While it has some amusing jokes in it, this isn’t a rationality quote. This won’t help anyone think better, doesn’t clarify beliefs, doesn’t offer insight into anything. It’s only a way of laughing at the out-group, which is counterproductive even when they are wrong.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you say positive things about chiropractic before, so my guess is that that’s what you have in mind. There’s e.g. this from Cochrane, which is less than a ringing endorsement but can be described without actual dishonesty as “say[ing] it can produce positive medical effects”.
[EDITED to add: isn’t “chiropractic” a horrible word? It surely ought to be “chiropractice” or “chiropraxis” depending on how pretentiously classicist one wants to be. Perhaps it’s no worse than “physic” or “arithmetic”, but it always feels wrong to me.]
There’s a huge difference between grantic that a process has significant positive clinical effects and recommending the process.
To the extend that the first is true, I don’t think it makes sense to argue that chiropractic is bad pseudoscience.
To recommend it you have to compare it’s advantges and disadvantages to other forms of treatment and I don’t claim that it regularly wins out when you do that.
Graphical quote of the day—The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RQjQvxtmK8A/TFiXItuYZ7I/AAAAAAAADMs/fYApM83k26s/s1600/Woo+Table+v2.0.png
While it has some amusing jokes in it, this isn’t a rationality quote. This won’t help anyone think better, doesn’t clarify beliefs, doesn’t offer insight into anything. It’s only a way of laughing at the out-group, which is counterproductive even when they are wrong.
There’s at least one element on that map where cochrane says it can produce positive medical effects. Can you spot it?
Is acupuncture on the list? Meditation? I see chakras, but you can have all the useful parts of meditation without chakras.
Acupuncture is on the list. I even thought about something different.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you say positive things about chiropractic before, so my guess is that that’s what you have in mind. There’s e.g. this from Cochrane, which is less than a ringing endorsement but can be described without actual dishonesty as “say[ing] it can produce positive medical effects”.
[EDITED to add: isn’t “chiropractic” a horrible word? It surely ought to be “chiropractice” or “chiropraxis” depending on how pretentiously classicist one wants to be. Perhaps it’s no worse than “physic” or “arithmetic”, but it always feels wrong to me.]
There’s a huge difference between grantic that a process has significant positive clinical effects and recommending the process.
To the extend that the first is true, I don’t think it makes sense to argue that chiropractic is bad pseudoscience. To recommend it you have to compare it’s advantges and disadvantages to other forms of treatment and I don’t claim that it regularly wins out when you do that.