The Tangled Bank

Friday, August 12, 2005

PZ Myers's avatar

Need more targets?

I've been grossly unfair. Everyone who reads this site knows I have nothing but contempt for religion and creationism, but there are many other looney ideas I despise. I offer a short list here, in the interest of encouraging more diversity in my hate mail.

  • Acupuncture is based on something nonexistent ("chi") flowing through channels that aren't there that has effects that have never been demonstrated. Sticking needles in people and turning them into porcupines is kind of neat, but more as a joke than therapy.
  • Astrology pretends that our destinies are guided by the impersonal movements of vast lumps of rock and ice. For some reason, this singularly silly and long-discredited idea drives the most amazingly baroque statistical fishing expeditions. Get over it. You have to be as dumb as Ronald Reagan to give it any credence.
  • ESP is another will o' the wisp that doesn't make sense if you think about it. Sure, the brain contains patterned electrical activity…but the pattern is variable between individuals, extremely small in magnitude, and you don't possess sensors sensitive enough to detect it.
  • Feng Shui is a silly fad for the shallow.
  • Ghosts and all that afterlife crap—one human universal is death and grief. Another is the existence of lying parasites who will make up stories to milk people of their pain.
  • Homeopathy freights the structure of water with unbelievable specificity and inflexibility. If I'm supposed to believe that an agent diluted to nonexistence is supposed to have incredibly potent effects on me, shouldn't I be much more concerned about that single bacterium farting botulinium toxin into my drinking water, or that dead squirrel rotting up on the banks of the reservoir?
  • Libertarianism is the new religion for the self-centered.
  • UFOs. Unknown lights in the sky? I believe that. Transdimensional transport pods piloted by the Sasquatch inhabitants of the Earth's hollow core? Shee-yeah, and like I've got a village of gnomes living in my belly button.
  • Velikovsky. Poor scholar and delusional fabulist. He was able to dress up his errors in the dead dreary, droning style of most serious academics, so he has fooled a lot of people.

I'm sure there are more. If you happen to have some daring, iconoclastic idea that every establishment figure laughs at despite your carefully drawn crayon diagrams and the endorsement of your spirit guide, you can safely assume I think you're an idiot, too, and send a little pre-emptive email venom my way anyway.


Aaargh, how could I forget the chiropractors? Stan Jones wrote to remind me, and boy, I can't stand those frauds. Sure, a good vigorous back message feels good, but please don't pretend it's medicine. There's a legitimate discipline called physical therapy that works with real doctors, and I'd rather see one of them.


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Comments:
#35026: — 08/12  at  08:21 AM
This is a wonderful entry.

I can only imagine the rage of the people who are sending you email right now. You should share them, for.. uh.. science.

Yes, share the emails for science!



's avatar #35027: Moses — 08/12  at  08:23 AM
Shee-yeah, and like I've got a village of gnomes living in my belly button.

Well, that might explain why you laugh like you do.

Are they blue and smurfy?



#35028: — 08/12  at  08:24 AM
Libertarians are republicans who are too smart to admit it.



's avatar #35029: Moses — 08/12  at  08:27 AM
BTW, I love how you boiled down libertarianism to one, brief sentence.

Now, pardon me while I return to burning all my old copies of "In Search Of..." to DVD.



#35030: — 08/12  at  08:30 AM
Actually, as far as I can tell with my own anecdotal evidence, acupuncture isn't crap.

A friend of mine has used acupuncture in fertility treatments, with his sperm count increasing immediately after beginning treatment. His doctor prescribed it for expressly that purpose.

I don't know precisely what caused it, but acupuncture seems to have helped him. Ever heard about this? We are both engineers, and not prone to New Age nonsense. I'm not citing this as proof, but it seems to have helped him.

Additionally, I know it helped my wife with postpartum back pain, and apparently it helped her in the short term.

Far as I can tell, you can't just write it off wholesale.

I really enjoy your articles on alcohol evolution, etc, by the way.



#35033: Sree — 08/12  at  08:39 AM
Acupuncture may not be totally bogus. We discussed it in my neurology class as part of the somatosensory system and here's what the teacher had to say:

"We don’t know shit about acupuncture. Stick a needle in the ear and you can do surgery on the stomach with no pain whatsoever. The patient is conscious and still feels things in toes, legs, neck, but not stomach. Because you are sticking a needle in a patients ear, they feel nothing in abdomen, if you stick it in another part of their ear, they won’t feel anything in their leg. How the hell does that happen? I don’t know. It has been shown that acupunture causes an increase in endorphin and enkephlin, but how can it be so specific We don’t know, but it is."



