort of sympathetic exploration of why the human brain is drawn to these strange conclusions. There’s no lesson in any of them to help the viewer become more skeptical–just “don’t believe unusual ideas”. It’s like teaching kids “don’t do drugs because only bad kids do drugs and if you like drugs you are a bad kid”. It’s an easier and more satisfying message, but it’s useless.
I don’t think they’re intentionally picking bad advocates for their opposition. For example when they wanted to get a creationist perspective they talked to Duane Gish, who’s… I guess one of the leaders of the field. He’s well funded, he runs a “creation science” museum - he’s a good spokesperson for their movement.
The other creationism advocate seemed to be well spoken and charismatic enough.
In the recent lie detector episode, they used a professional lie detector operator to advocate for their usage.
Other subjects have no clear spokesmen or leaders. If you want to do a story on ghosts and ghost hunters, who’s the credible source you go to? You may as well pick any random “reputable” ghost hunting team.
I really think everyone here is giving the show a bad rap for who they choose to interview. I think they pick reasonable advocates of a certain view - and usually if the person advocating that view looks bad, it’s because they’re advocating something so clearly wrong.
I think, where there’s actually a sympathetic character, they tend to be kind. Like the death penalty advocate who’d had his child murdered, or a grieving mother trying to use a medium to talk to her dead child - in cases like this, they don’t yell and insult, they speak softly and sympathize while getting angry at the people who are taking advantage of the grief.
But for people who are less empathetic… especially people who are using claims of the paranormal to profit - yes, they’re angry and self righteous. I like it myself. I want people who profit from this nonsense to be ridiculed and debunked.
My slight nitpick would be the overbroad net that they cast and that you bought into.
‘Alternative Medicine is bullshit.’
First of all alternative medicine is an EXTREMELY broad category. There has been research into the westernized version of acupuncture that show some real tangible benefits. Massage Therapy is immensely beneficial at relieving pain and to help with postural imbalances. Not every Chiropractor believes in the woo that originated with it, correcting postural deviations is great and reduces wear on your joints significantly. A lot of Chinese herbs are quite useful, such as their burn ointments. I take a Chinese cold remedy that blows out the cold in a couple of days and has an immediate effect, I haven’t had a bad cold since I discovered it. Pharmaceutical companies research folk medicine herbal remedies all over the world to find new drugs that they can sell to you. Germany has a comprehensive list of herbal remedies based off of scientific research, all of those would fall under the rubric of ‘alternative medicine’.
I have no problem with people disbelieving in Qi, or Homeopathy or Reiki or any of that stuff. It doesn’t really matter to me. I personally believe in Qi because I am a Shiatsu practitioner and a good Shiatsu is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, but I don’t care if YOU believe in it.
The point is that there is a whole host of things that fall under the rubric of alternative medicine that have been scientifically proven to be beneficial. But you and Penn and Teller like to make fun of hippies so you just buy into it and cast a broad net to cover it thus putting chiropractic and massage therapy into the same category as dolphin birthing.
My opinion on alternative medicine is much more broad based than an episode of bullshit.
True to an extent, but it all shares in common being unsubstantiated by evidence - otherwise it wouldn’t be alternative, it’d be medicine.
Nope. Bullshit. Utterly unsubstantiated.
There was a story recently floating around the news media that was completely irresponsible reporting that drew the exact wrong conclusion.
They did a study in which one group received real acupuncture - acupuncture experts were called in to do what they do.
Another group got sham acupuncture. Someone actually stuck them with needles, but not a skilled accupuncturist hitting the “correct” spots, but just more or less randomly.
A third group got false acupuncture. Someone designed a device that would pinch the skin in such a way that it felt like a needle was penetrating it, but there was no actual penetration.
All groups reported the same results - many people felt that their symptoms had improved - in the same quantities as the other group.
So there was a news story that came out - I can’t remember the source - that said “scientists confirm: Not only does accupuncture work, but sham accupuncture has a positive benefit too!”
:smack::smack::smack:
Textbook case of the placebo effect. And yet the science-ignorant media gobbled it up and drew the exact opposite of the correct conclusion.
