In the comments to Comment on ECC 2010 Update Interview – MedicCast – Part I by firetender, there is an answer to the question I asked, Are you really that crazy? firetender defends being that crazy with –
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation … Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way:
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
– Richard Feynman.…and then!
Are you claiming that we will find out that morphine and fentanyl are not effective for pain management?
Are you claiming that we will find out that lorazepam and midazolam are not effective for sedation?
Are you claiming that we will find out that CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) and high-dose nitrates are not effective for hypertensive acute pulmonary edema?
Are you claiming that we will find out that high quality chest compressions and defibrillation are not effective for cardiac arrest?
Are you really that crazy?
Well, Rogue, to be honest with you, I might very well be, but I’ll embrace it based on your Feynman quote!
It’s quite possible a lot of the therapies and drugs you mention will be shown to do what they were advertised to do.
No.
Science is not an expert. Science is not received wisdom.
Science is a method of learning how nature works.
The therapies and drugs I mention have been shown to do what they were advertised to do.
Is your approach to medicine –
Wishful Thinking >>> Evidence
This is fatally flawed.
This is the basis for alternative medicine.
If we want it to work, it is good, because we mean well.
At least some in alternative medicine do mean well.
How does good intention allow us to ignore evidence?
How does good intention allow us to ignore research that makes it clear that alternative medicine is nothing but placebos?
At least, something labeled as a placebo is more honest.
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[youtube]iMDTcMD6pOw[/youtube]
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Or is your approach to medicine –
Anything is possible, therefore we can never know anything.
This is fatally flawed, too.
This is just a bunch of philosophers taking an idea to an absurd extreme, which is not meant to be a criticism of the absurd. This is purely a criticism of these philosophers and their philosophy.
It is true that we cannot know everything. Not being able to know everything does not mean that we cannot know anything.
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Another of my sidebar quotes, this related to this post modernist philosophy is –
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies . . . publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. – Alan Sokal – A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies.[1]
When there is no discrimination between reality and everything else, anything is possible. Just don’t try to make that work in the real world, because anything is possible doesn’t work in the real world.
Is it now dogma in Cultural Studies that there exists no external world? Or that there exists an external world but science obtains no knowledge of it?[1]
The real world does exist. If you disagree, then stop imagining that I am responding to your comment and maybe my response will no longer exist.
If Real Medicine A is shown to have adverse effects that were not discovered during initial testing, that does not invalidate science. This is a common argument among alternative medicine promoters.
If Real Medicine A is shown to have adverse effects that were not discovered during initial testing, that does not mean that Alternative Medicine A automatically works or that any other treatment automatically works.
If Real Medicine A is shown to have adverse effects that were not discovered during initial testing, that only affects Real Medicine A and the people using it.
If Politician A makes a false statement, that does not mean that his opponent – Politician B – is in any way correct. The determination of whether Politician B is correct depends on the validity of the statement of Politician B.
It doesn’t matter how wrong Politician A is. Politician B can also be wrong.
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To be continued in The Difference Between Doubt and Post Modernist Insanity – Part II and later continued in The Difference Between Doubt and Post Modernist Insanity – Part III.
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Footnotes:
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[1] A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies
Alan D. Sokal
Article
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Let’s just put this back into context for kicks: You quoted Feynman:
“Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation … Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way:.. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. – Richard Feynman.
Then you listed a bunch of drugs you use today that work. Fine. To which I replied:
“You are practicing the medicine of today. If we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, according to Feynman, then you’re sure to be proven wrong!
Let’s put it this way, Rogue, today, you really are Feynman’s expert!”
I’m trying my best to rally behind your hero, Rogue, really!
firetender,
You completely misunderstand what Feynman said. Or you are intentionally misrepresenting his statement.
Feynman is not stating that the results of research will be proven wrong. He is stating that received wisdom – that which comes from experts, who do not wish to be challenged – is wrong. The only wisdom worth anything is that which can be challenged. New research is continually challenging old research. The old research is not being reversed, or overturned, but modified and buttressed.