#35034: — 08/12  at  08:41 AM
PZ, you're somewhat lucky in your field. Of course, creationists are very vocal and annoying, but you should see all the hogwash we have to deal with in psychology... I know the first thing that may come to your mind is evolutionary psychology, but that's quite harmless compared to: EMDR, psychoanalysis, facilitated communication, the Rorschach and its variants, primal scream therapy, hypnosis, graphology, etc etc etc



#35035: Jeff — 08/12  at  08:43 AM
I started to post in defense of acupuncture, intending to point to the Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld article in Parade some years ago that showed a Chinese woman having open heart surgery with acupuncture as her only anasthetic. Trying to be thorough, I did some Google searching and to my chagrin, came to an article that debunks the specific story I was talking about:

http://members.aol.com/garypos/Rosenfeld_sram.html

I'm a little embarassed that for years I've used the original Parade article to defend acupuncture. I've been saying the same as a poster above, "Far as I can tell, you can't just write it off wholesale." Maybe not wholesale, but it now sure looks like it's at least going for Wal-Mart prices.



#35036: Socar — 08/12  at  08:44 AM
Acupuncture is a good excuse for a nap. (For some reason, it really DOES feel very relaxing, but that might just have to do with being forced to stay still.)



#35037: — 08/12  at  08:48 AM
Well, I suppose PZ's and Mark's contributions to the vast study of libertarian thought have the virtue of being more glib than the usual "Libertarians are Republicans who smoke pot," if equally wrong.

Head on over to Reason's "Hit & Run" blog some time to see just exactly how much support the Republican agenda gets from posters and commenters there. Whatever its merits or lack thereof, it's hardly "Republican-lite."



#35038: Adam Ierymenko — 08/12  at  08:49 AM
Libertarianism... depends on what you mean...

I take it to mean someone who is socially liberal and economically conservative; a free-market liberal.

I identify myself loosely as this, and I really don't think I'm all that kooky. I do share your dislike for all the other hokum that you list.

There are however some "libertarians" that I would like to distance myself from, such as:

1) Kooks who think that private citizens should be able to have private large-scale armies, own nuclear weapons, etc.

2) People who use libertarian rhetoric to evade liability. Liability for damage to others and their property is an inherent part of property rights. These are usually people who want to evade responsibility for pollution and environmental degradation.

3) Theocrats who dress up theocracy to sound like libertarianism. There are a lot of these in the Republican party.



's avatar #35039: PZ Myers — 08/12  at  08:53 AM
Stick a needle in my ear and try to cut me open, and I'll start screaming. I bet you would, too. The thing is there are a lot of lies and scam artists out there, and they spread a lot of nonsense.

Yes, I know how psychology suffers. My wife has a Ph.D. in psychology from the UO; one of her committee members was Ray Hyman.

Anecdotes about sperm count and back pain are not convincing. Those things fluctuate greatly as it is -- you could prescribe naked dancing at midnight to treat those two common problems, and find significant numbers of people who would testify to its efficacy.

Back and joint pain are probably the second most common problems quacks treat, because they are so variable and because the symptoms are subjective and susceptible to suggestion. Cancer is even better; it's also variable in its course, and all of the failures die before they can report you to the better business bureau.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris



#35041: — 08/12  at  09:02 AM
I agree with the BS factor in acupuncture, but there is a curious nagging phenomena that could use some research. Direct stimulation of a nerve ganglia with heat, as is done in acupuncture, could have a mitigating effect on pain. I had it done once and felt the same sensations that I do when the nerves in your mouth start to fire up after a xylocane injection wears off. It's not enough to lobby my HMO to start paying for it, but it is interesting. BTW I am not a neruologist nor do I play one on TV so take this with the authority it deserves.



#35042: Jeff — 08/12  at  09:04 AM
Man, this is my day for quackery. Maybe someone lobbed an acupuncture needle at my ear and now nuttiness is leaping out at me? It's not as painful as open heart surgery but probably deadlier in the long run.

