Pseudoscience and the woo Epidemic

[ChpBstrd]

As for homeopathy, that's just water and everyone knows it. If people want to drink water and feel better, then have at it. The placebo effect is very, very powerful and I'm all for people getting benefit from magical water.

I know you're not serious, but it bears repeating:

The reason real medicine is held to standards of proof not applied to "alternative" medicine is because there's an ethical problem with setting up a fake medical shop, charging people hundreds or thousands of dollars for placebo treatments, manipulating them to believe something false but comforting, and causing them to avoid getting treatment from a real professional for what could be a serious, worsening, or even deadly condition. Even if the patients are thought to deserve it for being gullible or uninformed, such practices have an impact on their children, families, friends, economies, public health, etc.

Imagine if you discovered someone had sold you a "placebo" investment, which went up astronomically and made you feel rich for many years, but was ultimately proven to be fake and worthless. The seller could say they provided you with the experience of feeling rich, which is the outcome you were seeking from a real investment anyway. They're not incorrect on that point, but they're still obviously criminals. That's the value of the placebo effect in a nutshell.

[TreeLeaf]

Yeah - I have read a lot of 'woo woo' stuff by a lot of 'woo woo' teachers and tried a lot of it.

The explanations are often complete bullshit, imo, made up to make people believe there is some sort of logical explanation to what they are doing.

I have been *extremely* surprised how often if you simply look at the action or practice and end results how often these line up with what someone says. I have seen many things occur that have no current scientific explanation, which left me scratching my head a lot and shrugging my shoulders. I know some things actually occur that are not complete bullshit, but that currently lack good science to explain them. Or there have been one off occurances that left everyone looking at everyone else in disbelief asking 'did...we all just witness the same thing'?

I have pondered at times why the placebo effect is so strong that we have to use active placebos now to help negate the effect. Seems odd that the simple power of belief should have this much impact on our perception of reality.

With all that said I *much prefer* when things have actual scientific explanations and have been replicated in several labs.

You're conflating things working with the explanations being legit.

Just because something works *exactly* the way it's explained to work doesn't mean the explanation is valid.

This is the cornerstone of bullshit: explanations that make sense in a world where very little is that understandable.

I mean, people who followed the wheat belly diet almost universally lost substantial weight and had dramatic increases in their overall health. This doesn't validate the utter bullshit explanations in wheat belly.

Also, sorry to busy your bubble but you can repeat a scientific experiment a million times and still be no closer to an explanation of *why* you found the effect you did.

Do not conflate scientific validity with legitimacy of explanations.

This is the BIGGEST mistake people make when discussing science and woo.

If I do a treatment that costs $500 and the clinician does a treatment that has the exact same results but costs $70K and has a much more complicated explanation, and is much more invasive, which one of us, if either, is peddling woo?

Science will show over and over and over again that both of our interventions have the same rate of success. Their intervention has A LOT more science that kind of, sort of, could support their explanations if you squint your eyes and blue the findings a bit.

My explanation is "*shrug* fucked if I know why it works sometimes, but here's a vague idea."

The woo is almost always in the explanations, not the efficacy of the interventions. Many woo interventions have as good efficacy as medicine, which is why so many woo interventions eventually get adopted into medicine.

Huh...This is interesting. I actually expected you to have the opposite viewpoint based on previous posts. Accepting something as 'valid' that doesn't match your current worldview and has no scientific explanation isn't something that people with your rigorous academic background typically 'do'. Then again, you are referring specifically to the medical field, I assume, where this practice is much more common since we just don't have explanations for so many things yet.

I think I will respectfully have to agree to disagree on this one, since I am referring to more general statements, not specifically related to the medical field.

[Metalcat]

Yeah - I have read a lot of 'woo woo' stuff by a lot of 'woo woo' teachers and tried a lot of it.

The explanations are often complete bullshit, imo, made up to make people believe there is some sort of logical explanation to what they are doing.

I have been *extremely* surprised how often if you simply look at the action or practice and end results how often these line up with what someone says. I have seen many things occur that have no current scientific explanation, which left me scratching my head a lot and shrugging my shoulders. I know some things actually occur that are not complete bullshit, but that currently lack good science to explain them. Or there have been one off occurances that left everyone looking at everyone else in disbelief asking 'did...we all just witness the same thing'?

I have pondered at times why the placebo effect is so strong that we have to use active placebos now to help negate the effect. Seems odd that the simple power of belief should have this much impact on our perception of reality.

With all that said I *much prefer* when things have actual scientific explanations and have been replicated in several labs.

You're conflating things working with the explanations being legit.

Just because something works *exactly* the way it's explained to work doesn't mean the explanation is valid.

This is the cornerstone of bullshit: explanations that make sense in a world where very little is that understandable.

I mean, people who followed the wheat belly diet almost universally lost substantial weight and had dramatic increases in their overall health. This doesn't validate the utter bullshit explanations in wheat belly.

Also, sorry to busy your bubble but you can repeat a scientific experiment a million times and still be no closer to an explanation of *why* you found the effect you did.

Do not conflate scientific validity with legitimacy of explanations.

This is the BIGGEST mistake people make when discussing science and woo.

If I do a treatment that costs $500 and the clinician does a treatment that has the exact same results but costs $70K and has a much more complicated explanation, and is much more invasive, which one of us, if either, is peddling woo?

Science will show over and over and over again that both of our interventions have the same rate of success. Their intervention has A LOT more science that kind of, sort of, could support their explanations if you squint your eyes and blue the findings a bit.

My explanation is "*shrug* fucked if I know why it works sometimes, but here's a vague idea."

The woo is almost always in the explanations, not the efficacy of the interventions. Many woo interventions have as good efficacy as medicine, which is why so many woo interventions eventually get adopted into medicine.

Huh...This is interesting. I actually expected you to have the opposite viewpoint based on previous posts. Accepting something as 'valid' that doesn't match your current worldview and has no scientific explanation isn't something that people with your rigorous academic background typically 'do'. Then again, you are referring specifically to the medical field, I assume, where this practice is much more common since we just don't have explanations for so many things yet.

I think I will respectfully have to agree to disagree on this one, since I am referring to more general statements, not specifically related to the medical field.

We don't have a lot of explanations for a lot of things.

Also, don't misinterpret my statements to mean I don't value evidence for explanations. I'm saying that evidence of efficacy is NOT evidence of the legitimacy of an explanation.

What I DON'T have is a ton of faith in complex explanations for things that are difficult to actually understand, which is many, many things in this world.

Someone can demonstrate that something works and still be 100% full of shit.

[Metalcat]

As for homeopathy, that's just water and everyone knows it. If people want to drink water and feel better, then have at it. The placebo effect is very, very powerful and I'm all for people getting benefit from magical water.

I know you're not serious, but it bears repeating:

The reason real medicine is held to standards of proof not applied to "alternative" medicine is because there's an ethical problem with setting up a fake medical shop, charging people hundreds or thousands of dollars for placebo treatments, manipulating them to believe something false but comforting, and causing them to avoid getting treatment from a real professional for what could be a serious, worsening, or even deadly condition. Even if the patients are thought to deserve it for being gullible or uninformed, such practices have an impact on their children, families, friends, economies, public health, etc.

Imagine if you discovered someone had sold you a "placebo" investment, which went up astronomically and made you feel rich for many years, but was ultimately proven to be fake and worthless. The seller could say they provided you with the experience of feeling rich, which is the outcome you were seeking from a real investment anyway. They're not incorrect on that point, but they're still obviously criminals. That's the value of the placebo effect in a nutshell.

I think people are REALLY missing my most recent point.

I'm not praising woo, I'm just pointing out that woo isn't as black and white different from "real" medicine as people like to believe.

That proving that something works is not the same as the explanation for that thing being validated.

Back to the $500 treatment I used to do. It had a LONG and very convincing scientific explanation as to why it worked, supported indirectly by research.

By the time I learned it, the explanation had been so aggressively debunked that the treatment had fallen out of favour despite it actually working!

It turns out it worked, just by a completely different mechanism than the inventors had ever imagined.

[GuitarStv]

Great, so the chiro was able to help you with your issue. You should appreciate the help received and respect it. So he does know what he was doing. Many chiros are practicing functional medicine now a days.

I have no problem with a chiropractic guy who has abandoned the teachings of his field to focus on functional medicine.  My problem is with those who adhere to and continue to spread the lies of chiropractic "medicine".

Not pointing to you, but just dismissing entire professions, platforms as woo is a mistake.

As soon as they can prove that what they're selling works they should no longer be dismissed.  At that point I've got no problem with them . . . but for both chiropractic and homeopathy, they've had more than a hundred years to do so and have failed.  Dismissing an entire profession/platform based on lies and charlatanry that their profession/platform purveys is a significant societal benefit.

[TreeLeaf]

Yeah - I have read a lot of 'woo woo' stuff by a lot of 'woo woo' teachers and tried a lot of it.

The explanations are often complete bullshit, imo, made up to make people believe there is some sort of logical explanation to what they are doing.

I have been *extremely* surprised how often if you simply look at the action or practice and end results how often these line up with what someone says. I have seen many things occur that have no current scientific explanation, which left me scratching my head a lot and shrugging my shoulders. I know some things actually occur that are not complete bullshit, but that currently lack good science to explain them. Or there have been one off occurances that left everyone looking at everyone else in disbelief asking 'did...we all just witness the same thing'?

I have pondered at times why the placebo effect is so strong that we have to use active placebos now to help negate the effect. Seems odd that the simple power of belief should have this much impact on our perception of reality.

With all that said I *much prefer* when things have actual scientific explanations and have been replicated in several labs.

You're conflating things working with the explanations being legit.

Just because something works *exactly* the way it's explained to work doesn't mean the explanation is valid.

This is the cornerstone of bullshit: explanations that make sense in a world where very little is that understandable.

I mean, people who followed the wheat belly diet almost universally lost substantial weight and had dramatic increases in their overall health. This doesn't validate the utter bullshit explanations in wheat belly.

Also, sorry to busy your bubble but you can repeat a scientific experiment a million times and still be no closer to an explanation of *why* you found the effect you did.

Do not conflate scientific validity with legitimacy of explanations.

This is the BIGGEST mistake people make when discussing science and woo.

If I do a treatment that costs $500 and the clinician does a treatment that has the exact same results but costs $70K and has a much more complicated explanation, and is much more invasive, which one of us, if either, is peddling woo?

Science will show over and over and over again that both of our interventions have the same rate of success. Their intervention has A LOT more science that kind of, sort of, could support their explanations if you squint your eyes and blue the findings a bit.

My explanation is "*shrug* fucked if I know why it works sometimes, but here's a vague idea."

The woo is almost always in the explanations, not the efficacy of the interventions. Many woo interventions have as good efficacy as medicine, which is why so many woo interventions eventually get adopted into medicine.

Huh...This is interesting. I actually expected you to have the opposite viewpoint based on previous posts. Accepting something as 'valid' that doesn't match your current worldview and has no scientific explanation isn't something that people with your rigorous academic background typically 'do'. Then again, you are referring specifically to the medical field, I assume, where this practice is much more common since we just don't have explanations for so many things yet.

I think I will respectfully have to agree to disagree on this one, since I am referring to more general statements, not specifically related to the medical field.

We don't have a lot of explanations for a lot of things.

Also, don't misinterpret my statements to mean I don't value evidence for explanations. I'm saying that evidence of efficacy is NOT evidence of the legitimacy of an explanation.

What I DON'T have is a ton of faith in complex explanations for things that are difficult to actually understand, which is many, many things in this world.

Someone can demonstrate that something works and still be 100% full of shit.

I see what you're saying. I will explain this in medical terms.

