The Wright Stuff, a daily discussion program in the UK, has really surpassed itself today. An assertion, meant to be humorous, that the heaviest bobsleigh team should always win because they fall faster merely shows a basic misunderstanding of physics. An assertion that thinking good thoughts makes good things happen and that this is a "real science not something I just made up" shows that quasi-religious superstitious beliefs are alive and well.
However the main thing was a discussion of that old favourite, homoeopathy, and specifically of whether or not it should be available funded by the NHS.
This started with what I find a rather startling statistical claim, that 80% of GPs believe it shouldn't be funded. Only 80%. Who are these other 20% who believe it should be? I want to know if my GP is one of them so that I can change to another, more rational, GP, if he is.
Following on from this the panel are happily promoting this nonsense, with streams of anecdotal evidence. There are occasional nods towards rationality with references to "if people believe it works" but on the whole it's a whole program of "my grandmother's asthma was cured by homoeopathy". It's dispiriting stuff.
Caller after caller is promoting alternate therapies and suggesting that far from having less money spent on it we should divert a far higher proportion of the NHS budget to it. The old canard of "evil pharmaceutical companies" versus "natural remedies" is trotted out regularly.
The current caller wants to scrap all the hospitals because "they are not there to heal people, they are there to make money". She wants to replace them with "holistic health centres" because everything, even cancer, will "cure itself" if people just believe and lead a spiritual life.
Every single caller and every member of the panel has had a "homoeopathy has helped me/ my grandmother/ my nephew/ my cat" tale to tell.
The only critical thing at all was from the host himself who referred to a friend who contracted malaria because he was taking homoeopathic anti-malarial pills instead of ones that actually do anything. But even the host has insisted throughout as referring to it as "taking very small amounts" of a drug. He isn't a stupid man so he must know that "very small amounts" here means "none", that the dilution levels go billions of times past the Avogadro limit and so leave no molecules at all of the original substance.
Another panellist has trotted out the "science doesn't know everything" line. They have consistently referred to the treatments as "not proven to work" rather than the more accurate "proven not to work". One of them has actually, in the same week that we have had this story , happily promoted Chinese medicine as being as valid as western medicine.
This stream of uncritical belief in fairy tales is depressing.
And now I'm so depressed I think I'll go away and take a homoeopathic suicide pill. Much good may it do me.
However the main thing was a discussion of that old favourite, homoeopathy, and specifically of whether or not it should be available funded by the NHS.
This started with what I find a rather startling statistical claim, that 80% of GPs believe it shouldn't be funded. Only 80%. Who are these other 20% who believe it should be? I want to know if my GP is one of them so that I can change to another, more rational, GP, if he is.
Following on from this the panel are happily promoting this nonsense, with streams of anecdotal evidence. There are occasional nods towards rationality with references to "if people believe it works" but on the whole it's a whole program of "my grandmother's asthma was cured by homoeopathy". It's dispiriting stuff.
Caller after caller is promoting alternate therapies and suggesting that far from having less money spent on it we should divert a far higher proportion of the NHS budget to it. The old canard of "evil pharmaceutical companies" versus "natural remedies" is trotted out regularly.
The current caller wants to scrap all the hospitals because "they are not there to heal people, they are there to make money". She wants to replace them with "holistic health centres" because everything, even cancer, will "cure itself" if people just believe and lead a spiritual life.
Every single caller and every member of the panel has had a "homoeopathy has helped me/ my grandmother/ my nephew/ my cat" tale to tell.
The only critical thing at all was from the host himself who referred to a friend who contracted malaria because he was taking homoeopathic anti-malarial pills instead of ones that actually do anything. But even the host has insisted throughout as referring to it as "taking very small amounts" of a drug. He isn't a stupid man so he must know that "very small amounts" here means "none", that the dilution levels go billions of times past the Avogadro limit and so leave no molecules at all of the original substance.
Another panellist has trotted out the "science doesn't know everything" line. They have consistently referred to the treatments as "not proven to work" rather than the more accurate "proven not to work". One of them has actually, in the same week that we have had this story , happily promoted Chinese medicine as being as valid as western medicine.
This stream of uncritical belief in fairy tales is depressing.
And now I'm so depressed I think I'll go away and take a homoeopathic suicide pill. Much good may it do me.
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