Indeed, and is the image posted supposed to be about the character “wonder woman” or gal gadot in a wonder woman costume?

Hint: look at the text

i think the miscommunication was mutual, but started with me, apologies.

An important distinction.

• I asked about the placebo effect, by name.
• You recited the placebo effect to me like i didn’t just mention it directly.
• I recited it back with extra detail , to make clear that i know what it means.
• You recited it again, with additional detail, and asked me if i misunderstood your reply containing the definition of the thing i was asking about, by name ?

You believe a layman is still able to discover something in medicine. We’ll see.

I think the belief that “the only place innovation can come from is trained scientists” is arrogant and unscientific, even in specialised fields.

Im not suggesting people will be producing testable medical end- products on the weekends.

Just that some things are worth testing/looking into, even if its suggested by someone not wearing a white coat.

If anything, the lack of low hanging fruit in the current common knowledge base should be an incentive to look in unorthodox places.

In addition there’s a wealth of historical information that is siloed by culture, language and accessibility (among other things).

That includes dusty old tomes in buried cities but also folk remedies passed down among small villages or families and everything in-between.

Various new snake oils (ivermectin or urine for cancer , COVID and whatnot) sure aren’t it.

Absolutely agree.

All low hanging fruits we know of.

This is one of those unknown unknown situations where there are things were don’t even know to be looking for.

Like microbes, yes we posited something like them, but the full implications the confirmation weren’t understood until after.

It’s known to potentially have an effect , even if the actual treatment administered was known(by third parties) to be inert and the effect wasnt the one originally planned.

Thats not the same as not working at all.

This is a core part of blind tests, the whole reason you test using a placebo is to isolate the effects that can’t be attributed to the actual medicine.

that’s the exact opposite of what i was saying.

Nowadays we can potentially evaluate what is considered “alternative” for actual benefit, and if benefit is found then elevate it to actual medical science.

Formal science isn’t the only source of potential hypotheses.

If it’s not considered beneficial we can discard (for now), perhaps a fresh look later when our tooling and understanding has improved.

That way we can try to gain benefit where possible, and definitively ( for the current level of technology and resource ) suggest people kindly not overdose on de-wormer because we’ve scientifically determined it’s stupid and potentially lethal.

https://youtu.be/MusyO7J2inM

Agreed,

Pretty sure anesthesia is similar, (in the not fully understanding the underlying mechanism)

ah, that makes sense.

Does that still apply if the underlying mechanism isn’t understood?

I know examples of this exist already , I’m wondering if “proof of effectiveness” really means just the effectiveness in this context.

I was also going to use aspirin as an example, there is also psychedelics as a treatment for various psychological ailments.

I’m also going to post a response i made to a comment further up.

I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here.

What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition

Thats my bad.

I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.

In generalities i was thinking more of how certain branches or offshoots of what was considered to be mainstream ( or mainstream adjacent ) science were later found to be scientifically provable.

An example of this is microbes.

They were posited over the years in varied forms by multiple independent people, but they weren’t really fully accepted until the invention of a way of actually observing them.

This is largely what medicine was prior to the current , formal scientific method. Local “medicine people” would have salves, cures, potions and other such concoctions passed down to apprentices, they might have some knowledge of how it works, but most of that knowledge would be in the practical application and treatment using said concoctions.

That’s not to dismiss this practice, the years of experience and experimentation (of a kind) was, in some cases, essentially a precursor to modern scientific method.

There are ways of analysing effects and positing theories without fully understanding how the underlying mechanism works.

Sometimes that leads to legitimate data around the effects of a medicine or treatment being dismissed as “alternative”, at least until formal experimentation is done and verified

As i said in another reply, I’m not saying it’s common, all i was saying was that it’s a possibility.

Agreed,

I was positing the possibility of a move from “alternative” to “scientifically recognised”, not that it was likely to happen.

Indeed, though I’d argue that’s an issue with modern academia as an industry rather than the scientific method itself.

edit: not that the scientific method doesn’t have it’s flaws.

That’s certainly a definition.

(As a genuine question) How dos that definition account for the placebo effect ?

edit: re-read this and realised it sounded significantly more confrontational than i intended, so i added bracket context.

Yeah, I saw it after I’d posted.

I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here.

What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition

Thats my bad.

I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.

Medical science is just that, medicine that follows the scientific method. (Or at least it’s supposed to).

The scientific method is basically testing guesses (sometimes educated ones) and seeing what happens.

There’s a whole lot of structure and guidelines, but testing guesses(hypotheses) is where it’s at mostly.

The current state of any science is usually “the best theory we have right now, given the data and resources available to us”

Some people hear that and think “look, they’re just guessing, why should I listen to them?” and thats absolutely valid.

Where that falls down is that they then go on to assume all guesses are equal and ignore the time and resources that went in to that current scientific best guess.

Is it always correct? no, is it more likely to be beneficial than a random social media post by an influencer with no medical expertise? Generally yes.

Im all on the “listen to the medical experts” train.

There are however some medicines and treatments that legitimately started as “alternative”.

A lot of it is horseshit though.

Also modern medicine isn’t infallible(nor the people that practice it).

Statistically though, it’s fucking high magic compared to most internet sourced diagnoses.

Sure, is that what happened here?

Get them some nix