What if you saw a patient, who had a 5 inch tumor on his kidney, who refused treatment. Instead he went to a woo doctor. The patient comes back a week later for more testing and the cancer is simply gone. Vanished without a trace. Spooky...a fluke perhaps. You write it off because the evidence makes no sense. Is this even the same patient? It makes no sense.

Now - what if you see this same thing happen two more times?

What if another doctor told you these same stories also?

At what point do you go talk to the woo doctor?

I see your frustration here. People *like* having an explanation, even if the explanation is bullshit. It makes them feel better. You had to deal with patients full of bullshit a lot. You don't like dealing with people who are full of false beliefs.

I'm talking about the opposite scenario. Where we have strong prevailing views and theories of how things *should* work but then have data points here and there that are valid but make no sense at all according to theory.

[Metalcat]

Yeah - I have read a lot of 'woo woo' stuff by a lot of 'woo woo' teachers and tried a lot of it.

The explanations are often complete bullshit, imo, made up to make people believe there is some sort of logical explanation to what they are doing.

I have been *extremely* surprised how often if you simply look at the action or practice and end results how often these line up with what someone says. I have seen many things occur that have no current scientific explanation, which left me scratching my head a lot and shrugging my shoulders. I know some things actually occur that are not complete bullshit, but that currently lack good science to explain them. Or there have been one off occurances that left everyone looking at everyone else in disbelief asking 'did...we all just witness the same thing'?

I have pondered at times why the placebo effect is so strong that we have to use active placebos now to help negate the effect. Seems odd that the simple power of belief should have this much impact on our perception of reality.

With all that said I *much prefer* when things have actual scientific explanations and have been replicated in several labs.

You're conflating things working with the explanations being legit.

Just because something works *exactly* the way it's explained to work doesn't mean the explanation is valid.

This is the cornerstone of bullshit: explanations that make sense in a world where very little is that understandable.

I mean, people who followed the wheat belly diet almost universally lost substantial weight and had dramatic increases in their overall health. This doesn't validate the utter bullshit explanations in wheat belly.

Also, sorry to busy your bubble but you can repeat a scientific experiment a million times and still be no closer to an explanation of *why* you found the effect you did.

Do not conflate scientific validity with legitimacy of explanations.

This is the BIGGEST mistake people make when discussing science and woo.

If I do a treatment that costs $500 and the clinician does a treatment that has the exact same results but costs $70K and has a much more complicated explanation, and is much more invasive, which one of us, if either, is peddling woo?

Science will show over and over and over again that both of our interventions have the same rate of success. Their intervention has A LOT more science that kind of, sort of, could support their explanations if you squint your eyes and blue the findings a bit.

My explanation is "*shrug* fucked if I know why it works sometimes, but here's a vague idea."

The woo is almost always in the explanations, not the efficacy of the interventions. Many woo interventions have as good efficacy as medicine, which is why so many woo interventions eventually get adopted into medicine.

Huh...This is interesting. I actually expected you to have the opposite viewpoint based on previous posts. Accepting something as 'valid' that doesn't match your current worldview and has no scientific explanation isn't something that people with your rigorous academic background typically 'do'. Then again, you are referring specifically to the medical field, I assume, where this practice is much more common since we just don't have explanations for so many things yet.

I think I will respectfully have to agree to disagree on this one, since I am referring to more general statements, not specifically related to the medical field.

We don't have a lot of explanations for a lot of things.

Also, don't misinterpret my statements to mean I don't value evidence for explanations. I'm saying that evidence of efficacy is NOT evidence of the legitimacy of an explanation.

What I DON'T have is a ton of faith in complex explanations for things that are difficult to actually understand, which is many, many things in this world.

Someone can demonstrate that something works and still be 100% full of shit.

I see what you're saying. I will explain this in medical terms.

What if you saw a patient, who had a 5 inch tumor on his kidney, who refused treatment. Instead he went to a woo doctor. The patient comes back a week later for more testing and the cancer is simply gone. Vanished without a trace. Spooky...a fluke perhaps. You write it off because the evidence makes no sense. Is this even the same patient? It makes no sense.

Now - what if you see this same thing happen two more times?

What if another doctor told you these same stories also?

At what point do you go talk to the woo doctor?

I see your frustration here. People *like* having an explanation, even if the explanation is bullshit. It makes them feel better. You had to deal with patients full of bullshit a lot. You don't like dealing with people who are full of false beliefs.

I'm talking about the opposite scenario. Where we have strong prevailing views and theories of how things *should* work but then have data points here and there that are valid but make no sense at all according to theory.

I don't understand the question.

Of course if there's an effect, there's an effect. I can believe that woo doctor is curing cancer if he's curing cancer. Cool beans. But that doesn't mean I'm going to subscribe to his explanation as to *why* his treatment us curing cancer.

I can trust the evidence in the efficacy of something without trusting in the interpretations of that evidence.

[Sanitary Stache]

“I can trust the evidence of the efficacy of something without trusting in the interpretation of that evidence. “

I am going to repeat this the next time some tries to tell me how the universe was created.

[TreeLeaf]

Yeah - I have read a lot of 'woo woo' stuff by a lot of 'woo woo' teachers and tried a lot of it.

The explanations are often complete bullshit, imo, made up to make people believe there is some sort of logical explanation to what they are doing.

I have been *extremely* surprised how often if you simply look at the action or practice and end results how often these line up with what someone says. I have seen many things occur that have no current scientific explanation, which left me scratching my head a lot and shrugging my shoulders. I know some things actually occur that are not complete bullshit, but that currently lack good science to explain them. Or there have been one off occurances that left everyone looking at everyone else in disbelief asking 'did...we all just witness the same thing'?

I have pondered at times why the placebo effect is so strong that we have to use active placebos now to help negate the effect. Seems odd that the simple power of belief should have this much impact on our perception of reality.

With all that said I *much prefer* when things have actual scientific explanations and have been replicated in several labs.

You're conflating things working with the explanations being legit.

Just because something works *exactly* the way it's explained to work doesn't mean the explanation is valid.

This is the cornerstone of bullshit: explanations that make sense in a world where very little is that understandable.

I mean, people who followed the wheat belly diet almost universally lost substantial weight and had dramatic increases in their overall health. This doesn't validate the utter bullshit explanations in wheat belly.

Also, sorry to busy your bubble but you can repeat a scientific experiment a million times and still be no closer to an explanation of *why* you found the effect you did.

Do not conflate scientific validity with legitimacy of explanations.

This is the BIGGEST mistake people make when discussing science and woo.

If I do a treatment that costs $500 and the clinician does a treatment that has the exact same results but costs $70K and has a much more complicated explanation, and is much more invasive, which one of us, if either, is peddling woo?

Science will show over and over and over again that both of our interventions have the same rate of success. Their intervention has A LOT more science that kind of, sort of, could support their explanations if you squint your eyes and blue the findings a bit.

My explanation is "*shrug* fucked if I know why it works sometimes, but here's a vague idea."

The woo is almost always in the explanations, not the efficacy of the interventions. Many woo interventions have as good efficacy as medicine, which is why so many woo interventions eventually get adopted into medicine.

Huh...This is interesting. I actually expected you to have the opposite viewpoint based on previous posts. Accepting something as 'valid' that doesn't match your current worldview and has no scientific explanation isn't something that people with your rigorous academic background typically 'do'. Then again, you are referring specifically to the medical field, I assume, where this practice is much more common since we just don't have explanations for so many things yet.

I think I will respectfully have to agree to disagree on this one, since I am referring to more general statements, not specifically related to the medical field.

We don't have a lot of explanations for a lot of things.

Also, don't misinterpret my statements to mean I don't value evidence for explanations. I'm saying that evidence of efficacy is NOT evidence of the legitimacy of an explanation.

What I DON'T have is a ton of faith in complex explanations for things that are difficult to actually understand, which is many, many things in this world.

Someone can demonstrate that something works and still be 100% full of shit.

I see what you're saying. I will explain this in medical terms.

What if you saw a patient, who had a 5 inch tumor on his kidney, who refused treatment. Instead he went to a woo doctor. The patient comes back a week later for more testing and the cancer is simply gone. Vanished without a trace. Spooky...a fluke perhaps. You write it off because the evidence makes no sense. Is this even the same patient? It makes no sense.

Now - what if you see this same thing happen two more times?

What if another doctor told you these same stories also?

At what point do you go talk to the woo doctor?

I see your frustration here. People *like* having an explanation, even if the explanation is bullshit. It makes them feel better. You had to deal with patients full of bullshit a lot. You don't like dealing with people who are full of false beliefs.

I'm talking about the opposite scenario. Where we have strong prevailing views and theories of how things *should* work but then have data points here and there that are valid but make no sense at all according to theory.

I don't understand the question.

Of course if there's an effect, there's an effect. I can believe that woo doctor is curing cancer if he's curing cancer. Cool beans. But that doesn't mean I'm going to subscribe to his explanation as to *why* his treatment us curing cancer.

I can trust the evidence in the efficacy of something without trusting in the interpretations of that evidence.

This is the statement that confused me. You have a more enlightened view than most people - but I think this view is also more common in the medical field than other academic fields.

I have met some academics - highly qualified with PhDs in theoretical physics or whatnot - who will literally dismiss evidence from scientific results even if it has been replicated, simply because the evidence makes no sense according to current theory.

ETA: Some people have more faith in the theory of things than the evidence of things. Sorry I mentally put you in that category.

[Metalcat]

This is the statement that confused me. You have a more enlightened view than most people - but I think this view is also more common in the medical field than other academic fields.

I have met some academics - highly qualified with PhDs in theoretical physics or whatnot - who will literally dismiss evidence from scientific results even if it has been replicated, simply because the evidence makes no sense according to current theory.

Okay, but there's a huge difference between a research finding that can't possibly fir within a rigorously understood paradigm vs an unexpected finding that doesn't fit within a system that is poorly understood.

Astrophysics is a pretty stringent field for example, and my astrophysics friends will throw out findings that don't fit with their models, but if a giant body comes towards earth that they didn't see coming based on their measures, they're not going to pretend it didn't show up.

Likewise, as I said, if woo dude *is* curing cancer, he's curing cancer. Note, I didn't say I would believe he was curing cancer unless research bore out that he was, but if he is, the he is, and I'll accept that. But I won't wholesale accept his nonsense woo explanation for it.

Good on him for curing cancer with monkey piss, but I will hold mt judgement on whether or not the monkey piss worked because it stimulated "masculine energy" in patient's blood, or some such fucking nonsense.

[blue_green_sparks]

Being an electrical engineer who designed life-critical equipment, I became fairly versed in probability, statistics, experimentation, data collection and analysis. It is often futile to explain to non-technical people, the difficulties in establishing proposed causal relationships. Just one flaw in a study renders the results suspect. Yet it is still the best method to further our knowledge and/or make predictions. I am a skeptic who knows that I must rely on experts. The trick is to know who the real experts are.

[TreeLeaf]

This is the statement that confused me. You have a more enlightened view than most people - but I think this view is also more common in the medical field than other academic fields.

I have met some academics - highly qualified with PhDs in theoretical physics or whatnot - who will literally dismiss evidence from scientific results even if it has been replicated, simply because the evidence makes no sense according to current theory.

Okay, but there's a huge difference between a research finding that can't possibly fir within a rigorously understood paradigm vs an unexpected finding that doesn't fit within a system that is poorly understood.

Astrophysics is a pretty stringent field for example, and my astrophysics friends will throw out findings that don't fit with their models, but if a giant body comes towards earth that they didn't see coming based on their measures, they're not going to pretend it didn't show up.

