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From: dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: ELECTROMAGNETIC SMOG IS A HAZARD TO YOUR HEALTH !
Message-ID: <721@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Sep-85 12:04:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.721
Posted: Mon Sep  2 12:04:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 21:57:14 EDT
References: <2066@ukma.UUCP> <499@cadre.ARPA> <1118@cbdkc1.UUCP>
Reply-To: dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe)
Distribution: na
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia
Lines: 55

In article <1118@cbdkc1.UUCP> tjs@dkc1.UUCP ( Tom Stanions) writes:
>
>Here's an interesting point, what the holistic health field knows has to be 
>proved by the same methods as conventional medicine????  If a pro-conventional
>person wants to state a point he simple picks up an "approved" source, quotes
>it, and voila --- "TRUTH".  Yet when a holistic practitioner speaks from
>experience or knowledge or simple fact he must present bonified documents.
>These documents are then trashed out if they disagree with conventional
>medicine as being "unapproved" or if they are then we are told "See
>conventional medicine isn't all that bad".

It's a matter of being convincing.  Basic fact of life: if you want to convince
someone of something, you have to present an argument that THEY will listen to
and find plausible.  You have to adapt your techniques of argumentation to
your audience.  Typing in all caps, quoting popular news magazines and glossy
freebies, ad hominem attacks, accusations of persecution and conspiracy, and
personal testimonials are appropriate for the-man-on-the-street with little or
no background in science.  They aren't convincing to doctors and others who
understand the scientific method.

OK, so what is this great god called "the scientific method"?  It's simply a
technique for trying our best to prevent mistakes on the part of researchers.
Scientists are people, and being so, are liable to let personal prejudice color
their interpretations of what they observe.  They're also liable to neglect
to control for important variables in experiments.  I read a wonderful article
in net.pets yesterday that illustrates this.  The poster wanted to see if boric
acid would kill ants, so he sprinkled some on the sidewalk and put some ants
down in the middle of it and, sure enough, the ants shortly died.  So he
thought "Great! It works!" and sprinkled boric acid on several ant beds around
the yard.  Nothing happened; the ants in the beds didn't die.  His wife
eventually pointed out that it was 104 degrees and the ants on the sidewalk
were dying from the heat -- not from the boric acid.  (The ant beds were in the
shade.)

The fierce peer review and the insistance on repeatability are intended to
prevent results from flawed experiments from being believed.  The proof we
demand from you is no more than we demand from each other.


                                                      -Danny


-- CAUTION: WET FLOOR    <== Is this a warning or a command? --

Danny Sharpe
School of ICS
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts
-- 
-- CAUTION: WET FLOOR    <== Is this a warning or a command? --

Danny Sharpe
School of ICS
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts