Comments on: The Argument from Antiquity

By: I predict…The Missoula Independent is slipping. | The Missoula Skeptical Society

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:47:26 +0000

[...] legitimate animal welfare organizations rather than the quaint anecdotes of conformational bias and arguments from antiquity of a lady who just does some cold readings to tell the owner that their cat with a broken limb is [...]

By: MikeR

MikeR — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 05:31:26 +0000

Can I reboot and start again ?

By: Kerry Maxwell

Kerry Maxwell — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:47:56 +0000

I’m waiting for the popular movement to restore average lifespans to their medieval chinese levels. Ancient wisdom say “Die young and leave disease ridden corpse”.

By: ellazimm

ellazimm — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:06:19 +0000

And weren’t witch burning, serfdom and women not being allowed to vote once considered tried and sensible policies? It’s another example of cherry picking the data: focus on that which supports your theory and ignore the rest.

I think it’s important to ask why is someone a denier, in this case of evidence based medicine. There has to be a reason that a person will wilfully ignore data.

By: Chris Noble

Chris Noble — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:10:41 +0000

One of the questions I ask is how did the ancient Chinese supposedly get their knowledge of acupuncture points and their relationship to disease and health.

It’s taken several decades and some large trials to establish a few results bordering on statistical significance with extremely small effect sizes.

This just isn’t something that can be discovered by trial and error even over thousands of years.

By: nfpendleton

nfpendleton — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:06:15 +0000

…And, children, that’s what we call an intellectual dope slap.

By: mattdick

mattdick — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:42:23 +0000

Acupuncture does too have a side effect. It has the side effect of allowing the targeted disease to progress unabated.

But this small issue should not be seen as a flaw, but rather a natural effect of dreaming up random treatments. It enhances, rather than detracts from this treatment’s overall beauty.

By: J Dale

J Dale — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:57:39 +0000

He also makes the comment that acupuncture has had very few side effects. Which is true, except I’d say that it has had very few effects as well. The side effects, however are also a good reason that people have moved away from bloodletting, since it did have a tendancy to kill its patience.

By: Jim Shaver

Jim Shaver — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:57:17 +0000

Well, sure, when you put it all logical like that.

(^_^)