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Merged xkcd nails the paranormal

HansMustermann said:
Supposedly also in the USSR and China and rest of the Eastern block at the time, because if you ask someone from there what they got when they got ill, it turns out they got penicillin or such. The pharma conspiracy is so evil that it even makes countries which had free medical care and no profits to protect that way still prefer to treat than to cure, you know?
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Having said that, China and the ex-Comintern are hotbeds of herbalism and paranormal cures largely because pharmaceutical solutions are capital-intensive and their governments invented and promoted labour-intensive alternatives, whether they worked or not.

I have a reference copy of an English translation of the [Barefoot Doctor]'s Guide from China circa 1986, and they emphasize that 'western medicine' is still far, far, behind Chinese traditional medicine.

Essentially, the response to national poverty was to distribute propaganda that the cheap stuff worked better anyway. Add to that a little jingoism, and bob's your uncle.
 
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HansMustermann said:
You've never heard the pharma conspiracy theory before? E.g., that _all_ those companies and _all_ those doctors withhold some miracle cure, because it's more profitable to pretend it doesn't exist than to patent it and wipe the floor with the competitors for 20 years?

In those people's world, competitive advantage either doesn't exist. That or _everyone_ is wise enough to not make a trillion now with being the only ones who can cure cancer/diabetes/whatever, when they could be making millions by sticking to their share of the selling out-of-patent insulin for a lifetime.
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I find it even more incredible that out of all those doctors and all those heads of companies, not one of them has had a family member get cancer/diabetes/whatever. Or if they did, that the loved one was allowed to die to protect the money-making scheme.
 
HansMustermann said:
You're preaching to the choir.
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I know. I can't help it. I'm sorry.

HansMustermann said:
E.g., for relativity you don't even need to guess. There are people arguing basically that it's a scam and GPS actually works without it. In fact, there is no shortage of them.
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That sort of argument only works best, for those who know the least about the devices. The moment you are in a position where you either have to compete in the field of global tracking technologies, or in the field of innovating existing GPS systems, then it would quickly go out the window. The folks who know the most about GPS are the ones who are considering the impact Relativity has on them, the most.
 
blutoski said:
Having said that, China and the ex-Comintern are hotbeds of herbalism and paranormal cures largely because pharmaceutical solutions are capital-intensive and their governments invented and promoted labour-intensive alternatives, whether they worked or not.

I have a reference copy of an English translation of the [Barefoot Doctor]'s Guide from China circa 1986, and they emphasize that 'western medicine' is still far, far, behind Chinese traditional medicine.

Essentially, the response to national poverty was to distribute propaganda that the cheap stuff worked better anyway. Add to that a little jingoism, and bob's your uncle.
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Some where, some weren't. Depends on the country and time, I guess. The USSR wasn't quite so bad in some aspects (and far worse in others) AFAIK. They did take medical research in some different directions, e.g., phages, but I don't think they actually promoted paranormal at a state level. There was a bunch of woowo researched too, though.

Personally my wild guess -- though hopefully still Occam compliant -- is a bit different: that he or his source did read about something real, but was too stupid to understand what they've read. You probably know better than me that killing germs outside the body is actually a simpler affair. E.g., a strong oxidant can get rid of 99% of them. But ome people just don't understand the difference between killing germs on a petri dish and killing them in the body, basically. And I've seen the same mistake done about that when it came to western stuff too. Heck, just think all the people who think that because alcohol kills germs on the skin, getting plastered is a cure for pneumonia too. So I'm guessing that what happened is he heard of some disinfectant used on floors or FSM knows what else in Russia, and misunderstood it as some wonder medicine.
 
Wowbagger said:
That sort of argument only works best, for those who know the least about the devices. The moment you are in a position where you either have to compete in the field of global tracking technologies, or in the field of innovating existing GPS systems, then it would quickly go out the window. The folks who know the most about GPS are the ones who are considering the impact Relativity has on them, the most.
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No argument there, actually. That the people who believe the most woowoo and CTs on domain X, whatever X may be, are those who understand domain X the least... is pretty obvious, I think. Just looking at the stuff they come up with or present as proof, is usually ample evidence of that.
 
Monza said:
I find it even more incredible that out of all those doctors and all those heads of companies, not one of them has had a family member get cancer/diabetes/whatever. Or if they did, that the loved one was allowed to die to protect the money-making scheme.
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That's the argument I've been using on them too, but I can tell you first hand that even that won't deter a determined CT-er. Best case scenario they retreat into some nebulous "that's what they want you to believe" dodge, worst case they actually believe that someone would rather die horribly than reveal the secret.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
x-ray imagery technology was, to my knowledge, laughed at just as much as aura readings in its infancy?
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Well, not really. X-rays were discovered by real scientists, investigated sensibly, published about in peer reviewed journals, and almost immediately used in various applications because the results and utility were so incredibly obvious. They even won the first ever Nobel prize in physics just 6 years after the first publication about them. To give an idea of how little they were laughed at - Rontgen first observed them on November 8th 1895 (others, such as Tesla, had actually observed the phenomenon first, but did not publish papers until later, if at all), published the first paper on them in December the same year, and they were being used for medical imaging by February the next year.