Nope, accupuncture is total bullshit.
I can believe this - massage therapy can be something within the conventional medical realm, so I’m not sure it’s accurate to label it alternative medicine.
Any “relieving pain” is something that can placebo can do. If someone gets sugar pills or accupuncture or something else that reduces their subjective experience of pain - so long as they’re not excluding actual treatment for the problem, then good for them I guess.
Chiropractic care can temporarily relieve pain simply because physical manipulation often feels good, or maybe they can actually correct a structural problem in the skeleton. But chiropractors often promise ridiculous shit, like being able to cure asthma with some spine twisting.
They don’t have legitimate, evidence-based, medically approved training. They’re not doctors. Some of them may sometimes do good things, but there’s good reason to be skeptical of the whole profession.
I have no problem accepting this. After all, aspirin, one of the simplest, most useful medicines around is basically ground up willow bark. But without scientific testing, there’s no way we can know the effects. Sometimes there’s real effectiveness behind drug remedies - sometimes it’s just superstitious bullshit from a prescientific age. I’m fine with more research into these substances - and once they’re validated to be effective, then they’re part of the conventional medicine.
I think you’re putting words into their mouths. They never said that anything ever considered to be alternative medicine can’t work. They attacked specific practices, like magnet therapy and healing crystals and intuitive healing (“actually… it’s my other knee that hurts” … ha!), and healing touch.
They also demonstrated how guillable people can be, and how the placebo effect can work. If people can feel better after a fucking golden kazoo is blown over their body I think it clearly demonstrates that subjective assessments of medical effectiveness are faulty and that scientific, evidence based medicine is the only thing we have validated to be effective.
That’s not how people use the term alternative medicine.
Actually the media reported the Dr’s conclusion in that case.
This may be the study you are referring to.
Right
It shows that Chinese Medicine acupuncture is no better than sham acupuncture but that both worked better than the traditional treatments. Bottom line, acupuncture had some results.
“Acupuncture represents a highly promising and effective treatment option for chronic back pain,” researcher Heinz Endres, MD, tells WebMD. “Patients experienced not only reduced pain intensity, but also reported improvements in the disability that often results from back pain – and therefore in their quality of life.”
Your diagnosis of ‘placebo effect’ is just your choice of how you choose to view it. The Dr involved doesn’t view it as total bullshit, but recommends it as a treatment.
Well then you are using ‘alternative medicine’ in a way most people do not. I can see your point of view on this, and with that usage, I agree with you.
Well in the study you referenced the Doctor actually recommends acupuncture and it says that even the sham acupuncture had better results than the traditional treatment. So why if the traditional treatment has inferior results should I go with that treatment rather than the one that works better? Why is the placebo effect not valid if the goal is the subjective relief of pain?
Yes, some chiropractors promise ridiculous shit, but that doesn’t diminish chiropractic. It’s not a cure all and a responsible chiropractor will tell you that. But when my illium slips off of my sacrum and causes posterior pelvic tilt that then is compensated for by a hypertoning of the Psoas Major and Tensor Fascia Latae, then chiropractic is the perfect thing. A massage therapist can adjust the hypertonicity and hypotonicity of the surrounding muscle groups but since adjusting the sacral alignment falls outside of their scope of practice a chiropractor is quite useful. And one chiropractic adjustment CAN indeed readjust those imbalances on a permanent basis if you also treat the myofascial contributors. Of course, if it’s caused by foot pronation like mine is, it’s helpful to use some arch supports. One chiropractic treatment will lead to lasting relief of my medial knee pain and inner hip adductor pain. Since my feet pronate it naturally is going to reoccur over time but that is not the fault of chiropractic. Chiropractic is great maintenance care. I too am skeptical that chiropractic can cure asthma.
This is incorrect, and ignorant of chiropractic which is a medical degree doctoral program that requires a ton of the same courses that MDs are required to take. Years of Anatomy and Physiology, Kinesiology, and Pathology courses, just like a ‘real’ Doctor.
Well then look into the German herbal remedy table if you’re interested. It’s put out by the German version of the FDA.
Yes, and they spent a lot of their time on dolphins because that was much better to suit their agenda which was to make people laugh. The show prioritizes comedy over educating people. The point of the show isn’t to teach you anything new, it’s to preach to the choir and collectively PALATR.
Yes, and that’s one of the core differences between the eastern approach. The eastern approach doesn’t view subjective effectiveness as invalid. If the placebo effect really DOES reduce your pain and the goal of the treatment was to reduce pain, then it’s an effective treatment. That shouldn’t of course be used in lieu of actually finding out the cause of the pain, but when the cause is idiopathic, or the cause is known then it’s a workable treatment. No Acupuncturist or Chiropractor that I know would discourage you from seeing an MD. They would actually do the opposite and encourage you to do so.
I agree with others than the show is for entertainment, not serious discussion of issues. Some of the episodes are pretty good, others are really bad (though even some of the bad ones are entertaining; they just miss the mark on accurate discussion).
The animal rights episode is especially bad, though parts were funny. Most of the show involves Penn and Teller pointing to PETA’s advocacy of animal rights and doing the rhetorical equivalent of rolling their eyes. There are four arguments offered against animal rights in the whole show: PETA is a bad organization; chickens are stupid; meat is food (courtesy of Ted Nugent); and rights mean responsibilities, so if we liberate animals we have to expect them not to eat each other. That is not even close to serious attempt to grapple with the arguments of the other side, much less the best arguments of the other side.
Other than the general vacuous nature of the episode, they also make a number of false of misleading points. They imply that insulin is an animal product (it isn’t). They imply that some of their guests are PETA spokespeople, when in fact they are just random whackos (and really, if you can’t find genuine PETA whackos for your show, you’re doing it wrong).
Anybody else much prefer Mythbusters to Bullshit!? I find the former much more tolerable (mainly because most of the cast is engaging, while I personally find Penn Jillette completely insufferable). Mostly tho it’s because the MB guys (and girl!) don’t get up on a high horse at all really (unless it’s to test something about horses), while the BS guys seem to feel the need to spin a lot of what they study and discuss. MB just goes ahead and does their tests and has fun doing it-no need to talk down to the audience or belittle some group they disagree with. Even when they were testing the moon hoax theories you didn’t get any of that.
The Mythbusters guys also seem much more willing to admit, and address when they’re wrong (or might be wrong). It’s quite refreshing.
Anyway, I like the concept of Bullshit, but hate the execution. It’s lame as hell than Penn and Teller never actually go out and speak to anyone themselves. Instead, they merely sit back and do little more than narrate; it’s aggravating and makes them look like lazy tools.
They’re two totally different shows. One is about taking myths and fables and seeing if they could potentially being true… And then blowing shit up. The other is about disproving political or conceptual topics or beliefs.
And of course, one is on the Discovery channel and has to appeal to a very wide audience. The other is on Showtime and has a much more narrowed audience. It’s like comparing Full House to Arrested Development, since they’re both comedies.
And you have to credit BS with being willing to take on more controversial issues. I think one of the Mythbusters wanted to do an episode on creationism and of course, Discovery would have never allowed them to do it (why alienate an undoubtedly substantial amount of their audience?).
How is that not being a yahoo? In order for that to happen in two and a half short years, there would need to be a massive social or political cataclysm that affects the entire world. How is predicting such a thing any different from predicting a gigantic killer asteroid fireball of flaming death?
All I’m saying is that there are a few that can discuss 2012 a little more reasonably than the idiots they had on. 2012 was just an example of how P&T pick the worst from the opposite side to represent those views
There are reasonable people predicting that very thing (though the minimum time I’ve seen is ten years, not two and a half). There’s a prominent poster here who’s a very firm believer in it, in fact.
I’m not. I’ll admit that some people classify certain valid treatments under the category of “alternative medicine” and so it’s not accurate to say everything that’s classified as alternative medicine is completely baseless.
But most of it is. Most of it is based on prescientific or new age nonsense with no proof of efficacy or even logical mechanims to work.
I can’t speak for how everyone uses the term - but it generally means treatment that people believe to be effective without any scientific evidence based reason for believing it, right?
