My complaint is over the treatment I have recieved for pointing out that the word "different" means "not the same." Every person who has contacted me from the BBC has been unbelievably patronizing. This wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so demonstrably, unequivocably, wrong.
The original website contained a description of complementary medicine. Under a bold-faced heading, "How is it different?," it proceeded to describe a number of features that it _shares_ with scientific medicine. Indeed, in three paragraphs of text, the only difference was one word - spirituality. The other differences listed were things like, "cares about a patient's whole well-being" and "aims to prevent disease."
Any competent reader of English understands that when you provide a title, "How is it different," then the following paragraph explains differences. And if CAM is different because it cares about whole well-being and aims to prevent disease, then, by logical necessity, standard medicine must not care about these goals. That is what different means: not the same.
When I pointed out that was insulting to the entire medical field, and wrong to boot, I was told that I don't understand what the word different means.
Now the website has been changed. And yet, the BBC continues to assert that the only problem with the original text was my inability to read English.
For example, Ethan Kennedy writes:
"Although I concede that "different" can be understood in the sense that you ascribe to it I do feel that it wasn't intended in that sense and the doctors who periodically review the site don't seem to have understood it in that sense either."
This is ludicrous. So much so that it is insulting. Please explain to me how it is possible to describe a list of features as "differences" when you meant "similarities." Please explain why the BBC cannot simply admit it made a mistake in the common, ordinary usuage of a common, ordinary word.
Please ask Mr. Kennedy to explain what sense of the word different means "the same."
We're not arguing over the realities of CAM here; we are arguing over the definition of an ordinary word. And incidentally, over the integrity of a institution that cannot admit even the slightest editorial mistake.
You insulted doctors. You changed it, after I complained many times. Now I would like you to admit that I was correct about the meaning of the word different, and that you were wrong. Then, perhaps, you can meditate on the mind-set that required your institution to be so insultinginly patronizing to someone who pointed out a simple error on your behalf.
