WACKADOO: Probably the best explanation of alternative medicine ever.
Just read this paragraph from the excellent blog theotherendoftheleash.com, and couldn't resist quoting it here. The context is the author's (a learned ethologist and scientist) response to individuals HORRIFIED, just HORRIFIED, that she's choosing to use "alternative" methods like acupuncture and chiropractic alongside conventional veterinary medicine when treating her very active working Border Collies:
"If I haven’t lost you already in the land of “claptrap,” it gets worse. If you really want to hear how Dr. McConnell has gone “wackadoo” (I am becoming quite fond of that word), follow along for another post soon to come, about my reliance on Arnica, Traumeel and Zeel, homeopathic medicines which, to my mind, shouldn’t work at all, based on their proponents description of how they work. Except they do. Go figure."
I also love this little nugget, because it's an erudite way of phrasing something I've been arguing for YEARS now:
"One of the things that one learns when getting a Ph.D. is that “science” is a fluid creature, moving this way and that, depending on the state of our knowledge (and the culture) at the time. You also learn that there is a profound amount that we don’t know, that many of the things that we think we do know turn out to be wrong a few years down the road. In addition, it becomes stunningly clear that, at any given time, science may acknowledge a particular observation or result, but not understand the mechanism to explain it. It was my experience in graduate school that helped me see the difference between result and mechanism: not understanding why or how something works is not a good reason to argue that it doesn’t work."
"If I haven’t lost you already in the land of “claptrap,” it gets worse. If you really want to hear how Dr. McConnell has gone “wackadoo” (I am becoming quite fond of that word), follow along for another post soon to come, about my reliance on Arnica, Traumeel and Zeel, homeopathic medicines which, to my mind, shouldn’t work at all, based on their proponents description of how they work. Except they do. Go figure."
I also love this little nugget, because it's an erudite way of phrasing something I've been arguing for YEARS now:
"One of the things that one learns when getting a Ph.D. is that “science” is a fluid creature, moving this way and that, depending on the state of our knowledge (and the culture) at the time. You also learn that there is a profound amount that we don’t know, that many of the things that we think we do know turn out to be wrong a few years down the road. In addition, it becomes stunningly clear that, at any given time, science may acknowledge a particular observation or result, but not understand the mechanism to explain it. It was my experience in graduate school that helped me see the difference between result and mechanism: not understanding why or how something works is not a good reason to argue that it doesn’t work."