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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Purging Stoll and his kind
Message-ID: <272@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 01:43:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.272
Posted: Tue Sep 17 01:43:04 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 19:29:15 EDT
References: <2172@ukma.UUCP> <813@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP>
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Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 39
Keywords: (or giving net.med a high colonic)

Welcome to the club, Byron.  I have stopped responding to Stoll's articles.
I initially felt that it was important to address the inaccuracies which he
passes off as revealed truth, in the hope that the less knowledgeable would
have a better chance of making an informed judgement of his postings.  Now,
it seems, that, like all true fanatics, he has more stamina than sense, and
will continue with his combinations of misquotations, self-serving
invective against the orthodox medical profession, and the stubborn refusal
to respond to criticism of his more outlandish notions, until we are all
totally exhausted and disgusted.  There is no true interchange here.  In
this regard, he is in heady company along with the Velikovskians and the
"scientific creationists" in net.origins.  It is worth asking ourselves
whether we really want 'net.med' to take on this flavor.  I suspect not.

What is the right way to deal with these problems?  Obviously, not by
"banning" anyone: it can't be done, and it's undesirable.  But, these kind
of people thrive on attention: their entire stance is contra-orthodoxy, and
without the right kind of feedback (meaning any whatsoever), I'm now
convinced that their contributions will simply fall with a hollow thud.
Certainly we should point out factual errors when we see them so that
people are not misled, but I suspect that a gentle correction followed
by nothing other than a change of topic will suffice to avoid these
religious wars.  In other words, I'm proposing a bit of restraint when
responding to fanatical types, letting them have their due say, without
pushing their own buttons, ekeing them on to even more lows of
megalomania.  I suspect that most readers of net.med by now have their
BS detectors turned on high sensitivity, and they don't need our help.

This doesn't mean that we need to avoid certain topics: issues like Chinese
Medicine can be fascinating and enlightening, as long as one skirts the
realm of fanaticism.  I would go further, setting as one of the ground
rules a certain respect for logic and scientific materialism.  Again, this
is no less than anyone expects from the people who design our cars and
airplanes (or computers, for that matter.)  It is truly amazing to me that
where one's health is concerned, people will gladly accept theories with no
more proof than "I said so" or "so and so said so."
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{harvard,seismo}!bbnccv!bbncc5!sdyer
sdyer@bbncc5.ARPA


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