It’s an alternative to evidence based medicine. I don’t like the term “western medicine” because it makes it sound like it’s just one school or flavor of medicine. In the west, we use science and evidence to determine what works.
What’s funny is that the new middle class and rich in China are ecstatic that they can now afford to get real medicine, western medicine. Traditional treatments are saved for the poor schmoes who can’t afford any better.
Whereas spoiled middle class and rich idiots here reject the good stuff and crave that ancient chinese wisdom.
Edit: I shouldn’t say it’s always this way. People with severe medical problems can be very vulnerable and are often preyed on, and they deserve sympathy rather than scorn.
I don’t think so - the study I’m referring to had another group which received a treatment with devices that simulated needle sensation without actually penetrating the skin. In the study you linked (which doesn’t even seem to mention what journal it’s in) they only used “correctly” placed needles and randomly placed needles and speculated that simply sticking needles in someone may have a positive medical effect.
It’s the very definition of placebo effect.
Are you advocating that the treatment actually has some inherent medicinal value? If random needle and “correct needle” groups had the same results, you could say that the “art” of placing the needle correctly was bullshit, but sticking needles in people had real medicinal value. But what about people who just got their skin pinched to feel like they were getting accupuncture?
The placebo effect is an interesting thing. If you give people expensive sugar pills as opposed to cheap ones, they report better results. If you treat them with a syrup that tastes bitter and nasty, it has better results than one that tastes sweet. If you tell people that the drug is powerful and will have side effects, they both report that the intended effect was greater and they’re more likely to report side effects.
So there may be a valid case that the particular song and dance involved in acupuncture serves as a potent placebo. We may find one day that having someone come into the room in a bigfoot suit and rub their assholes has an even greater placebo effect.
But that doesn’t validate that acupuncture is actually doing anything, or that there’s an ancient chinese secret behind it - it just means that it’s a really fancy sugar pill.
I’ve seen people try to group legitimate treatments that happen not to come from a guy in a lab coat with woo woo shit in an effort to legitimize the woo by association.
In another thread a few weeks ago I recalled someone describing the science of nutrition (and educating doctors in it) as “alternative medicine”.
The definitions can be wide ranging.
This is a different debate and I guess a question of medical ethics. I’m not going to comment conclusively on a link to a webMD article that references a study but doesn’t even list the journal you can find it in or the research body who conducted it or how big the size was or what the procedures were.
Conceptually - if someone has to deal with pain, and there’s no real clear cut treatment for it - and having needles stuck in them or bigfoot rub their asshole makes them feel better? Then I guess it’s for the best. But I say that with some caution - some of the socialist medical beauracracies in Europe embrace total nonsense like homeopathy because it saves them money when they don’t actualy have to treat people. So a government study saying “hey, it’s okay, we’ll just give everyone acupuncture” would concern me.
I think it does. The whole profession is based on a sham. The creator (and IIRC 70%ish percent of practicing chiropractors still claim to be working off his teachings) invented the procedures because he thought skeletal misalignment was blocking people’s life energy. It’s prescientific bullshit.
Does he tweak your flux capacitor also?
The basis of the chiropractic profession is the idea that most or all diseases are caused by the misalignment of life energy. So by adjusting the body to allow the free flow of this life energy you can cure things that are unrelated to the skeletal/muscular system.
I was under the impression that chiropractors went to chiropractic school rather than any sort of medical school, and they wouldn’t really be qualified to perform any sort of non-chiropractic medical procedure.
A real doctor - even if he was a researcher or a psychiatrist, would still know how to treat someone having a heart attack. Would you want a chiropractor in that situation?
At best, they seem like specialized physical therapists that work on skeletal and muscular problems.
At worst, they’re charlatans whose entire philosophy is based on prescientific nonsense, and they’re doing potentially damaging adjustments to people trying to cure problems that have nothing to do with their treatments.
I think it’s both. For instance I found the programs on 12 stepping and the lie detectors to be pretty educational. Most of the harsh treatment they give people are those who are turning a buck on exploiting people’s guillability, and I don’t have a problem with that. Compare their treatment of a guy who disagrees with them on the death penalty with the dead kid with one of the psychics who’s trying to sell a book.
