I’m reminded of the times that people went to psychics who gladly put them in contact with their dead family members - dead family members that didn’t actually exist.
Admittedly, it does prove that all “talk to the dead” claimants are frauds - but it proves that some are, and raises substantial question about how one would find a real one among the frauds. Likewise, if an ear candler chosen at random is either blatantly lying or completely uninterested in knowing whether the service being sold actually works, how could you advise anyone to find an ear candler that did work? (for that matter, it’s suggestive that the ear candling process apparently automatically produces misleading evidence)
I just stumbled on this fantastic article about the specifics of antivax woo and the age old concepts of purity and contamination. It’s very disturbing.
She proved that one ear candler will do that, and then proceeded to:
But her personal research as reported utterly failed to support that conclusion. If she had found somebody with tons of earwax who got candled and then still had tons of earwax afterward that would at least somewhat support the conclusion that it doesn’t work.
Jiffy Lube is well documented to have defrauded customers repeatedly in different locations. That doesn’t mean oil changes are a scam.
There’s a Bureau of Auto Repair that investigates oil change shops and punishes the scammers. An agency of “Ear Candling” that did the same would lower my suspicion of the process considerably.
One of the groups that investigated Jiffy Lube used the same process as @Saint_Cad’s doctor friend - taking a car known to be free of defects and seeing the Jiffy Lube folks “detect” a problem that required action.
Which, again, proved Jiffy Lube is willing to scam customers. It doesn’t say anything one way or another about whether getting an oil change is a good or bad idea.
I agree with that - but if there are good ear-candlers being falsely tarred with the bad reputation of the fraudulent ones, then the good ones should work towards the creation of a public or private agency that will police the field, just as honest oil change shops are delighted that the Bureau of Auto Repair is weeding out the bad ones.
We know it is woo based, as there is no mechanism of action that can be demonstrated as happening.
From here:
A small clinical trial6 proved the implication of these experiments. Ear candling was carried out on ears, half with wax in them, half without. Otoendoscopic photographs were taken before and after ear candling. These photographs showed that no ear wax was removed from the ears with impacted wax, and candle wax was deposited in the ears without wax.
Unfortunately, people are less moved by studies than by anecdotes, so the most effective way to get the message across might be something like “Hey, we’ve got studies that show it can’t work, and I tried it out one time when I knew there was no problem to solve, and the guy took my money and pretended to solve the problem that didn’t exist”. Since we have the story at third hand, that may be what Saint_Cad’s friend actually says.
If a patient asked about the whole “step on a crack, break your mother’s back” thing should she set up a double blinded study to verify the safety of crack stepping?
If her mother was dead, so she stepped on a crack and asked her father if he was ok, that wouldn’t prove anything about the saying. Therefore she should then not use that trial as evidence about crack stepping.
The doctors personal experience with a local ear candelling “professional” served to put a personal, local spin on it. Some of her patients would certainly be convinced by a scientific study. Others would be more convinced by her personal anecdote based on her own experience. For some folks, stories work better to convince them than hard data. The doctor’s personal story was probably effective on many.
There’s plenty of information out there for an audiologist to base a professional opinion on. She didn’t need to do a personal “experiment” at all but probably did so she could also say she spoke from personal experience, as that often carries more weight with people who are attracted to woo.
Just curious, are you defending ear candling? Or just being critical that she didn’t do a full scientific study? Because either way, she was right to tell her patients that it’s a fraud, and there’s no evidence of a benefit.
My experience is that people that fall for woo will ignore any and all scientific evidence, explanation, papers, etc. but will believe what one of their Facebook’s friend’s friend’s friend says. So I can totally understand how an “I did it and …” anecdote would be effective whereas science would not.
Neither. As the story was told, a doctor used a personal anecdote of dubious relevance to make recommendations to patients. Using personal anecdotes of dubious relevance to make medical choices is why we have woo in the first place.
I’m criticizing a doctor for perpetuating the thinking that leads patients to seek out ear candling in the first place.
Nope. You might think so if you had little experience with Wooers. There have always been crackpot theories and snake oil and suckers willing to spend their money on them, and they’ve always been anecdotal-based, not science-based. In recent years, woo has surged, and it’s not because there haven’t been scientific studies challenging those findings.
Oh, the many times I’ve tried to convince woo-ers by citing scientific studies and the scientific method. It doesn’t work. Why not? Because they’re conspiracy theorists who believe:
There are no large-scale, double-blind, repeated studies of woo treatments because all those studies are funded, in some cases secretly, by Big Pharma. The purveyors of woo don’t have the billions to conduct those studies! [And they insist it does require billions when you point out Joe Mercola reaps millions from hawking woo.]
Every large-scale, double-blind, repeated study showing that woo treatments don’t work is funded by Big Pharma.
The FDA and CDC are corrupt and controlled by Big Pharma.
Anecdotal evidence is just as valid as big studies. It’s the people speaking their truth!
Anecdotal evidence is the only thing these people trust. Now, maybe if Spoons’ ex had recruited 10 other people who went to 10 ear candlers in 10 different cities on 3 continents, her anecdotal evidence would have been even more compelling. But really, all she needed to do was show, as she did through her scientific approach, that she had not stacked the deck and to sow doubt in the only way woo-ers can be convinced, through anecdotal evidence based on personal experience.
You want to convince rational people who understand and believe in science? Use scientific studies. You want any hope of convincing the woo-gullible? Use anecdotes based on personal experience.