More on topic, I agree with Blutoski. While we like to think that the xkcd cartoon represents reality, it really doesn't. In the UK, the NHS provides homeopathic care. The military (both US and UK I think) have used dowsing to search for landmines. Businesses all over the world use astrology, feng shui, and various other nonsense for serious business decisions. And the list goes on. The only one I can't think of an example for is oil prospecting (technically also crystal energy, but I think that's more an issue of semantics since they're simply using the word "energy" to mean something completely different. Imaginary, yes, but different).

The whole reason people hold these beliefs in the first place is because they don't think about them rationally. Given that, we should hardly expect them to act in a rational way regarding them, even when those actions could have consequences for their business.
 
HansMustermann said:
That's the argument I've been using on them too, but I can tell you first hand that even that won't deter a determined CT-er. Best case scenario they retreat into some nebulous "that's what they want you to believe" dodge, worst case they actually believe that someone would rather die horribly than reveal the secret.
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I always assumed they secretly gave their family member the cure that must not be mentioned and tried to pass it off as just a random spontaneous remission.
 
Tanstaafl said:
I always assumed they secretly gave their family member the cure that must not be mentioned and tried to pass it off as just a random spontaneous remission.
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While I'll agree that this would be a logical dodge, it's also strangely one I've yet to hear the pharma CT-ers use.
 
Cuddles said:
More on topic, I agree with Blutoski. While we like to think that the xkcd cartoon represents reality, it really doesn't. In the UK, the NHS provides homeopathic care. The military (both US and UK I think) have used dowsing to search for landmines. Businesses all over the world use astrology, feng shui, and various other nonsense for serious business decisions. And the list goes on. The only one I can't think of an example for is oil prospecting (technically also crystal energy, but I think that's more an issue of semantics since they're simply using the word "energy" to mean something completely different. Imaginary, yes, but different).
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I disagree with the highlighted part; businesses may be using those techniques, but they are not making a killing by doing so; the only people doing that are those peddling the woo (see the mouseover text).
 
Tanstaafl said:
I always assumed they secretly gave their family member the cure that must not be mentioned and tried to pass it off as just a random spontaneous remission.
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Yeah, but what if their family member actually dies? Then either the wonder cure is not working or they did not give it to them. Quite a conundrum...
 
Since they gave them the wonder cure secretly... still not a problem.
 
Tanstaafl said:
Since they gave them the wonder cure secretly... still not a problem.
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No, it's still a problem. The statistics would be off. If they aren't, the argument falls flat. Since the conspiracists are the ones with the claim, the burden of proof falls on them. Unless they can show significant difference in mortality by [fill in disease for which supposedly a miracle cure is being suppressed] in the "big pharma" community, the argument is invalid. See, problem! :D
 
I wouldn't be surprised if that's why they don't use that argument. Plus, I guess it makes the secret pharma conspiracy even more evil if they can sit and watch their own baby die rather than divulge the secret.
 
zooterkin said:
I disagree with the highlighted part; businesses may be using those techniques, but they are not making a killing by doing so; the only people doing that are those peddling the woo (see the mouseover text).
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But that's incorrect, and that's the point. The checkboxes in the cartoon are not qualified in that way.

Businesses are perfectly capable of making bad decisions, which is why the economic argument is invalid. Businesses fail all the time because they keep making the same mistakes over and over. My personal hell as a business management consultant was to watch good advice like: "The customers pay for all your costs," ignored and good hardworking people sink into debt and close their doors.

The good news is that the longer a business has been in operations, and the larger it is, the more professional and scientific its operations will be.

Just as a specific datapoint, Barry Beyerstein was involved in getting graphology prohibited as a HR management tool in Canada back in the 1980s. Prior to that, firing somebody on the basis of handwriting analysis was practically SOP for even major companies. My feeling is that the only reason it's as uncommon as it is today is because it's explicitly illegal, and small companies that are not aware of the law are the only ones still doing this.

And even today, failing a polygraph is a perfectly legitimate reason for employee termination for many fortune 500s and the US Government, even though the evidence is that it does not work at all.

My employer is one of the largest in Canada, and right now, they have at least two fulltime naturopaths on staff for 'wellness instruction' in BC and Alberta. Possibly another on retention in Toronto - not 100% sure about that. The flu season is here, so the company has also hired homeopaths to give 'vaccines'. Our EVP for facility operations banned Aspartame from the cafeterias company-wide last year. He probably makes a million annual salary for his 'proven ability to make good business decisions'.

I have personally come across several dowsers who have astronomical contracts with exploration plays in the AB oilpatch. It's all speculation, and any 'edge' over the competition is considered a good investment.
 
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CORed said:
In other words, these abilities exist, but their existence is indistinguishable from nonexistence.
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Well, they do try very hard to produce a distinction from nonexistence through experimentation. Sheldrake has made himself quite a nice career doing this.

To be frank: that part goes in their favour. (I concede that decreeing positive results for psi experiments such as remote viewing "must be the result of falsified data" is not collegial scientific conduct, and I think ultimately Ray Hyman has come to terms with this and we're stuck with the data as-is)

What they can't show is that it responds to intention, which means it's useless at this point.
 
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