This may be true for acupuncturists or chiropractors. I don’t have much experience with them. But for advocates of other disciplines - homeopathy, healing crystals, and all sorts of stuff - the advocates most certainly tell people to stop taking that EVIL CORPORATE WESTERN MEDICINE and use their treatment instead.
So if the issue is someone paying for their own sham placebo treatment because it makes them feel better, and they’re not skipping out on any legitimate treatment - well, good for them. When it comes to governments paying for sham treatments for their citizens, that concerns me. If there’s no real scietific treatment available, then sure. But when they start pushing off people with real medical problems with real medical solutions into sham treatments, it’s very concerning.
This was indeed done in a later study (I think - I know the patient was blinded but I’d have to double check about the acupuncturist) and the results show that actual needle insertion is irrelevant to the patient’s reported improvement.
Yes that often happens, but generally I hear it referring to anything that is not slice/medicate. Which is why Massage Therapy, even Swedish Massage which is 100% based in a science you could comprehend if you had the proper anatomy knowledge is referred to under the ‘alternative medicine’ rubric.
That’s an awfully broad statement. I am not sure it’s supportable. I’ve spoken to some wealthy educated Chinese who have more derision for people who blow off Chinese medicine than they do for people who put some stock in it. One guy I know can rattle off a list of treatments that have made it into allopathic medicine that were based off of Chinese medicine. Yes, ‘western’ medicine for lack of a better term has been embraced in the East, but the idea that it’s an either/or scenario is just a claim you are making and one I doubt you’ve really done extensive research on.
You’re mainly judging things by the lowest common denominator, another problem with the show. ‘Haha, idiots think that dolphins can heal them, therefore chiropractic is bullshit!’
And sometimes people go for years to a really real Doctor, or even several and find no relief for something, and get acupuncture and find relief. It’s more complicated than you’re allowing for. If it’s just a matter of belief, then why didn’t they ‘believe’ that the scientific medicine would cure them long before they even knew anything about acupuncture? See a lot of people who go to acupuncturists don’t even know anything about it until they’ve been treated by Doctors for years and are desperate enough to try anything. A good friend of mine has had ridiculous allergies for most of her life, and acupuncture has reduced them according to her. This is not because she blows of scientific medicine, quite the opposite, just that western medicine never helped in the more than the decade she tried it and acupuncture did.
Fair enough.
Well I am not going to defend acupuncture in it’s specifics. If you don’t believe in it that’s fine. Scientific studies of it tend to focus on pain reduction as a whole. So it’s likely that the endorphin release from small pinching pain in general is what relieves the pain. Also, another problem with studies, which doesn’t apply to the randomized application, but does apply to pinching people within the rubric of acupuncture is that the points are subject to manipulation. In attempts to debunk it people have used needles and then done other things, but the problem is they didn’t read up enough on the theory to really understand it before they went off and spent a few million on a study. Both Shiatsu (acupressure) and Tui Na (painful chinese massage) use the acupuncture points and manipulate them with fingers. Shiatsu is one of the most relaxing styles of massage one can get it, very refreshing, and Tui Na can relieve muscular tension in a way other styles cannot. As I am most familiar with massage I can comment more authoritatively on it. bottom line, Tui Na and Shiatsu are very effective massage treatments.
And one of the problems with studying pain in general is the subjective process. People have trouble doing studies on massage therapy even Swedish which is entirely based in scientific myofascial treatments, has trouble being studied. The reason for that is that it relies upon the report of the person being treated, therefore it relies on subjective data. This is problematic for two reasons. Say you have two people in the study, person A is in more pain than person B to begin with, and Person A draws on the practitioner A in the study whose skill is vastly inferior to practitioner B, and therefore person B reports a much greater result from the treatment. There is also a problem wherein the relationship between the practitioner and the patient is important. You can not enjoy a massage if you don’t like the person who is massaging you no matter how good they might be. There are so many subjective criteria involved that it makes it difficult to actually study.
Yeah, that’s basically what I was getting at.
Fair enough.
I understand that too. I go to acupuncturists from time to time, but if I had just had a heart attack I’d want to go to a real hospital.