Likewise, as I said, if woo dude *is* curing cancer, he's curing cancer. Note, I didn't say I would believe he was curing cancer unless research bore out that he was, but if he is, the he is, and I'll accept that. But I won't wholesale accept his nonsense woo explanation for it.

This makes sense.

I previously developed software that replaced mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers at various companies, among other things, so I am not a medical expert. I work in the tech field.

I have studied the medical field enough to understand that doctors often misdiagnose things, we often make wide scale recommendations about things which later turn out to be wrong, and we often prescribe things that temporarily fix a problem in the short term but result in long term issues, and often have no real full understanding of why things work or what all the side effects and interactions are of various drugs, prescription or otherwise.

My approach has been to stay away as long as possible. I am dreading the day I actually develop some medical problem *shudders*.

[TreeLeaf]

Being an electrical engineer who designed life-critical equipment, I became fairly versed in probability, statistics, experimentation, data collection and analysis. It is often futile to explain to non-technical people, the difficulties in establishing proposed causal relationships. Just one flaw in a study renders the results suspect. Yet it is still the best method to further our knowledge and/or make predictions. I am a skeptic who knows that I must rely on experts. The trick is to know who the real experts are.

If a study is well designed, replicated several times, with no known data collection or analysis issues, and shows clear causal relationships,  and the expert rejecting the studies even admit there are no issues he can find with the studies but they are 'different from what he was taught in college' then I tend to reject the expert.

I generally don't trust anyone who is an *expert* unless they actually have an in depth understanding of their field, regardless of what they claim about themselves, especially on the internet. In the tech field I interview engineers who claim all sorts of knowledge on their resume, but then don't understand the technical details of what they claim to know. I am *shocked* how often this occurs. This was never obvious until I started doing the interviews.

I have met a disturbing number of people in other fields who have a high level of education who *also* seem to be in this group. It is shocking how many people who claim to an expert but who can't actually cite a single book, research study, class, or source where they got some piece of information. Their response is just 'trust me, I'm an expert'.

Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine. I rely on experts in other fields but it is only the ones who are willing and able to cite their sources of data. It has become impossible for me to understand who the experts are without testing them. Somehow people are graduating with degrees while barely learning much and then proceed to never read a book or research study for the rest of their life.

[Metalcat]

This is the statement that confused me. You have a more enlightened view than most people - but I think this view is also more common in the medical field than other academic fields.

I have met some academics - highly qualified with PhDs in theoretical physics or whatnot - who will literally dismiss evidence from scientific results even if it has been replicated, simply because the evidence makes no sense according to current theory.

Okay, but there's a huge difference between a research finding that can't possibly fir within a rigorously understood paradigm vs an unexpected finding that doesn't fit within a system that is poorly understood.

Astrophysics is a pretty stringent field for example, and my astrophysics friends will throw out findings that don't fit with their models, but if a giant body comes towards earth that they didn't see coming based on their measures, they're not going to pretend it didn't show up.

Likewise, as I said, if woo dude *is* curing cancer, he's curing cancer. Note, I didn't say I would believe he was curing cancer unless research bore out that he was, but if he is, the he is, and I'll accept that. But I won't wholesale accept his nonsense woo explanation for it.

This makes sense.

I previously developed software that replaced mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers at various companies, among other things, so I am not a medical expert. I work in the tech field.

I have studied the medical field enough to understand that doctors often misdiagnose things, we often make wide scale recommendations about things which later turn out to be wrong, and we often prescribe things that temporarily fix a problem in the short term but result in long term issues, and often have no real full understanding of why things work or what all the side effects and interactions are of various drugs, prescription or otherwise.

My approach has been to stay away as long as possible. I am dreading the day I actually develop some medical problem *shudders*.

I still don't think my examples are getting my point across. I'll have to contemplate why my points are being made clearly.

It is a difficult point I'm trying to make though, so I'm not terribly surprised that I'm not capturing it perfectly.

[TreeLeaf]

This is the statement that confused me. You have a more enlightened view than most people - but I think this view is also more common in the medical field than other academic fields.

I have met some academics - highly qualified with PhDs in theoretical physics or whatnot - who will literally dismiss evidence from scientific results even if it has been replicated, simply because the evidence makes no sense according to current theory.

Okay, but there's a huge difference between a research finding that can't possibly fir within a rigorously understood paradigm vs an unexpected finding that doesn't fit within a system that is poorly understood.

Astrophysics is a pretty stringent field for example, and my astrophysics friends will throw out findings that don't fit with their models, but if a giant body comes towards earth that they didn't see coming based on their measures, they're not going to pretend it didn't show up.

Likewise, as I said, if woo dude *is* curing cancer, he's curing cancer. Note, I didn't say I would believe he was curing cancer unless research bore out that he was, but if he is, the he is, and I'll accept that. But I won't wholesale accept his nonsense woo explanation for it.

This makes sense.

I previously developed software that replaced mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers at various companies, among other things, so I am not a medical expert. I work in the tech field.

I have studied the medical field enough to understand that doctors often misdiagnose things, we often make wide scale recommendations about things which later turn out to be wrong, and we often prescribe things that temporarily fix a problem in the short term but result in long term issues, and often have no real full understanding of why things work or what all the side effects and interactions are of various drugs, prescription or otherwise.

My approach has been to stay away as long as possible. I am dreading the day I actually develop some medical problem *shudders*.

I still don't think my examples are getting my point across. I'll have to contemplate why my points are being made clearly.

It is a difficult point I'm trying to make though, so I'm not terribly surprised that I'm not capturing it perfectly.

I understand your point, and I think it is a valid point, especially in the medical field.

When I said 'scientific explanation' in my original post I was referring to 'any science backed studies' not to a requirement for an explanatory theory.

I am specifically referring to woo woo things that are valid, but rare with no scientific evidence or explanation. Cases like '5 inch tumor disappears in 2 weeks' which boggle my mind.

I generally prefer some sort of scientific evidence. I probably should have used the word 'evidence' here and not 'explanation'. To me having replicated scientific studies that show an effect is a 'scientific explanation' in my mind.

I really need to work on my terminology.

ETA: At least I *think* I understand your point. Does this explanation of how I see things make sense?

[RetiredAt63]

Maybe we need to pull in more technical terminology?  Instead of evidence and explanation can we use data, hypothesis and theory?  Then we have data of varying degrees of validity, hypotheses about why certain things are happening, and then theories when we have a related group of hypotheses that are holding up well.

Think geology.  We had a theory that continents are static. We had data of various sorts that accumulated showing continents are not static, but no good hypotheses as to why they appeared to move.  More evidence suggested that continents are what we see but they are sitting on larger plates that ACTUALLY DO MOVE!  Boom we went from continents don't move to continents sit on plates that do move, the continents are passengers.  So now we work based on the theory of plate tectonics.  Total paradigm shift based on accumulating data.

I remember when this happened.  Because of that, I basically  assume every hypothesis is only as good as it's data and that it may be revised or abandonned based on new data or new viewpoints on old data.

So in medicine, if there is a treatment that works, that is a data point.  As we gain more data we can form a hypothesis as to why it works.  The hypothesis may well be wrong but that doesn't change the data point that the treatment works.

[Metalcat]

I understand your point, and I think it is a valid point, especially in the medical field.

When I said 'scientific explanation' in my original post I was referring to 'any science backed studies' not to a requirement for an explanatory theory.

I am specifically referring to woo woo things that are valid, but rare with no scientific evidence or explanation. Cases like '5 inch tumor disappears in 2 weeks' which boggle my mind.

I generally prefer some sort of scientific evidence. I probably should have used the word 'evidence' here and not 'explanation'. To me having replicated scientific studies that show an effect is a 'scientific explanation' in my mind.

I really need to work on my terminology.

ETA: At least I *think* I understand your point. Does this explanation of how I see things make sense?

Lol, unfortunately no, it's making it very clear that my point was not made clearly at all.

All data requires interpretation, you yourself posted that in this very thread.

Also, data itself is NOT agnostic. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.

[TreeLeaf]

I understand your point, and I think it is a valid point, especially in the medical field.

When I said 'scientific explanation' in my original post I was referring to 'any science backed studies' not to a requirement for an explanatory theory.

I am specifically referring to woo woo things that are valid, but rare with no scientific evidence or explanation. Cases like '5 inch tumor disappears in 2 weeks' which boggle my mind.

I generally prefer some sort of scientific evidence. I probably should have used the word 'evidence' here and not 'explanation'. To me having replicated scientific studies that show an effect is a 'scientific explanation' in my mind.

I really need to work on my terminology.

ETA: At least I *think* I understand your point. Does this explanation of how I see things make sense?

Lol, unfortunately no, it's making it very clear that my point was not made clearly at all.

All data requires interpretation, you yourself posted that in this very thread.

Also, data itself is NOT agnostic. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Well - I guess I really don't understand.

I am saying I generally prefer accepting data as valid if it has robust scientific evidence to support it. Preferably in the form of peer reviewed studies in scientific journals. I have this preference to protect myself against misinformation.

I don't understand your argument.

Where do you get valid information?

[Metalcat]

I understand your point, and I think it is a valid point, especially in the medical field.

When I said 'scientific explanation' in my original post I was referring to 'any science backed studies' not to a requirement for an explanatory theory.

I am specifically referring to woo woo things that are valid, but rare with no scientific evidence or explanation. Cases like '5 inch tumor disappears in 2 weeks' which boggle my mind.

I generally prefer some sort of scientific evidence. I probably should have used the word 'evidence' here and not 'explanation'. To me having replicated scientific studies that show an effect is a 'scientific explanation' in my mind.

I really need to work on my terminology.

ETA: At least I *think* I understand your point. Does this explanation of how I see things make sense?

Lol, unfortunately no, it's making it very clear that my point was not made clearly at all.

All data requires interpretation, you yourself posted that in this very thread.

Also, data itself is NOT agnostic. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Well - I guess I really don't understand.

I am saying I generally prefer accepting data as valid if it has robust scientific evidence to support it. Preferably in the form of peer reviewed studies in scientific journals. I have this preference to protect myself against misinformation.

I don't understand your argument.

Where do you get valid information?

I honestly don't know where to go from here.

To me, I've made my point very, very clear, so I don't have a way to say it clearer. That's not a criticism of you, that's me acknowledging that I don't know how to make my point clearer, so I'm going to have to reflect on it for a bit.

Basically, all sources of information and expertise are profoundly flawed and subject to corruption. But recognizing the flaws doesn't discount their value.

When I point out that a system of expertise is more flawed than people think it is, I'm not discrediting that system and saying that anything else is better.

But people's innate need to find some source of truth, so see some sources as infallible is what makes them so susceptible to bullshit.

If I point out that a system is riddled with flaws and corruption and the person's reaction is to think that I'm saying they shouldn't depend on that system, then that's a problem. That's not what I'm saying at all.

I always seek out the highest quality of information there is, but with the solid understanding that there is a lot of nonsense, bullshit, and corruption in every single system of knowledge and power.

The best ones are still the best, but that doesn't mean they aren't fucked sideways in important and dangerous ways.

[TreeLeaf]

@Malcat

Ok - the 10,000 foot view.

I see all data as having confidence levels and probabilities.

Nothing is 100% certain. I have no absolute faith in anything.

I don't even know with 100% certainty that gravity will still exist 5 minutes from.

Or if I will be alive in 5 minutes.

Why? Because the future is inherently unknowable until it occurs. And even then you are relying on your own memory recall.

Everything changes, including our understanding of things.

So yes - everything changes. All the time.

All data has confidence levels and probabilities, and I categorize incoming data based on how confident I  am of the source of information, their interpretation of the data, my own interpretation of the data, etc.

