That’s nearly a contradiction in terms. Mainstream medicine, as a practice, refuses empirical experimentation on particular patients. Here’s the disease. Here is the cookbook cure that has been sanctioned by some professional board, with backing by a billion dollar study that shows some statistical advantage over a whole population. If there is no such study, then the prescription is a shrug and a pat on the head.
If no study shows that any treatment has a particular advantage over placebo, many doctors will prescribe a placebo. Prescribing actual medicines at random would be a bad idea, since there’s no reason to arbitrarily privilege the hypothesis that any particular treatment will help you more than a placebo, and a placebo has less danger of side effects. Of course, you can always go to a drugstore and buy mainstream medicines which have been found to be useful for something to test on yourself, and like alternative medicine, this will give you something to point at when you get better, but it’s not a very wise treatment plan.
If it works for you, then it works for you. No billion dollar study required, and it doesn’t matter what the statistical averages are when you determine it works for you. That is the problem to be solved—an individual’s problem. Given that he and no one else has possession of the system requiring fixing, he is in a very good position to do “research” to fix his problem, if he is not prevented by regulations and institutions barring him from tests, materials, and treatments. He has much more motivation to fix the problem than his doctor, who has a great many more compelling interests than healing his patient.
If mere motivation was enough to overcome bias and incompetence at processing evidence, we would have no need for this site at all.
The advantage of “alternative medicine” is that you can always turn to it for a harmless placebo, but this is much less useful once you know that it’s what the advantage actually is.
If no study shows that any treatment has a particular advantage over placebo, many doctors will prescribe a placebo. Prescribing actual medicines at random would be a bad idea, since there’s no reason to arbitrarily privilege the hypothesis that any particular treatment will help you more than a placebo, and a placebo has less danger of side effects. Of course, you can always go to a drugstore and buy mainstream medicines which have been found to be useful for something to test on yourself, and like alternative medicine, this will give you something to point at when you get better, but it’s not a very wise treatment plan.
If mere motivation was enough to overcome bias and incompetence at processing evidence, we would have no need for this site at all.
The advantage of “alternative medicine” is that you can always turn to it for a harmless placebo, but this is much less useful once you know that it’s what the advantage actually is.