42. Chris Carter, Parapsychology, Skepticism and Ideology (Podcast)

[Venom]

You should have introduce yourself there:

Introduce yourself

But I suppose that the title of the thread ("introduce yourself") wasn't clear enough.

Originally Posted by pacificwhim

I can bring an interesting spin to the CAM question. In my guise as a nonfiction ghostwriter, I'm helping an equine chiropractor write his book about working on some of the top racehorses in the country. I could get quotes from a dozen top racing trainers (as well as hunter/jumper horse owners, one of whom, a Ph.D. psychologist, was a 100% skeptic about chiropractic) about how chiropractic adjustment has completely changed their horses' careers and improved their racing performance. In fact, I believe one of the horses my author worked on, Costa Rising, was voted Horse of the Year by the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.

What makes this especially interesting is that with a horse, there obviously can be no question about the placebo effect.

Well, no need of placebo effect in the horses here. It's just a mix between the error of personnal validation (some owners have the subjective impression that the horse is doing better when in fact is not doing better) and the logical fallacies of "Post-hoc ergo propter hoc" (the horse is improving for other reasons than chiropractic but the people think falsely that the improvement comes from it).

So, yeah, no need of placebo effect at all for explaining those testimonies (and by the way, in science, testimonies doesn't prove anything).

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

Take your pick: meditation, acupuncture, chiropractic. All have been shown to be safer and at least as effective as "mainstream" treatments for a range of ailments -- and we are talking about multiple, replicated, double-blind studies using the accepted standards for medical research, published, in many cases, in mainstream medical journals.

Sure, but the big story is that CAM has become mainstream and CAM-deniers (like a few of the ones on this forum) have become marginalized sideline cynics.

This is where psi is headed. There will always be deniers, but they will be pushed further and further to the fringes... marginalized.

[Topher Cooper]

Venom,

As far as I know, there is no hint of a requirement that participants use the introduce yourself thread, its there for when participants decide to do so -- if they do. Your sarcasm was uncalled for.

Its common for Skeptics to exaggerate the lack of relevance of so-called "anecdotal evidence". Ultimately, all scientific evidence depends on anecdotal evidence -- scientists describing anecdotally, in their reports or lab notebooks, the conditions under which data was collected and what they observed (and didn't observe) while it was.

It is hardly a new observation, though, that Skeptics' aversion to anecdotal evidence only applies to evidence that might seem to weaken their case. Anecdotal evidence that supports their beliefs tends to be embraced enthusiastically as not only valid but conclusive (e.g., confessions of admitted hoaxers whose word is unreliable by their own confession and whose testimony is frequently inconsistent, or Langmuir's decades old recollections of a casual conversation with Rhine where Rhine supposedly openly admitted to being ignorant of elementary elementary errors and having committed them, despite having written, by that time, extensively on the importance of avoiding those same errors and excluding them from his published protocols).

Of course, with the kind of evidence described here we need to consider alternate explanations, e.g., personal validation, and post hoc as you suggest, as well as selective reporting and differential treatment by handlers who know that the horses in question received the treatment. In evaluating any evidence we need to consider these alternatives.

But contrary to the strong, irrational insistence of Skeptics, "partial evidence" is not "no evidence" (denial of which handily allows them to ignore any cumulative evidence -- any piece of evidence must stand alone as complete and inarguable proof strong enough to overcome any degree of prior doubt however extreme).

I would judge that rationally, pacificwhim's report is an interesting, relevant bit of evidence in support of chiropractic treatments, especially in line with the strength of the reported effect which is a stretch for the alternative explanations to cover. Naturally, it is not conclusive. Of course, in the case of chiropractic, we already have strong, double-blind, controlled (using sham manipulations as the control case), replicated studies that support their effectiveness (for some conditions) and relative safety in humans. This is in stark contrast to some of the "mainstream" treatments for the same conditions (contrary to what you might expect, use of double-blind studies to validate surgical techniques is relatively rare unless they involve implantation of a new medical device -- effectiveness is generally evaluated by comparing outcome for treated patients compared to independently recorded -- often informally collected -- outcomes for existing treatment or those who receive, for whatever reason, no treatment at all).