The future is inherently uncertain because it has not *occured yet*. Nothing can actually be *proven 100%* because all data is based on past experience, and we are making the fundamental assumption that the future will be like the past. This assumption cannot be 100% proven.

So no - I don't really know anything, but I have to have some sort of mental framework to attempt to make decisions. So I have data with confidence levels and probabilities.

I happen to view incoming data from scientific studies as having a higher confidence level than data from woo woo teacher.

This is how I form 'beliefs' about the world.

Does this make better sense?   

[Metalcat]

Does this make better sense?   

Kind of, but I still think all of my key points have been lost in the noise along the way.

Again, for that I blame myself for not having a good package for them. I've been explaining this to DH for days now and even in long conversation he's just starting to grasp my central thesis and got very frustrated with me along the way.

He just said this morning: "you don't have a non-clunky way to explain this. Spend more time with it before trying to package it again."

[TreeLeaf]

Does this make better sense?   

Kind of, but I still think all of my key points have been lost in the noise along the way.

Again, for that I blame myself for not having a good package for them. I've been explaining this to DH for days now and even in long conversation he's just starting to grasp my central thesis and got very frustrated with me along the way.

He just said this morning: "you don't have a non-clunky way to explain this. Spend more time with it before trying to package it again."

I mean - it sounds like we are saying the same thing. It sounds like we fundamentally see the world the same but you are assigning a lower confidence level and are more cynical of scientific studies related to medicine - and perhaps for good reason based on your experience.

I am more cynical of some other things, but for completely different reasons. We are filtering incoming data differently.

Either that or I'm missing some key points about how you view the world. 

[TreeLeaf]

@Malcat

I will expand on this some more - specifically related to the medical industry. Maybe this will help me better understand how we see things differently. 

The standard of evidence in the medical industry is *absurdly low* in order to recommend a treatment option, prescribe a drug, etc.

This is because we can't really fully model up a human being yet. Frankly - even if we *had* a complete theoretical understanding of a human being and the brain, I think we will need a powerful quantum super computer first to model something like this up in.

So over the years we have mostly been doing some combination of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, and what doesn't stick, and developing some half baked theories and interpretations about why.

To complicate matters the medical industry has become HUGE financially, and there are TONS of special interest groups and companies who all are funding research to prove that their product works, to some effect. Since there is such low standard of evidence to prescribe a treatment option of prescription drug, a company often just has to prove some low level of efficancy for doctors to start prescribing things en mass, and side effects may often be discovered after the fact or not explained well to patients even if the doctor is aware of all the side effects.

For these reasons I *do not trust* the entire medical industry in the USA.

I have *never* fully trusted the medical industry for a long time now and have tried my best to take matters into my own hands at a young age. This is what I concluded from the medical industry when I first started learning about the medical industry.

Instead I have mostly focused on preventative things. Things like daily running, eating whole foods, lifting weights, trying to maintain low stress levels, sleeping well, having positive relationships, etc, etc.

I ensure my bloodwork and physiological stats all check out and pray, basically, that I never have to actually see a doctor for some disease.

So far this has worked out absurdly well. I have seen the doctor once a year for a checkup and that's it. All stats are normal.

My grandfather followed the same plan in life. He is 100 years old now and only recently stopped chopping his own firewood at the age of 98. Social Security actually called him to come in because they thought he was actually dead and the family was just collecting his social security checks since he has not even seen a doctor in 50 years. I started out by imitating his dietary and exercise habits.

To make this all worse I have brought up issues with some doctors I have talked to - and cited scientific studies - and I was told I 'should not be looking at scientific studies' and I 'should not learn about medicine' and I 'should trust the doctor completely'. Which just caused me to find a different doctor...because he was obviously full of himself.

At the end of the day - we are ALL responsible for our own health because WE are the ones who suffer from the effects of health decisions impacting our body. Choosing to outsource this responsibility to a doctor may work out well, or it may work out terribly, but either way you are the one who experiences the effects of the treatment / surgeries / prescription drugs, etc.   

Does this help explain my views better?

ETA: I view my medical doctor as a medical advisor, not as a boss.

Right now he serves to do precautionary testing and treatment, like bloodwork, vaccines, etc.

I understand I may develop a disease some day. My doctor can make treatment plans and suggest treatment options and medicines but ultimately I'm going to do my own research and do what I think is best for me.

Unless I lost my mind. Then I'm fucked.

[chemistk]

This is a fascinating discussion.

I am not picking on you, I promise, but @curious_george what's the value of modern medicine? As individuals, being agents of our own health and well-being, what's the value in taking a risk in seeking care for any particular medical condition? The stakes are ultimately simple - life or death. Pain and pleasure play parts but you can have neither without...you know...living.

In aggregate, we can say with reasonable confidence that certain medications and certain lifestyle choices will lead to certain outcomes for some or many or even all people. But in small populations, those assumptions can start to fall apart and the statistical tails can suddenly have a meaningful outcome on only metric that really matters.

Perhaps I'm one of those rare ones that has an allergy to some or most pain relievers, and can't seek traditional medical care because I can't be properly numbed. And perhaps I visit the cancer-curing shaman who is able to address many of my issues in a way that modern medicine cannot. Should I discount the healthcare system and advocate for the woo-dude?

Suppose I do have cancer and I have the aforementioned condition, and I visit the woo-dude, and he's unable to cure my cancer and I die in 6 months. As I'm dying, should I continue to tell others that modern medicine isn't effective?

Suppose I notice that the 5 others whose cancer was cured by woo-dude saw those effects in under one month and after 6 weeks I seek medical care and although i experience great pain I am eventually cured - how am I to feel about the field then? What should I tell the woo-dude? Would he accept my response?

To @Malcat 's point, upthread, why did I choose to seek care from woo-dude? I saw that his approach had measured success and although I had no clue whether it would work for me, it was the better alternative in my view. But then why would I seek Western medical care after no success from woo-dude? I personally would make that choice based on the evidence presented. I accepted that the woo-dude might have something up his sleeve that we haven't yet understood but then after seeing that it didn't work, I decided to turn to a system with known outcome and known drawbacks.

Because much of science, and medicine glaringly so, relies on our ability to trust others' reasonings and conclusions we have to as individuals determine where our confidence is to be placed. Note that faith /= trust as I describe it. The 5 people who visited woo-dude did so because they had less trust in the outcomes of the alternative system (Western medicine) and their trust was rewarded.

But why did they choose woo-dude? Did they happen to embark on a spiritual journey and stumble across an ancient temple where he was practicing spiritual healing? Or was he operating out of a former strip mall tobacco shop and advertising his services in the local paper? The latter being more likely, his aim was to deny Western medicine to a certain degree. Perhaps he viewed his practice as synergistic or perhaps it was antagonistic. But in either case, for the first patient he cured, he was able to turn distrust of one system into blind faith of another.

As with anything modern society has created, we build trust by demonstrating through evidence that something is beneficial to us as individuals. You have learned to trust your grandfather's way of life because you have evidence that through a combination of lifestyle and genetics you may be able to follow in his footsteps. Although your sample size is 1, in your observation, it has a 100% success rate and you have no evidence of the downsides.

But suppose I with an intolerance for painkillers find that your family practice involves the occasional Advil, and I follow the practice blindly only to die from an allergic reaction. Now your success rate drops to 50%. Do you still trust that this approach will be successful? Maybe a third individual succumbs again while following his lifestyle as best they can and now there is only a 33% success rate. Do you keep on going?

Conversely you share your grandfather's success with others and find that through careful practice each is able to outlast his expected lifespan and makes it well past 100. Now you have strong evidence that it works, at least based on your sample population. Does that enshrine his lifestyle into a medical SOP?

Again to Malcat's point, i can accept that your grandfather's lifestyle guidebook is successful but without evidence of why, I can also choose not to trust it.

Science and modern medicine confer the benefit of being able empirically demonstrate the reasons why we expect something to have a particular outcome. Either through chemistry/physics or through evidence based studies, we can prove or disprove to the best of our ability why an outcome occurred the way it did.

The disturbing and unfortunate truth that you point out is that not all scientific experiments are successful, and those which are or are not confer a benefit to society at the expense or success of the individual and the outcome of their own life.

To me, the biggest difference between the scientific method and commensurate alternatives is that the alternatives often back up their observations with "because I said it does" or "I haven't seen it fail yet". My chiropractor peddles a bunch of bullshit in the same way that ICP views magnets ("fuckin magnets, how do they work?") - there's no reason to believe that something doesn't work if it hasn't failed a very specific set of observations in a very specific population of people. But I still see my chiropractor because there is evidence that his services can help to mitigate the effects of my minor but frustrating scoliosis.

ETA - the thing about us Sapiens is that we don't like to lose things, and we have a very very poor base-level understanding of probabilities. We have to force our minds to overcome the gut feeling that something which is statistically in our favor is something we should choose when our gut feelings tell us to run away.

If you knew that they outcome of a particular medical intervention were 66% favorable, 10% neutral, and 24% unfavorable, would you seek that care?

What about another practice which had a 10% fatality rate and a 70% success rate?

If woo-doctor has no statistics, but seeking his care would put you past the window of the 10% fatality rate example, and turn that same practice into a 50% fatality rate, would you still pursue the woo-dude?

What if the woo-dude has a 33% success rate and no adverse outcome, but in seeking his care the above were true (50% death rate because you waited)?

What about 50% success with woo-dude but if he fails, you're past the point at which modern medicine is helpful?

When does trust turn into faith?

[GuitarStv]

To @Malcat 's point, upthread, why did I choose to seek care from woo-dude? I saw that his approach had measured success and although I had no clue whether it would work for me, it was the better alternative in my view. But then why would I seek Western medical care after no success from woo-dude? I personally would make that choice based on the evidence presented.

So, this right here . . . this is a serious problem with the bullshit artists who pedal their fake cures.

Biology is a messy field.  Sometimes good or bad stuff just happens for difficult to identify reasons.  That's why rigorous testing and retesting is so important.  A total charlatan can get lucky and have his patients survive a few times, even though the treatment he was pushing actually does harm.

It has proven very easy to get people to believe a lie.  All though human history this has been the case.  In medieval Europe, everyone knew that the key to health was to balance the humors - because that's what worked!  Those medieval doctors bleeding plague victims to cure them sometimes had it work, so they developed a faith in it.  To the average serf at the time, it really looked like they knew what they were doing.  Now we know that they were actually doing more harm than good and that patient survival was completely unrelated to the treatment.

The evidence presented is often complicated and difficult to understand.  Alternate 'medicine' often takes advantage of that to convince folks of success where none really exists.

This is also why we developed modern scientific methods of testing and validating claims and then recreating results.  Modern medicine certainly has some fuzzy/grey areas still, but it's constantly iterating through improvements and gets better over time.  Alternative medicines are rarely interested in rigorous testing of cures - they're invariably designed to employ and enrichen practitioners of the alternative medicine.

[TreeLeaf]

To be abundantly clear - I am very against 'woo' doctors. What I am saying is I have witnessed some 'woo' things in my life that were surprising to me. These 'woo' things were not even medicine related and actually do have extensive scientific evidence behind them. I don't know why everyone thinks of 'woo' as medicine. I made the medical references to explain the point to @Malcat because she thinks of things in medical terms.

I have never been to a 'woo' doctor. If you develop a disease, please go see a real medical doctor.

Also my preventative habits are all based on dozens of books, written by real medical doctors or professors, with extensive scientific sources being cited. I don't place my faith in woo medicine. My grandfather is one example, but there is actually a lot of data behind doing things to take care of your body.

What I am saying is I have seen some other 'woo' things in my life which turned out to be true. This has led me to accept that some woo things could be valid.

Again - I much prefer things with extensive scientific evidence.

There are problems with modern medicine, but it is far better than the alternatives.