Anyway, it's been commented on here, at PT, and on talk.origins about why creationists don't spend more time trying to "debunk" the Germ Theory of Disease. Apparently, surprisingly, alarmingly, they do, and no less a luminary than Bill Mahr is a devotee:

<blockquote>Here, I'm reading these right now: Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, Yoga for Dummies, Vitamin Bible, [Prescription for] Nutritional Healing, Rethinking Pasteur's Germ Theory--that's a good one. I'd like to go back and reread Dostoevsky, but... books are so long.</blockquote>

That is from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/572140/102-3369202-5125760



#35043: — 08/12  at  09:09 AM
I agree PZ - for what that might be worth. I would like to see folks take a scientific approach. If acupuncture is interesting to people and they think - from anecdotes - that it might be useful. I would like to see them do the studies to prove the efficacy AND to explain the mechanism of action.

All of the testimonial based claims just don't cut it, it is like reading Dembski - all poof and no evidence, no mechanism - no explanation.



#35044: Socar — 08/12  at  09:13 AM
Well, for what it's worth, the reason I was sent to have acupuncture done was that I couldn't sleep. I napped through the treatment itself, but noticed no lasting improvement whatsoever. (Insomnia is another good target for snake-oil cures: sleep is the most unpredictable beast of them all. I'm supposed to be asleep right now, in fact, but clearly am not.)



#35046: — 08/12  at  09:18 AM
Here's another fun bit of garbage in the "healing" community--DNA activation:
http://www.possibilitiesdna.com/home.html
http://www.dnaperfection.com/pages/1/index.htm

12-strands of DNA, but science just can't detect the 10 etheric strands. Poor, poor science--if only it would open it's mind... ;)



#35047: — 08/12  at  09:25 AM
I think there's a reason why alternative medicines are "alternative". It's because they don't have what it takes to become mainstream. I've found the QuackWatch site (below) very useful as an information resource.

http://www.quackwatch.org
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html



#35048: HP — 08/12  at  09:25 AM
Libertarianism is political quackery. Of course it seems reasonable. That's how quackery works. But it's not politics; it's wishful thinking.

Speaking of ghosts and psychology, have use seen this recent obit? http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/12354194.htm Robert Baker of the University of Kentucky. I wish I'd heard of him before his passing.



#35049: — 08/12  at  09:29 AM
Hi there: Been lurking here for quite a while, only now checking in. A quick PubMed search of acupuncture and fMRI (functional MRI) yields a number of good to mediocre papers on brain cortex stimulation with acupuncuture. Controls include false acupuncture sites. Some think that more study is needed for these "alternative" therapies, not less.
Science Goddess



#35050: gwax — 08/12  at  09:30 AM
Acupuncture points have some relation to the electrical conductivity of the skin and it appears to be the case that the needles manipulate this conductivity.



's avatar #35052: PZ Myers — 08/12  at  09:36 AM
I was wondering which of my targets would inspire the most complaining. Acupuncture seems to be winning.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris



#35053: notheory — 08/12  at  09:40 AM
yeah, if i were to complain, i'd complain that that was on the list. Of course i have neither first hand knowledge, nor any research to present, but i do enjoy complaining.

Anyway, i was just stopping to say "Man, PZ, you're cantankerous."

See? Complaining.

In conclusion, David Horowitz is an intellectual pygmy.



#35054: Socar — 08/12  at  09:41 AM
Hey, I'm not complaining (in case you thought I was). I was most disappointed in acupuncture. It failed to cure my insomnia. (I am still awake, you might note.) If anything, I've got complaints about acupuncture, itself.

Maybe I had to believe it would work, in order to get results. I tried, but it was like when I was eight, and I tried to believe in God. Nothing happened.



's avatar #35055: — 08/12  at  09:41 AM
What I always say to the acupuncturists/astrologers/UFOlovers etc, is that I have a totally open mind, and I would LOVE for their pet beliefs to be real, just show me the evidence. I then exclaim joyfully over each anecdote and try to explain how that anecdote doesn't prove a thing. Then when they bring out some half (at best) assed "study" with STATS and everything, I say WOW, that's nice and show how the stats are either wrong, skewed, based on VERY false premises, etc etc.

The thing is I am genuinely disappointed to find that every time I have examined any claims like these in even relatively little depth, I have found the holes, errors, and wishful thinking. What upsets me is that people can be so easily taken in, and that I've been robbed of another opportunity to learn something exciting about the universe. All I've learnt is that there is another data point on the humans are gullible chart.

I think PZ puts is very well in the most evil curse thread. There is a Scientist's Blessing, and damn is it good!



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