I’d like to see where you got that statistic from. As long as you didn’t pull it from bigfoot’s asshole I’ll weigh it’s credibility.
So I explained to you specifically what he does in a scientific manner and you blow it off. How much myology do you know? Do you know what the Psoas Major and TFL are? Do you understand how a misaligned bone can result in the muscle structures being hypertonic on one side and hypotonic on the other?
Yes, I am aware of its origins. There is some truth to the life energy flow thing, pinched nerves and blocked arteries/veins/lymph etc… can result in health conditions that appear unrelated to the structural deficiencies on the surface.
They do go to a special chiropractic school. I think you are ignorant of how the medical professions work. Look up ‘scope of practice’. I wouldn’t go to a respiratory specialist for a heart attack either. Saying that a chiropractor doesn’t treat a heart attack is pointless as that isn’t his scope of practice. A psychiatrist as opposed to a psychologist is a full-on MD, and so is a medical researcher. If I were in a hospital I’d want a cardiac specialist, if I were at a restaurant and the closest thing to a Doctor around was a chiropractor, I’d want the chiropractor as opposed to someone else because his knowledge of anatomy and physiology is pretty close to that of an MDs. A chiropractor isn’t trained to be an MD, so I don’t know why you are using this example.
Highly specialized physical therapist. Though these days a PT is a Masters level program so it’s getting pretty advanced, but it’s not quite as intensive as a chiropractor. A chiro can do anything a PT can do, but I am not sure what the precise boundaries of a PTs scope of practice is, IE, whether they are allowed to do spinal adjustments. A chiropractor has about two more years of schooling than a PT.
You get irresponsible MDs too, what’s your point? I don’t see how chiropractic is any more prone to abuse than any other medical profession. Maybe your Doctor’s a cokehead whose God complex is amplified 100 times by his coke habit and is entirely unwilling to hear that he might actually be wrong even if he is. So what? In my experience a chiropractor is no more likely to be a lunatic than anyone else. I have known several chiropractors and only one of them touched on the woo, and that was just an allergy test where he tested for muscle weakness right after I consumed potential allergens. He didn’t try to cure them, he just tried to tell if I was allergic to something. I’ve since heard people skeptical of those allergy tests. Otherwise in one of my kinesiology classes one of the assistants was a chiropractor and he taught it strictly within a scientific approach talking about normal ranges of motion and that sort of thing. He also assisted in my neurology class, and there was no evidence of the woo there. One of my best friends is a chiropractor and while he’s very into a lot of ‘woo’ in his personal life he makes a strict separation between his personal interests and how he practices as a chiropractor. He deals with chiropractic entirely as structural imbalances in the bones and myofascia. He’s even joked about the woo in chiropractic with me.
I didn’t see the death penalty show.
Well I am sure you can find acupuncturists and chiropractors who will denounce allopathic medicine just as you will find any number of things anywhere. I know a lot of massage therapists who discount it, but I also in my schooling saw an even greater number of people who made fun of the people who dismissed real medical treatment. In my training the first thing we were taught to do before treating a person for a condition was send them to a Doctor. You can give someone a basic massage without a Doctor’s input but you wouldn’t treat them for Tennis Elbow without it.
I agree, but there are also times where western medical science can’t help someone and other treatments did help them, at least they seem to think so and are healthier as a result. So there is a level where I am willing to be fully skeptical and not partially skeptical and say, “I just don’t know.”, rather than trying to explain it as bullshit when I don’t know the answer one way or the other.
Well the problem with that is that in TCM the actual needle insertion is not the only form of treating the Qi flow. I’m not using this as a defense of acupuncture only explaining why studies where they try to trick people into thinking they got stick with a needle doesn’t work, because acupuncturists working with patients who don’t want to be stuck with needles will use acupressure.
I’m a fan of the show. To be sure they take liberties but overall it’s a good show that broadcasts some much needed skepticism. The recent show on lie detectors was excellent. I don’t particularly enjoy when they debunk clearly unbalanced people like the recent show on the apocalypse but I think it is important for them to tear the shit out of astrologers and other various myth spinners.