Your comment is clearly wrong.
Your lack of understanding sad.
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You claim that you are not anti-science, but you make these clearly anti-science comments. Science does not behave like a yo-yo, no matter how much you claim it does.
You are preaching anti-science.
Properly done, science will modify what we know. It is extremely rare that well done science is reversed. If you believe otherwise, please provide a large number of examples. One is the switch from acid as a cause of ulcers to bacteria as a cause of ulcers.
Go back to the first randomized medical trial by James Lind.
Where is the science that reverses that research?
This is the oldest true scientific medical study, but nothing has reversed it.
Why not?
I’m saying the same thing, ad nauseum here and the one not hearing is you.
I put out the direction that I want to head in what I see we’re all trying to do to our medics; upgrade them, here http://emsoutsideagitator.com/2010/10/the-ems-outside-agitator-and-rogue-medic-rumble-part-iii/
Quite frankly I want out of the scientific conversation. I conceded to you in the above mentioned blog that you won, ROGUE; YOU WON!
Science betrayed me yet I don’t turn my back on it. I have literally been spending my full-time (business is slow in the tourist industry) trying to adequately translate my experience into something a bit more workable for the upcoming generation.
DO YOU THINK FOR A SECOND I SHOWED UP HERE TO TOPPLE THE ESSENCE OF WHAT WE DO? I’M HERE TO TRY AND MAKE SENSE OF IT ON A HUMAN LEVEL — and work with it!.
It works like this: almost literally, one morning I woke up to realize that in the early years part of what I was doing was creating Cardiac Cripples. Furthermore the things I was given to “try” were often the agents of it. Everything in my tool box was placed there through the best scientific studies there were.
TODAY: Use this, we know it will make a difference, here are studies showing how.
TOMORROW: Well, based on what we learned from you, maybe it doesn’t work so hot.
AND THEN; Here, try this, our studies show it will work.
…and on and on BUILDING a body of scientific knowledge that CULMULATIVELY will make a difference. SCIENCE IS not FIXED, IT IS DYNAMIC.
YOU SAY: “You are preaching anti-science.
Properly done, science will modify what we know. It is extremely rare that well done science is reversed. If you believe otherwise, please provide a large number of examples. One is the switch from acid as a cause of ulcers to bacteria as a cause of ulcers. ”
Thanks for that, it’s a perfect illustration. All that acid we’ve been FIGHTING has produced a lot of perforated ulcers, pain and patients, hasn’t it? The science leading up to determining acid WAS the culprit was as valid as your science is TO YOU, today.
We are experimenters gathering knowledge. I can live with this and I’m searching for ways to blast you out of your myopia and see what we REALLY reflect so we can woirk with it.
Yes, I’m basically saying that evidence TODAY is showing the CONCEPTS you are dealing with now will be scientifically overthrown and one day, you too will awaken and “feel” betrayed. Of course you won’t have been because you are part of a much greater continuum, as was I, and that’s what I’m trying to look at.
My point is this: Feynman speaks directly to you. He’s saying, “Rogue, right now YOU are the expert that’s using aggressive treatment to ‘snap back’ people from death to life…”
(Pause while Rogue has a conniption fit about my speaking in parables rather than studies..)
“…and tomorrow the new breed will find that everything in your toolbox is useless (if not damaging)because the whole SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT of “snapping people back” is flawed. It causes more damage than it corrects. If my scientists are working right, they’re going to topple your world and you’ll be freezing and suspending your patients, in essence buying time THAT way because YOUR way and all the component tools you use to get there have been scientifiacally shown to be False Gods.”
Let me quote an intelligent guy; YOU. “received wisdom – that which comes from experts, who do not wish to be challenged – is wrong.”
I’m saying the paramedic system of which I was a part was based on recieved wisdon from experts. Twenty five years from now, you’ll be saying the same thing.
Love the time you’ve been given!