If you would like to poke holes at the 'woo' I am referring to go talk to Princeton University and their PEAR studies. This is what I am referring to. We can talk about this some if you want. I went down this rabbit hole very far looking at their data and methodologies and statistical analysis and places where it was replicated. I took this all the way to buying my own REG machines and running my own trials. My experiments showed odds against chance of about 1 trillion to 1. I then ran the machines by themselves to verify that they were truly random with no operator present. Then I ran the software backward of the stated intention to verify it wasn't all an elaborate prank.

I struggle to really believe this is occurring or understand why but I can't deny the woo evidence.

I would normally never believe in this sort of thing but many people have seen the same thing as I have, and it started at Princeton University. If Princeton University is spreading woo woo science we have problems.

Yes - I have fallen into the trap of woo woo.

[chemistk]

To @Malcat 's point, upthread, why did I choose to seek care from woo-dude? I saw that his approach had measured success and although I had no clue whether it would work for me, it was the better alternative in my view. But then why would I seek Western medical care after no success from woo-dude? I personally would make that choice based on the evidence presented.

So, this right here . . . this is a serious problem with the bullshit artists who pedal their fake cures.

Biology is a messy field.  Sometimes good or bad stuff just happens for difficult to identify reasons.  That's why rigorous testing and retesting is so important.  A total charlatan can get lucky and have his patients survive a few times, even though the treatment he was pushing actually does harm.

It has proven very easy to get people to believe a lie.  All though human history this has been the case.  In medieval Europe, everyone knew that the key to health was to balance the humors - because that's what worked!  Those medieval doctors bleeding plague victims to cure them sometimes had it work, so they developed a faith in it.  To the average serf at the time, it really looked like they knew what they were doing.  Now we know that they were actually doing more harm than good and that patient survival was completely unrelated to the treatment.

The evidence presented is often complicated and difficult to understand.  Alternate 'medicine' often takes advantage of that to convince folks of success where none really exists.

This is also why we developed modern scientific methods of testing and validating claims and then recreating results.  Modern medicine certainly has some fuzzy/grey areas still, but it's constantly iterating through improvements and gets better over time.  Alternative medicines are rarely interested in rigorous testing of cures - they're invariably designed to employ and enrichen practitioners of the alternative medicine.

We also tend to dramatically overemphasize relationships and the word of a friend, family member, or trusted acquaintance. If someone is told by another person they trust that some product or practice is beneficial/successful/whatever, they're much more likely to accept the claims of that thing as valid and reasonable than if they hear it from a stranger.

And in areas of the world where social networks are emphasized over population-level consensus, people become much more susceptible to be peddled a bunch of crap.

[Log]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

[TreeLeaf]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

[GuitarStv]

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

It depends how you view them.

Hard line traditional beliefs that conflict with reality are obviously going to make things difficult.

But spirituality can have nothing to do with belief in a god.  For me personally, spirituality is a philosophical field of contemplation - general questions of my own place in the universe, meaning of life, and moral decisions tend to fall into this area.  But I'm agnostic, and certainly don't follow a traditional God (I've got sort of warm feelings towards pantheism though).

I've also known Christians who loosely follow the teachings of the church without buying into the mystic and obviously false stuff (like the resurrection of Christ).  They get value from the moral questions and the community of the church without the illogical and contradictory trappings.

[Psychstache]

For anyone having fun with this topic, I would highly recommend the Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast:

https://ohnopodcast.com/

[TreeLeaf]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

[Metalcat]

@Malcat

I will expand on this some more - specifically related to the medical industry. Maybe this will help me better understand how we see things differently. 

The standard of evidence in the medical industry is *absurdly low* in order to recommend a treatment option, prescribe a drug, etc.

This is because we can't really fully model up a human being yet. Frankly - even if we *had* a complete theoretical understanding of a human being and the brain, I think we will need a powerful quantum super computer first to model something like this up in.

So over the years we have mostly been doing some combination of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, and what doesn't stick, and developing some half baked theories and interpretations about why.

To complicate matters the medical industry has become HUGE financially, and there are TONS of special interest groups and companies who all are funding research to prove that their product works, to some effect. Since there is such low standard of evidence to prescribe a treatment option of prescription drug, a company often just has to prove some low level of efficancy for doctors to start prescribing things en mass, and side effects may often be discovered after the fact or not explained well to patients even if the doctor is aware of all the side effects.

For these reasons I *do not trust* the entire medical industry in the USA.

I have *never* fully trusted the medical industry for a long time now and have tried my best to take matters into my own hands at a young age. This is what I concluded from the medical industry when I first started learning about the medical industry.

Instead I have mostly focused on preventative things. Things like daily running, eating whole foods, lifting weights, trying to maintain low stress levels, sleeping well, having positive relationships, etc, etc.

I ensure my bloodwork and physiological stats all check out and pray, basically, that I never have to actually see a doctor for some disease.

So far this has worked out absurdly well. I have seen the doctor once a year for a checkup and that's it. All stats are normal.

My grandfather followed the same plan in life. He is 100 years old now and only recently stopped chopping his own firewood at the age of 98. Social Security actually called him to come in because they thought he was actually dead and the family was just collecting his social security checks since he has not even seen a doctor in 50 years. I started out by imitating his dietary and exercise habits.

To make this all worse I have brought up issues with some doctors I have talked to - and cited scientific studies - and I was told I 'should not be looking at scientific studies' and I 'should not learn about medicine' and I 'should trust the doctor completely'. Which just caused me to find a different doctor...because he was obviously full of himself.

At the end of the day - we are ALL responsible for our own health because WE are the ones who suffer from the effects of health decisions impacting our body. Choosing to outsource this responsibility to a doctor may work out well, or it may work out terribly, but either way you are the one who experiences the effects of the treatment / surgeries / prescription drugs, etc.   

Does this help explain my views better?

ETA: I view my medical doctor as a medical advisor, not as a boss.

Right now he serves to do precautionary testing and treatment, like bloodwork, vaccines, etc.

I understand I may develop a disease some day. My doctor can make treatment plans and suggest treatment options and medicines but ultimately I'm going to do my own research and do what I think is best for me.

Unless I lost my mind. Then I'm fucked.

Yeah, I'm leaving it for now because I literally don't have a way to explain it efficiently.

There are a lot of moving parts to what I've been trying to say on a large scale. As I said, I had a several days long conversation with DH about this as we talked back and forth about democracies and populism.

The points I'm making about medicine are a very small, very specific example that's supposed to be feeding into a larger concept, but I can't explain it without being incredibly clunky and misunderstood.

Not yet at least. It's something I'll have to chea on for awhile.

[Metalcat]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

Very, very easily.

There's tons of shit we don't know.

Science isn't even about proving everything, it never has been. It's always been about endlessly exploring what we don't know. That's 100% compatible with spirituality.

Also some of the worst offending woo-peddlers I know are highly respected medical professionals.

[wenchsenior]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

[TreeLeaf]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

Very, very easily.

There's tons of shit we don't know.

Science isn't even about proving everything, it never has been. It's always been about endlessly exploring what we don't know. That's 100% compatible with spirituality.

Also some of the worst offending woo-peddlers I know are highly respected medical professionals.

See - this is why I struggle to trust doctors.

I go to doctor A, and they claim doctor B is a woo peddler. I go to doctor B and they claim doctor A is a woo peddler.

I then read pop-sci books written by medical doctors and professors who have different interpretations of different research studies which sometimes contradict each other.

Then I find myself reading through all the research reports and discover things are often not conclusive, not that effective, we often don't fully understand what we are looking at, and there are uncertainties and side effects and interactions between various systems that are often not obvious and the answer is often 'it depends' and here is the probability that you will have this effect and here are the probability you will have these side effects based on the clinical trials but we really don't understand why this really works.

Then I cry in a corner eating my can of beans.

[Kris]

Also some of the worst offending woo-peddlers I know are highly respected medical professionals.

Yeah. One of them is currently running for the US Senate in Pennsylvania.

[TreeLeaf]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

[wenchsenior]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

[Log]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

Very, very easily.

There's tons of shit we don't know.

Science isn't even about proving everything, it never has been. It's always been about endlessly exploring what we don't know. That's 100% compatible with spirituality.

Also some of the worst offending woo-peddlers I know are highly respected medical professionals.

^^Yes

Our fundamental understanding of the universe is pretty much non-existent. There's a reason philosophers continue considering "basic" questions like:
"What is truth?"
"Is the world strictly composed of matter?"
"Do people have minds? If so, how is the mind related to the body?"
"Do people have free will?"
"Do we know anything at all?"

Science is, by definition, concerned with uncovering that which can be observed by human senses and human technology. We don't really have good reason to believe that human sensory inputs have evolved in such a manner as to ever understand the universe on a fundamental level.

There is plenty of stuff that we as a species can generally agree upon (like: humans have thoughts) that we cannot empirically observe. Just as much as there is an infinitely vast physical universe deep out into space, and an infinitely tiny universe of subatomic particles, and an infinite horizon of time backwards and forwards, there is the infinitely vast universe of consciousness which we do not understand on a fundamental level.

People into "scientism" who aggressively reject any form of spirituality often take for granted the assumption that consciousness is "made of" the chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains, and that there is a strictly physicalist explanation for consciousness. That mind=brain, and when our nutrient absorbing meat-tube stops providing energy to the brain that our consciousness is gone forever. This is something that has not been proven and cannot be proven with existing technologies. It MIGHT be true, but taking that assumption for granted is just as much a gesture of "faith" as believing in God.

So this is how someone with an understanding of and respect for science can also value philosophy, spirituality, and even a little bit of "woo."

[RetiredAt63]

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

N=2 is totally meaningless.  Remember that if you go for 95% certainty (p=0.05) that 5% of the time you will get the wrong result - and you don't know when you are in the 95% territory or the 5% territory.  But N=2? Gag.

I used to read the biological literature a fair bit in toxicology areas, not so much recently so maybe it has improved a bit.  Back then I noticed that in a lot of medical research the lab animals parts were reasonably well designed (not always), and then the human part showed up and there was some ridiculously small sample size.  At N=2 or 4 or whatever, you don't even know the shape of the distribution of your population, so how can you even design a test?  Plus there were so many other errors in the statistical analyses that I used to save some articles to show my students what not to do.

Basically medical researchers have no background in experimental design and statistical analysis, and unless they consult with someone who does their experiments will be full of problems.  It isn't as if we don't know how to design experiments, we do.  You would never know it from the M&M of some papers though.

[ChpBstrd]

People into "scientism" who aggressively reject any form of spirituality often take for granted the assumption that consciousness is "made of" the chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains, and that there is a strictly physicalist explanation for consciousness. That mind=brain, and when our nutrient absorbing meat-tube stops providing energy to the brain that our consciousness is gone forever. This is something that has not been proven and cannot be proven with existing technologies. It MIGHT be true, but taking that assumption for granted is just as much a gesture of "faith" as believing in God.

The "assumption" that consciousness ends after the death of the brain is the null hypothesis. The claim that consciousness does not end upon death is the alternative hypothesis. A null hypothesis is always the opposite of a claim that a thing or relationship between things exists. For example, if in an experiment the alternative hypothesis is that ibuprofen reduces headaches through some invisible action, then the null hypothesis is that ibuprofen does not reduce headaches. The people selling ibuprofen have to deliver evidence against the skeptic's claim that it doesn't work.

The difference between a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis goes back to Empirical philosophy and its focus on evidential testing of any claims we are to believe (as opposed to appeals to tradition or appeals to authority). As in a debate or trial, there is a proposal that statement X is true, and the other side of the argument is that X is false, or null.

