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Post by Smithee on Mar 6, 2012 13:51:47 GMT 10
Pseudoscience harming unis news.ninemsn.com.au/health/8429693/pseudoscience-harming-unis-journal“Pseudoscientific health courses are undermining the credibility of Australian universities, according to an editorial in a leading medical journal. Homeopathy, iridology, reflexology, kinesiology, healing touch therapy, aromatherapy and energy medicine are offered at more than a third of universities.” |
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Post by Smithee on Mar 6, 2012 14:15:06 GMT 10
Evolutionary Psychology: Science or Pseudoscience? scienceweek.com/editorials.htm#051203"A typical "proof" paradigm in evolutionary psychology might be as follows (constructed by us for this text): Because hoarding food would have increased chances for survival in lean times, our Pleistocene ancestors should have developed by natural selection an adaptive tendency to hoard food. Since the modern era is too close to the Pleistocene for any substantial biological evolution to have occurred, modern behavior should have strong Pleistocene adaptive components. One assumption is that universality of a behavior constitutes evidence of a biologically evolved adaptation. A current survey of 10,000 households in 50 states shows that on average, when economically possible, people tend to store excess food in quantity in kitchen cupboards. The hypothesis of evolution of this adaptive behavior by natural selection is thus considered to be confirmed. Problems: Do we know enough about Pleistocene behavior to say that a survey of current behavior confirms anything about any Pleistocene evolutionary scheme? Are the conclusions here already implicit in the premises? Is universality of a behavior pattern evidence of biological evolutionary adaptation? Is this science or rhetoric? Aside from questions about "confirmation", how is this game played? Apparently, the first thing is to do a small pilot survey of maybe 100 households. If one obtains results that contradict the hypothesis, one either puts the hypothesis in a drawer for "future study" and moves on to another proposed evolved Pleistocene adaptive behavior, or one looks for "faults" in the details of the survey sample or data gathering and repeats the study. The probability is high that eventually some behavioral survey will be made that "confirms" some Pleistocene evolutionary adaptation scheme. A much larger study is then designed and hopefully funded, and the general outcome is that advocates of the theoretical approach of evolutionary psychology will tend to publish research papers supporting their formulated hypotheses, and tend not to publish research papers that contradict biological determinism of particular behavior patterns." |
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Post by brandt on Mar 6, 2012 16:04:51 GMT 10
The probability of the hypothesis given the data is not the same as the probability of the data given the hypothesis.
Google that.
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Post by Smithee on Apr 9, 2012 19:43:44 GMT 10
Pseudoscience harming unis news.ninemsn.com.au/health/8429693/pseudoscience-harming-unis-journal“Pseudoscientific health courses are undermining the credibility of Australian universities, according to an editorial in a leading medical journal. Homeopathy, iridology, reflexology, kinesiology, healing touch therapy, aromatherapy and energy medicine are offered at more than a third of universities.” Teaching - And Defending - Pseudoscience In Universities Written by Dr. Steven Novella Friday, 10 February 2012 09:00 "I acknowledge that professor Iain Graham has a difficult task before him. He has to come up with some way to defend the practice of his university (Southern Cross University, SCU, in Australia) of teaching pseudoscience as if it were real medicine. This is no easy feat (at least not for the intellectually honest and rigorous). Universities in Australia have been coming under fire recently for teaching so-called alternative medicine. A group called the Friends of Science in Medicine formed to publicly complain about the slipping science standards represented by the infiltration of medical pseudoscience into universities. Of course, proponents are not backing off voluntarily. They are marshaling all the logical fallacies and distorted facts in their arsenal to defend their profitable nonsense." "I get the sense that Professor Graham doesn't even know what homeopathy is, yet he feels comfortable defending its inclusion at his university. He then waves his hands around saying, "It's a very political, emotive, cultural and complex issue." No, actually it isn't. Despite Graham's attempt at misdirection and befuddlement, trying to muddy the waters of legitimate criticism, with homeopathy the issue is quite simple. Homeopathy is made up nonsense. It never had a lick of science behind it. Two centuries of science since Hahnemann invented homeopathy have clearly shown that it is impossible, as far as we can ever say in science. For homeopathy to be true major sections of physics, chemistry, and biology would have to be rewritten. It is the ultimate extraordinary claim. Graham's dismissal of skepticism on the grounds that homeopathy has not been adequately studied is also factually incorrect. Just go to PubMed and punch in "homeopathy." Plenty of studies come up. Most are not good, but some are well designed. There is also, you will notice, a pretty reliable relationship between how rigorous a study of homeopathy is and how negative the results are. Even when you put plausibility aside and just look at the clinical evidence, homeopathy does not work. Further, Graham tries the dodge that, "Studies are often small and don't lend themselves to standard research trials." Really? Why is that, exactly? Homeopathic remedies are pills. Pills are really easy to give as placebos. You can even do the whole homeopathic individualization of treatment, just swap out the homeopathic placebos with other placebos and compare the groups. Whenever this is done rigorously - no difference. Homeopathic pills are placebos. I expect gross misstatements of fact, logical fallacies, bias and distortion in the defense of pseudoscience by true believers. This is true almost by definition. You cannot use sound arguments to defend false positions, so you have to distort the facts or use bad logic. But it is still shocking when it comes from someone high up in the hierarchy of an academic institution. At least Professor Graham has highlighted the problem for all the world to see." |
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