For the record: I have never been to a chiropractor, have no friends who are chiropractors, and overall, have no particular emotional investment in it being "real". Lots of treatments, both complementary (a term I prefer to "alternative") and conventional that looked promising once were later disproved or superseded. The failure of any technique which it looked might have provided relief from suffering with much lower risk and cost should be regretted by anyone, but that would be the extent of my emotions if someone were to show that all the existing studies were wrong.

[Topher Cooper]

Did anyone, by the way, see the episode of Mythbusters where they tested various remedies for motion sickness? Although they found most of the alternative treatments ineffective in practice (despite some of them having been shown to have a positive effect in laboratory experiments), they found a simple herbal remedy (which has a record of safety that no mainstream treatment could possibly match) to work every bit as well as an unidentified standard prescription remedy, which left them woozy to the point of being almost completely nonfunctional. The herbal remedy was ginger root, by the way.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Venom

You should have introduce yourself there:

Well, no need of placebo effect in the horses here. It's just a mix between the error of personnal validation (some owners have the subjective impression that the horse is doing better when in fact is not doing better) and the logical fallacies of "Post-hoc ergo propter hoc" (the horse is improving for other reasons than chiropractic but the people think falsely that the improvement comes from it).

So, yeah, no need of placebo effect at all for explaining those testimonies (and by the way, in science, testimonies doesn't prove anything).

Venom, how can you write such stuff without (presumably) knowing any more details than Pacificwhim included in his post.

Statements like that only serve to discredit your reliability, because they demonstrate the way you feel free to construct damning prose from essentially no evidence!

The inability of certain skeptics to handle evidence in a fair way, seems to be a feature of this whole area. If I were a skeptic I would not want you as an advocate, so perhaps it is fortunate that you are unlikely to change sides and support the cause of open mindedness

David

[pacificwhim]

Christ, you're arrogant. If you like, I'll get the equine chiro and the racing trainer to post on this list and explain to you precisely what was done and not done to the horse in question, the Horse of the Year winner. Two hours before a big race, the horse was hobbling and its gait, as measured biomechanically by an equine vet, was severely unbalanced. The horse received no other treatment but pelvic adjustment before the race. Two hours later, the horse won the race by 12 lengths and the same equine vet said he had never seen such a immediate transformation in a racehorse. He also checked the horse's gait and said that the imbalance between its front legs was gone.

Now, if you're willing to put your own baseless certitude before the experience, judgment and scientific biomechanical knowledge of a horse vet and a professional horse trainer, then you're even more of an ignorant pseudoskeptic than I already think you are. I suppose you're going to tell me that veterinary medicine isn't a science next?

As for the introduction thread, I have better things to do than introduce myself to the likes of you, who has nothing more to contribute to this conversation than rewarmed Latin phrases you've picked up from the JREF forum, misuses of Occam's Razor (yes, that's how it's spelled), and desperate personal attacks.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

The herbal remedy was ginger root, by the way.

Good stuff, ginger.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

Take your pick: meditation, acupuncture, chiropractic. All have been shown to be safer and at least as effective as "mainstream" treatments for a range of ailments -- and we are talking about multiple, replicated, double-blind studies using the accepted standards for medical research, published, in many cases, in mainstream medical journals.

I guess I should dust off my Transcendental Meditation teaching certificate. Anyway, fair enough.

Here's a cool sham acupuncture needle:

BioMed Central | Full text | A double-blind placebo needle for acupuncture research


~~ Paul

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

Sure, but the big story is that CAM has become mainstream and CAM-deniers (like a few of the ones on this forum) have become marginalized sideline cynics.

This is where psi is headed. There will always be deniers, but they will be pushed further and further to the fringes... marginalized.

Are there any CAM modalities that you think are bullshit?

Acupuncture?
Homeopathy?
Therapeutic touch?
Reiki?
Kinesiology?
Chiropractic?

I fully expect that people will continue to pay lots of money for these treatments but this has little to do with results from well controlled studies.

Well at least you are clarifying your true-believer status.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

As far as I know, there is no hint of a requirement that participants use the introduce yourself thread, its there for when participants decide to do so -- if they do. Your sarcasm was uncalled for.

I know, but it was just funny.

I mean the introduce yourself thread is so obvious, and he missed it. He didn't have to introduce himself at all (especially for his silly piece of chiropractic propaganda), but he did it somewhere where it was completely irrelevant to the subject of discussion.