There are an infinite number of possible statements we could be asked to believe, some of then contradictory to other statements. Thus, the burden of proof always lies on the alternative hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis is always the claim that we should affirmatively believe something, rather than maintaining skepticism.

Imagine a person who realizes they have held many incorrect beliefs and probably still hold many more. We can imagine such a person discarding all their old beliefs and starting over from scratch with a skeptical attitude and disbelief-by-default toward all claims. At this point, they are consistent. They believe nothing because they have no reason to believe anything. They could then use the scientific method of disproving the null hypothesis to inductively rebuild a set of probably-correct beliefs one claim at a time. At each step of the knowledge-building journey they would maintain consistency about only believing things for which they have a (non-fallacious) reason to believe them.

I had to say all this to illustrate how the assumption of a null hypothesis is not a "gesture of faith". It is a consistent way of thinking until we are confronted with sufficient evidence to think any particular null hypothesis is so unlikely that we must accept the alternative hypothesis. That's why it's called the alternative. We only resort to believing the alternative when the null hypothesis becomes indefensible.

There are many serious thinkers who are pondering whether the universe is a simulation, and we are characters in a cosmic video game where quantum states represent bits in the computer. It is not a "gesture of faith" to disbelieve this claim any more than it is to disbelieve the claims of a UFO cult or someone who believes in fairies. We would not want to attempt putting any of these claims in the position of the null hypothesis, and say that we have to either accept the claim by default or prove they are not true. Imagine having to believe each piece of spam in your email inbox until they were proven untrue! If we got in the habit of misplacing the alternative hypothesis like this, we'd eventually be confronted with two contradictory statements and mistakenly believe they were both the null hypothesis.
 

[TreeLeaf]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

If you read the study and understand how the data is generated and understand the data itself you would agree that the study should not exist at all, regardless of sample size. It's not a medical study. You would have to conclude several PhD level researchers made up a fake study and published it for...reasons?

Here is another random study that should not exist.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyh5qe6un1u6z8q/Radin2004EEG.pdf?dl=0

I can't force you to read them all. I can say that I have read a lot of these sorts of studies, as well as several books with references to more studies. None of these studies should exist.

I did not believe any of them. So I bought my own REG device here:

http://www.psyleron.com/

and did my own studies.

Those results certainly should not have occurred. 1 in a trillion odds. I ran the machine with reverse intentions to ensure it wasn't a hoax. Then I ran the machine with no operator and ensured the data is normally random.

Sometimes I plug it in just to play with it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Everyone is free to read the research, and repeat the studies for yourself.

I just find it ... a bit weird.

I can deny *all* the studies but I can't deny my own REG study, because if I ever doubt I can simply go downstairs and plug it in.

You can also go through all the studies, or simply refute them without reading.

This is how I fell into the woo woo trap. By reading. And learning. And exploring.

I can accept that evidence is real without having an explanation of why the evidence is real.

[wenchsenior]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

If you read the study and understand how the data is generated and understand the data itself you would agree that the study should not exist at all, regardless of sample size. It's not a medical study. You would have to conclude several PhD level researchers made up a fake study and published it for...reasons?

Here is another random study that should not exist.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyh5qe6un1u6z8q/Radin2004EEG.pdf?dl=0

I can't force you to read them all. I can say that I have read a lot of these sorts of studies, as well as several books with references to more studies. None of these studies should exist.

I did not believe any of them. So I bought my own REG device here:

http://www.psyleron.com/

and did my own studies.

Those results certainly should not have occurred. 1 in a trillion odds. I ran the machine with reverse intentions to ensure it wasn't a hoax. Then I ran the machine with no operator and ensured the data is normally random.

Sometimes I plug it in just to play with it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Everyone is free to read the research, and repeat the studies for yourself.

I just find it ... a bit weird.

I can deny *all* the studies but I can't deny my own REG study, because if I ever doubt I can simply go downstairs and plug it in.

You can also go through all the studies, or simply refute them without reading.

This is how I fell into the woo woo trap. By reading. And learning. And exploring.

I can accept that evidence is real without having an explanation of why the evidence is real.

Sure.

I can't speak to the particular thing you are experiencing, nor am I comfortable saying (without looking at all the papers) that any given paper represents research into ESP or whatever 'woo' we are talking about that should not have ever been done at all.

As a scientist,  my default preference is that everything gets tested, at least to some degree. If it were up to me, lots of crazy shit would be tested (esp. if falsifiable hypotheses could be generated to test them). Scientists MUST remain open to possible woo to some extent b/c (as I noted above), science only ever can offer provisional explanations of 'truth'. So scientists can say, thus and such mechanism clearly does NOT cause the observed phenomenon, but they can't say with equal certainty (most of the time) that they have have equal certainty about what DOES cause things. In practice, of course, we can determine actionable 'truth' and a fair degree of certainty about that 'truth', and act on it, or we simply couldn't progress.   But there are plenty of things science can't comment on b/c we can't figure out how to objectively measure elements of the question, or (more often) we haven't figured out how to design a falsifiable test for that question.  You've likely heard of Sagan's 'dragon in the garage' scenario, which simply describes the challenges with grappling with certain types of questions. And of course, in practical reality, science is hugely hindered by mundane issues of funding and time and personnel limitations.

But the stage you are at, that of observing evidence (and trying different methods of getting consistent observations) while not understanding why your observations are happening, is simply an early stage of the scientific method.  Scientists do this too, they observe a phenomenon they don't understand or that is surprising. They look for repeated observation of said phenomenon, first with small sample sizes (your individual experience/environment/context), then with much larger sample sizes and under variable conditions (expanding much beyond your individual experience/environment/context). If the patterns hold, scientists' next step is to generate explanations as to WHY they are seeing what they are, and falsifiable tests for these explanations. They then apply these tests, trying to kick holes in their hypotheses until there's only one explanation as to 'why' left standing, which then is the functional and provisional explanation for the pattern/phenomenon that first interested them.

Unfortunately, in practice, much scientific research gets stuck somewhere in the 'large sample size/variable conditions' and 'generating falsifiable tests of hypothesis' steps (esp the 'soft' sciences like applied medicine, social sciences, population level ecology and biology, etc.). Trust me when I say, no one is more pissed about this than a lot of scientists are.  WE WANT TO KNOW WHY DAMMIT, and often all we can do is get to some degree of: Well these 3 hypotheses are very unlikely b/c there has so far been no consistent supportive evidence for them, and these other 2 are still in play and we should keep trying to test them, but most of the money is going to test only 1 of the 2 so really we have no idea whether 2 is a good possibility or not, etc. 

Don't misunderstand me; we can still generate a lot of useful knowledge in the earlier stages of the process, but for all the reasons discussed in this thread so far, we often can't be super confident that we fully understand the 'why' part...and even when we are pretty confident we've nailed down the nuts and bolts of the 'why' part (this would be called a "scientific theory", which is not the same as the word "theory" as used by a layperson) and are proceeding successfully along in life with this as our assumption, we must always remain open to the possibility that currently unknown data might arise that would complicate the 'why' or disprove it altogether.

ETA: Also, now that I've had time to go back and scan a lot of the posts higher up this page, plenty of people have made more less the same points as I have, only more eloquently LOL.

[teen persuasion]

To pivot points a bit, I think a couple of driving factors in the "Woo epidemic" are
1) A gaping vacuum for spirituality in the lives of non-religious people in an increasingly secular world, and
2) The inherently radicalizing nature of engagement driven algorithmic feeds on social media

A smart person with basic science education who believes themself to be rational can see that there's a lot of valid evidence to the benefits of certain things that are woo-adjacent, like meditation or psychedelics. Then once you enter that media space, you're suddenly surrounded by a lot of bullshit artists. Once you've already "let your guard down" to one thing you used to believe was woo-woo bullshit and now understand to have legitimate value, then it's easier to get fooled as Youtube or Instagram or Facebook spews nonsense at you just because it has a lot of "engagement."

That's a path for even an educated, skeptical person to get sucked into the nonsense. Then consider how many people grow up religious, are conditioned to believe claims that stretch credulity from an early age, and then leave the church as teenagers or young adults. Those people actively go searching for something to fill the spiritual void, and if they grew up being told to uncritically accept the stories of the bible, then it's going to be a lot easier for them to do the same when they run into a charismatic screen personality on Youtube or Instagram telling them an over-simplistic story about how they can become happier/healthier/better.

A properly functional public school system would nip a lot more of this in the bud, teaching every kid basic science literacy and critical thinking skills that many of us take for granted. But the US made the brilliant policy decision of making quality public schools accessible only to children whose parents can afford homes in exclusionary white-flight suburbs.

How can one be spiritual and also only believe in scientific evidence for things? It's not like we can 'prove' God with science.

Also a lot of the woo woo is spread by 'spiritual' teachers.

Wouldn't we want to avoid the whole concept of religion and spirituality and God if we want to stop the spread of woo woo? I mean - this is where the woo woo comes from.

Very, very easily.

There's tons of shit we don't know.

Science isn't even about proving everything, it never has been. It's always been about endlessly exploring what we don't know. That's 100% compatible with spirituality.

Also some of the worst offending woo-peddlers I know are highly respected medical professionals.

See - this is why I struggle to trust doctors.

I go to doctor A, and they claim doctor B is a woo peddler. I go to doctor B and they claim doctor A is a woo peddler.

I then read pop-sci books written by medical doctors and professors who have different interpretations of different research studies which sometimes contradict each other.

Then I find myself reading through all the research reports and discover things are often not conclusive, not that effective, we often don't fully understand what we are looking at, and there are uncertainties and side effects and interactions between various systems that are often not obvious and the answer is often 'it depends' and here is the probability that you will have this effect and here are the probability you will have these side effects based on the clinical trials but we really don't understand why this really works.

Then I cry in a corner eating my can of beans.

Yeah, I'm coming around to the conclusion that even respected doctors are woo peddlers.

A few years back, DH was a volunteer with a local fire company.  He'd trained as an EMT, but wanted to do Firefighter 1 as well.  Of course the one week bootcamp version that started after the school year ended in June coincided with a stretch of 90* days.  So suddenly jumping into a physically stressful training wearing 50lbs of turnout gear AND breathing masks running up flights of stairs in unusual heat - he was having trouble breathing and felt short of breath.  Not surprising, especially first time with breathing tanks, but EMTs on site convinced him to get checked out - *just in case*.  Well, short of breath automatically gets interpreted as heart attack at the hospital.  They immediately start giving him blood thinners and cholesterol drugs (he'd just had a full workup for the FC, his cholesterol and other numbers were all excellent) and high blood pressure drugs, etc.  They began a series of enzymes tests to see if his numbers would increase, confirming a heart attack.  They kept him overnight for observation.  The one thing they couldn't do - provide a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea!

Well, the cardiologist who everyone hailed as an EKG expert didn't like his EKG, but couldn't explain why it bothered her.  And his enzyme tests made no sense - one random one spiked, then returned to normal - they don't do that.  (Umm, obviously that outlier was not quite right - maybe someone else's got mixed up?  They never pursued that.)  Finally she referred him for an angiogram - at another hospital.  Completely clean, that doctor said DH would never have a heart attack before he was twice his then-current age. 

They insisted on a follow up - we assumed the angiogram dr.  No no no, EKG dr. had to do it, she's the expert!  She was still insisting he'd had a heart attack, prescribing nitro, low dose aspirin, limit eating eggs (there'd recently been news articles debunking the eggs-are-bad mantra)...and wanted a treadmill stress test before she'd release him for working!  Passed that with flying colors, and she was still harping on about the EKGs she didn't like - it finally dawned on her, it signified sleep apnea!  No kidding, we both told you about that months ago...

