>If you were previously skeptical that the treatment did anything, you shouldn’t take the fact that your shit now has a surprising form that you didn’t expect as evidence that the treatment provides the medical benefits it’s claimed.
Isn’t this conditional on why you think it would not help? If you believe that is does nothign and therefore doesn’t work then it doing a weird thing should make one less sure of any claims which on the balance ignorant 50:50 would be nearer to it working thhan a strong stand against. Yes it is good to focus on does the weird thing help or hinder but surprise about the mechanism is still surprise.
When it comes to popular treatments there are reasons why other people use those treatments. Generally, other people using a treatment is some evidence that it works. If the other people however use the treatment because it produces big effects in short time frames that have nothing to do with health benefits that means them using the treatment is less evidence that it works.
I do think that in the world we are living there’s a sizeable number of approaches in the New Age / alternative medicine category that share “surprising short term effect” + “doesn’t uphold promises about long term effects” and that it’s useful to warn people about them when you tell them they should be more willing to accept evidence that certain alternative medicine interventions can have positive effects.
>If you were previously skeptical that the treatment did anything, you shouldn’t take the fact that your shit now has a surprising form that you didn’t expect as evidence that the treatment provides the medical benefits it’s claimed.
Isn’t this conditional on why you think it would not help? If you believe that is does nothign and therefore doesn’t work then it doing a weird thing should make one less sure of any claims which on the balance ignorant 50:50 would be nearer to it working thhan a strong stand against. Yes it is good to focus on does the weird thing help or hinder but surprise about the mechanism is still surprise.
When it comes to popular treatments there are reasons why other people use those treatments. Generally, other people using a treatment is some evidence that it works. If the other people however use the treatment because it produces big effects in short time frames that have nothing to do with health benefits that means them using the treatment is less evidence that it works.
I do think that in the world we are living there’s a sizeable number of approaches in the New Age / alternative medicine category that share “surprising short term effect” + “doesn’t uphold promises about long term effects” and that it’s useful to warn people about them when you tell them they should be more willing to accept evidence that certain alternative medicine interventions can have positive effects.