So when he pressed her on whether he'd passed the stress test and would she finally release him for working (before the school year began again) she reluctantly asked if he thought the shortness of breath *might* have been from running up stairs with 50lbs of turnout gear on in 90* wearing a breathing mask for the first time?  Ya think?

I was rolling my eyes so hard at her admonitions against eating eggs (and other diet advice), because she was decidedly round in shape.

[TreeLeaf]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

If you read the study and understand how the data is generated and understand the data itself you would agree that the study should not exist at all, regardless of sample size. It's not a medical study. You would have to conclude several PhD level researchers made up a fake study and published it for...reasons?

Here is another random study that should not exist.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyh5qe6un1u6z8q/Radin2004EEG.pdf?dl=0

I can't force you to read them all. I can say that I have read a lot of these sorts of studies, as well as several books with references to more studies. None of these studies should exist.

I did not believe any of them. So I bought my own REG device here:

http://www.psyleron.com/

and did my own studies.

Those results certainly should not have occurred. 1 in a trillion odds. I ran the machine with reverse intentions to ensure it wasn't a hoax. Then I ran the machine with no operator and ensured the data is normally random.

Sometimes I plug it in just to play with it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Everyone is free to read the research, and repeat the studies for yourself.

I just find it ... a bit weird.

I can deny *all* the studies but I can't deny my own REG study, because if I ever doubt I can simply go downstairs and plug it in.

You can also go through all the studies, or simply refute them without reading.

This is how I fell into the woo woo trap. By reading. And learning. And exploring.

I can accept that evidence is real without having an explanation of why the evidence is real.

Sure.

I can't speak to the particular thing you are experiencing, nor am I comfortable saying (without looking at all the papers) that any given paper represents research into ESP or whatever 'woo' we are talking about that should not have ever been done at all.

As a scientist,  my default preference is that everything gets tested, at least to some degree. If it were up to me, lots of crazy shit would be tested (esp. if falsifiable hypotheses could be generated to test them). Scientists MUST remain open to possible woo to some extent b/c (as I noted above), science only ever can offer provisional explanations of 'truth'. So scientists can say, thus and such mechanism clearly does NOT cause the observed phenomenon, but they can't say with equal certainty (most of the time) that they have have equal certainty about what DOES cause things. In practice, of course, we can determine actionable 'truth' and a fair degree of certainty about that 'truth', and act on it, or we simply couldn't progress.   But there are plenty of things science can't comment on b/c we can't figure out how to objectively measure elements of the question, or (more often) we haven't figured out how to design a falsifiable test for that question.  You've likely heard of Sagan's 'dragon in the garage' scenario, which simply describes the challenges with grappling with certain types of questions. And of course, in practical reality, science is hugely hindered by mundane issues of funding and time and personnel limitations.

But the stage you are at, that of observing evidence (and trying different methods of getting consistent observations) while not understanding why your observations are happening, is simply an early stage of the scientific method.  Scientists do this too, they observe a phenomenon they don't understand or that is surprising. They look for repeated observation of said phenomenon, first with small sample sizes (your individual experience/environment/context), then with much larger sample sizes and under variable conditions (expanding much beyond your individual experience/environment/context). If the patterns hold, scientists' next step is to generate explanations as to WHY they are seeing what they are, and falsifiable tests for these explanations. They then apply these tests, trying to kick holes in their hypotheses until there's only one explanation as to 'why' left standing, which then is the functional and provisional explanation for the pattern/phenomenon that first interested them.

Unfortunately, in practice, much scientific research gets stuck somewhere in the 'large sample size/variable conditions' and 'generating falsifiable tests of hypothesis' steps (esp the 'soft' sciences like applied medicine, social sciences, population level ecology and biology, etc.). Trust me when I say, no one is more pissed about this than a lot of scientists are.  WE WANT TO KNOW WHY DAMMIT, and often all we can do is get to some degree of: Well these 3 hypotheses are very unlikely b/c there has so far been no consistent supportive evidence for them, and these other 2 are still in play and we should keep trying to test them, but most of the money is going to test only 1 of the 2 so really we have no idea whether 2 is a good possibility or not, etc. 

Don't misunderstand me; we can still generate a lot of useful knowledge in the earlier stages of the process, but for all the reasons discussed in this thread so far, we often can't be super confident that we fully understand the 'why' part...and even when we are pretty confident we've nailed down the nuts and bolts of the 'why' part (this would be called a "scientific theory", which is not the same as the word "theory" as used by a layperson) and are proceeding successfully along in life with this as our assumption, we must always remain open to the possibility that currently unknown data might arise that would complicate the 'why' or disprove it altogether.

ETA: Also, now that I've had time to go back and scan a lot of the posts higher up this page, plenty of people have made more less the same points as I have, only more eloquently LOL.

Yes - this is why I'm careful in how I word this. I can say there is some evidence for...some 'woo' things. I can say under what circumstances it tends to exist, how much it exists in the average person, what sorts of people and groups tend to have the greatest effect in these studies, etc. I can say that meditators tend to show a larger effect in these studies than non-meditators for some reason. I have no idea *why*. So I don't buy into the spiritual explanation behind these things because the evidence that I have seen does not support any particular explanation. I can say that a lot of 'spiritual' people tend to do better in these tests for...again I have no idea why.

I can say that the effect in an average person is normally pretty small. For example, in a Ganzfeld forced choice experiments where there are 4 choices, the average person has a 33% accuracy rate, vs 25% expected by chance. This also means that some people score worse than chance expectations, some people hit chance, etc.

If you look into the actual data for some of these studies you will discover that there is usually a small minority of the sample size that *always* hits exactly what is expected by chance. It's like the effect just does not show up in some people for some reason. Likewise there are some people who do worse than chance expectations. This means these sorts of tests have to be ran on dozens of people generating tens of thousands of data points to get any sort of statistically significant result.

I cannot say 'why' or what the causal mechanism is or what the 'woo' is. So again - I don't buy into the 'spiritual explanation' behind these things...because the evidence does not support that. However I have also found no scientific explanation. So right now I just have a bunch of data I can't explain.

I will also point out that many of these effects do not 'scale up' well. For example, I have never read a study or seen in person someone 'healing' a 5 inch tumor for example. A lot of the physical healing studies just do not show an effect. So I don't really buy into the 'spiritual healers' for this reason, even though they are *also* the people who seem to do best on the fmri correlated brain signals testing of subjects for some reason.

What I have seen is a lot of small effects on very small systems. Minor changes on eeg output in random intervals that *also* seems to occur in the same *random intervals* that someone is told to connect with the person on a computer screen. Minor changes in random event generation machines that use quantum tunneling as their source of randomness, etc. These are all very very minor microscopic level systems. There are no macro level events going on here...or at least none that I have seen or experienced.

Again - I'm not saying I believe in the spiritual woo explanations. Please go see a real medical doctor if you have a physical disease. I guarantee there are *way way way* more woo peddlers in the spiritual psychic world than there are in the real medical world.

I'm saying I have seen a lot of evidence for some effects of...something?...and I have replicated some of these studies personally.

So I am inclined to believe in some of the evidence, even though I have no idea why these things occur.

I am at the stage now of trying to understand *why* these effects occur, increasing the effect in myself, and trying to figure out *what* exactly consciousness is comprised of that could generate these effects.

Also - thank you for taking the time to read some of the studies.

[wenchsenior]

Thinking about this some more - how I originally got involved in woo woo is that I mistook it for science.

I mean look here: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references

Scroll through this page. There are a lot of references to supposed 'science' written in supposed peer reviewed scientific journals written by people with Phds claiming various woo woo things.

If you trust 'science' and 'scientific journals' and 'published research reports' how does one defend against this woo woo? Does one conclude there are a lot of educated woo woo peddlers in the world?

It's a good thing that reputable scientific journals (there are several on that list) examine these questions and claims  of effectiveness, preferably in repeated studies. I just randomly checked 6 of the papers published from reputable journals (several of these journals listed sound sketchy, though I don't know enough about them to be sure, so I just picked the journals that I know are not considered actively sketchy).

Of the 6 papers I  looked at, 3 had results that did not support any evidence that intercessory prayer/etc. worked in terms of improving any of the tested outcomes; 2 papers noted no robust evidence for effectiveness, had possible equivocal supportive evidence, but noted data and methodological limitations that dictated that conclusions couldn't be drawn without considerable further research; and 1 paper showed weak but statistically significant support for shortened hospital stay/shorter fever when the patient with infection was the focus of prayer, but no difference in mortality rates.

So...that's good, in the sense that the question is being looked at/tested/published upon. The results of these studies being very little evidence to support the hypothesis that prayer does much good, but still enough evidence that it might possibly have some effect that more studies examining the issue are certainly warranted before determining that we can safely disprove the hypothesis that prayer helps.

So that part of the process is working as it should, at least in the reputable journals (can't speak to the journals I haven't heard of/don't know). I'm not sure why this would lead the average person to look at these papers and instantly conclude that the woo works. That is certainly not what the 6 papers I opened and glanced at said.

Yes - I have spent some time looking over these studies and other similar studies.

The prayer studies are not good examples, generally. Some of them show some small effect size but not enough to be statistically significant.

The ganzfield experiments and mind matter interaction with REG devices and telepathy studies are harder for me to dismiss because some of them actually show statistical significance.

For example this study:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e93mzyt7ohie1hs/Richards2005fMRI.pdf?dl=0

I'm sure there is a flaw somewhere, but I struggle to find some of the flaws in the studies.

I don't understand how the conclusions are valid. Either several researchers are lying on purpose or there is some sort of design flaw in several studies that I'm missing.

Well, I haven't read this paper you just linked...I just glanced very quickly at the methods and the obvious gigantic gaping flaw in the study you linked to is the sample size. 2 subjects, and 2 trials (as far as I could tell). You can get almost anything to be statistically significant with a sample size that small.

If you read the study and understand how the data is generated and understand the data itself you would agree that the study should not exist at all, regardless of sample size. It's not a medical study. You would have to conclude several PhD level researchers made up a fake study and published it for...reasons?

Here is another random study that should not exist.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyh5qe6un1u6z8q/Radin2004EEG.pdf?dl=0

I can't force you to read them all. I can say that I have read a lot of these sorts of studies, as well as several books with references to more studies. None of these studies should exist.

I did not believe any of them. So I bought my own REG device here:

http://www.psyleron.com/

and did my own studies.

Those results certainly should not have occurred. 1 in a trillion odds. I ran the machine with reverse intentions to ensure it wasn't a hoax. Then I ran the machine with no operator and ensured the data is normally random.

Sometimes I plug it in just to play with it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Everyone is free to read the research, and repeat the studies for yourself.

I just find it ... a bit weird.

I can deny *all* the studies but I can't deny my own REG study, because if I ever doubt I can simply go downstairs and plug it in.

You can also go through all the studies, or simply refute them without reading.

This is how I fell into the woo woo trap. By reading. And learning. And exploring.

I can accept that evidence is real without having an explanation of why the evidence is real.

Sure.

I can't speak to the particular thing you are experiencing, nor am I comfortable saying (without looking at all the papers) that any given paper represents research into ESP or whatever 'woo' we are talking about that should not have ever been done at all.

As a scientist,  my default preference is that everything gets tested, at least to some degree. If it were up to me, lots of crazy shit would be tested (esp. if falsifiable hypotheses could be generated to test them). Scientists MUST remain open to possible woo to some extent b/c (as I noted above), science only ever can offer provisional explanations of 'truth'. So scientists can say, thus and such mechanism clearly does NOT cause the observed phenomenon, but they can't say with equal certainty (most of the time) that they have have equal certainty about what DOES cause things. In practice, of course, we can determine actionable 'truth' and a fair degree of certainty about that 'truth', and act on it, or we simply couldn't progress.   But there are plenty of things science can't comment on b/c we can't figure out how to objectively measure elements of the question, or (more often) we haven't figured out how to design a falsifiable test for that question.  You've likely heard of Sagan's 'dragon in the garage' scenario, which simply describes the challenges with grappling with certain types of questions. And of course, in practical reality, science is hugely hindered by mundane issues of funding and time and personnel limitations.

But the stage you are at, that of observing evidence (and trying different methods of getting consistent observations) while not understanding why your observations are happening, is simply an early stage of the scientific method.  Scientists do this too, they observe a phenomenon they don't understand or that is surprising. They look for repeated observation of said phenomenon, first with small sample sizes (your individual experience/environment/context), then with much larger sample sizes and under variable conditions (expanding much beyond your individual experience/environment/context). If the patterns hold, scientists' next step is to generate explanations as to WHY they are seeing what they are, and falsifiable tests for these explanations. They then apply these tests, trying to kick holes in their hypotheses until there's only one explanation as to 'why' left standing, which then is the functional and provisional explanation for the pattern/phenomenon that first interested them.

Unfortunately, in practice, much scientific research gets stuck somewhere in the 'large sample size/variable conditions' and 'generating falsifiable tests of hypothesis' steps (esp the 'soft' sciences like applied medicine, social sciences, population level ecology and biology, etc.). Trust me when I say, no one is more pissed about this than a lot of scientists are.  WE WANT TO KNOW WHY DAMMIT, and often all we can do is get to some degree of: Well these 3 hypotheses are very unlikely b/c there has so far been no consistent supportive evidence for them, and these other 2 are still in play and we should keep trying to test them, but most of the money is going to test only 1 of the 2 so really we have no idea whether 2 is a good possibility or not, etc. 

Don't misunderstand me; we can still generate a lot of useful knowledge in the earlier stages of the process, but for all the reasons discussed in this thread so far, we often can't be super confident that we fully understand the 'why' part...and even when we are pretty confident we've nailed down the nuts and bolts of the 'why' part (this would be called a "scientific theory", which is not the same as the word "theory" as used by a layperson) and are proceeding successfully along in life with this as our assumption, we must always remain open to the possibility that currently unknown data might arise that would complicate the 'why' or disprove it altogether.

ETA: Also, now that I've had time to go back and scan a lot of the posts higher up this page, plenty of people have made more less the same points as I have, only more eloquently LOL.

Yes - this is why I'm careful in how I word this. I can say there is some evidence for...some 'woo' things. I can say under what circumstances it tends to exist, how much it exists in the average person, what sorts of people and groups tend to have the greatest effect in these studies, etc. I can say that meditators tend to show a larger effect in these studies than non-meditators for some reason. I have no idea *why*. So I don't buy into the spiritual explanation behind these things because the evidence that I have seen does not support any particular explanation. I can say that a lot of 'spiritual' people tend to do better in these tests for...again I have no idea why.

I can say that the effect in an average person is normally pretty small. For example, in a Ganzfeld forced choice experiments where there are 4 choices, the average person has a 33% accuracy rate, vs 25% expected by chance. This also means that some people score worse than chance expectations, some people hit chance, etc.

If you look into the actual data for some of these studies you will discover that there is usually a small minority of the sample size that *always* hits exactly what is expected by chance. It's like the effect just does not show up in some people for some reason. Likewise there are some people who do worse than chance expectations. This means these sorts of tests have to be ran on dozens of people generating tens of thousands of data points to get any sort of statistically significant result.

I cannot say 'why' or what the causal mechanism is or what the 'woo' is. So again - I don't buy into the 'spiritual explanation' behind these things...because the evidence does not support that. However I have also found no scientific explanation. So right now I just have a bunch of data I can't explain.

I will also point out that many of these effects do not 'scale up' well. For example, I have never read a study or seen in person someone 'healing' a 5 inch tumor for example. A lot of the physical healing studies just do not show an effect. So I don't really buy into the 'spiritual healers' for this reason, even though they are *also* the people who seem to do best on the fmri correlated brain signals testing of subjects for some reason.

What I have seen is a lot of small effects on very small systems. Minor changes on eeg output in random intervals that *also* seems to occur in the same *random intervals* that someone is told to connect with the person on a computer screen. Minor changes in random event generation machines that use quantum tunneling as their source of randomness, etc. These are all very very minor microscopic level systems. There are no macro level events going on here...or at least none that I have seen or experienced.

Again - I'm not saying I believe in the spiritual woo explanations. Please go see a real medical doctor if you have a physical disease. I guarantee there are *way way way* more woo peddlers in the spiritual psychic world than there are in the real medical world.

I'm saying I have seen a lot of evidence for some effects of...something?...and I have replicated some of these studies personally.

So I am inclined to believe in some of the evidence, even though I have no idea why these things occur.

I am at the stage now of trying to understand *why* these effects occur, increasing the effect in myself, and trying to figure out *what* exactly consciousness is comprised of that could generate these effects.

Also - thank you for taking the time to read some of the studies.

Yes, this is exactly why it's so hard to draw any conclusions about effects on broader populations from individual experiences.

One problem is that most people never take even basic statistics courses, and don't understand even basic stuff about probabilities or distribution curves or any other foundational mathematical concepts associated with data interpretation. And people naturally have all kind of cognitive biases (mathematically, I mean) in terms of how they interpret these concepts. So-called common sense is pretty useless when interpreting statistical data b/c human brains automatically seek patterns and identify them even when they are mathematically meaningless or non-existent, remember and overweight unusual circumstances, engage in future discounting, attach to 'anchoring points', and a bunch of other things that cause misinterpretation of objective data.

[maizefolk]

@Malcat I'm curious if my take away from your posts is correct. I understand you're taking a break to think about how to explain it differently but if/when you feel like it, I'd be interested if you could give me a thumbs up/thumbs down on the below:

The point I read you as making was about the distinction between evidence of an effect and evidence for a mechanism.

-The association between too much time in the sun and a sunburn is an effect.

-Knowing that sunlight includes ultraviolet radiation that damages cells in our skin, triggering an inflammatory response as our body tried to heal that damage is a mechanism.

For research purposes we're really interested in understanding mechanisms because the more we understand about why some things work, the easier it is to figure out what other things we haven't tried yet might also work or work even better. But in the short term for an individual person trying to getting healthier, ultimately all that matters is that there is good evidence the effect is real, not whether we understand why the effect happens.

If a tribe on a desert island believes that George, the angry monkey god, hates the sight of human skin (for his skin is covered in hair) and so curses the skin of anyone who goes out for too long in the daylight without their skin covered with a red and painful malady as punishment. ... well they've gotten the mechanism completely wrong. But in the short term they figured out how to avoid being sunburned. The effect of their prescription is real and they can demonstrate it with as many replicated and controlled studies as they like.

And, as you or someone up thread said, when it comes to medicine there are still all sorts of things we use because they really do work but we either have no real idea why they work (e.g. tylenol/paracetamol) or we think we know why they work but we are wrong.

[TreeLeaf]

@Malcat

Thinking back to the conversation earlier about conceptual models of data validity and trying to figure out what you were trying to convey. It's going to be hard for me to convey this point but I'll get to it eventually.   

I'm thinking about how the brain handles analytical and conceptual data on different levels of 'intelligence' here. I sort of view this as different contextual levels or ways that the brain can operate in.

On a simple level of intelligence, concepts are heavy in the mind and dense. Associations between concepts are very thick and heavy. The model that the concepts are running in is simplistic. Concepts are easy to hold in the mind. Because of this heaviness concepts tend to carry associated feelings and a heavy connection to your sense of self. Concepts tend to be more 'sticky' and 'long lasting' in the mind. The concepts inspire confidence in people because with this simplistic model or view or context of the concept the concept makes 100% complete sense. 2+2 is alwasy 4. It is 'common sense' as they say.

This is why it is extremely easy to spot who is...I guess I will say thinking in this manner. It's almost always the person shouting the loudest and who has the most faith in his beliefs, because their ideas tend to be simple, heavy, be connected with feelings and their sense of self, and carry a lot of emotional weight because of how heavy the concept is in their mind. They literally have a different subjective experience of concepts. This is why trying to invalidate their idea with logic is generally not a good idea - the ideas are already stuck and heavy and tend to be emotionally charged and associated with their identity. 

As intelligence increases so does the ability to hold many concepts in the mind at once. The overall view and context in which a concept is viewed in also tends to become more complex and inter connected. Concepts become more light, fragmened, and less emotionally charged. The connections between concepts becomes more thin and it becomes harder to hold all the concepts in short term memory at the same time. Have you ever been trying to put a complex idea together in pieces and suddenly the whole concept sort of...broke down in your mind? The concepts become less associated with a person's identity, not because they don't see the concepts as theirs but because that's just another association that the brain can't afford to maintain.

People start to realize that *everything* depends on something else, the models are extremely complex so there are always caveats and cautions and even putting the entire concept into words can become challenging as you have to add all the language around the idea to attempt to explain it. You wind up writing a book to attempt to explain the concept.

As intelligence increases further people realize they don't actually *know* anything with any sort of confidence at all, and the whole idea that something can even be *known* as a thing is an impossibility. Concepts are - at best - abstractions in the mind that represent something, but they are completely different than what they actually represent. At a certain level everything appears to be nonsense - because everything is technically nonsense.

Then people start thinking about their own thinking and beyond that is madness. There is a thin line between genuis and insanity because the associations between concepts are so thin that it's easy to break the whole system down at this level.

It's hard for people to really relate to each other at times because a simple person may ironically view an intelligent person as an idiot because of how vague and 'not confident' they appear in their statements, how many caveats there are, etc. An intelligent person may view a simple person as an idiot because of how many things they don't think of in their simple conceptual model of things.   

I don't know if any of this makes sense at all - but it sounds like what you were trying to say is that you're sort of seeing a lot of data from a certain high level where everything appears to be *technically* nonsense in a way because there is always this level of uncertainty to things, data collection techniques, interpretations, etc, etc. We can take any piece of data and prove that it is nonsense on some level or viewpoint, etc. So there is always a certain level of doubt about data in general.

But I could be *extremely* off base here, lol.

@maizefolk probably has a more accurate idea of what you were trying to say here.

[Metalcat]

@Malcat I'm curious if my take away from your posts is correct. I understand you're taking a break to think about how to explain it differently but if/when you feel like it, I'd be interested if you could give me a thumbs up/thumbs down on the below:

The point I read you as making was about the distinction between evidence of an effect and evidence for a mechanism.

-The association between too much time in the sun and a sunburn is an effect.

-Knowing that sunlight includes ultraviolet radiation that damages cells in our skin, triggering an inflammatory response as our body tried to heal that damage is a mechanism.

For research purposes we're really interested in understanding mechanisms because the more we understand about why some things work, the easier it is to figure out what other things we haven't tried yet might also work or work even better. But in the short term for an individual person trying to getting healthier, ultimately all that matters is that there is good evidence the effect is real, not whether we understand why the effect happens.

If a tribe on a desert island believes that George, the angry monkey god, hates the sight of human skin (for his skin is covered in hair) and so curses the skin of anyone who goes out for too long in the daylight without their skin covered with a red and painful malady as punishment. ... well they've gotten the mechanism completely wrong. But in the short term they figured out how to avoid being sunburned. The effect of their prescription is real and they can demonstrate it with as many replicated and controlled studies as they like.

And, as you or someone up thread said, when it comes to medicine there are still all sorts of things we use because they really do work but we either have no real idea why they work (e.g. tylenol/paracetamol) or we think we know why they work but we are wrong.

This is definitely part of one of the points I was trying to make.