Misappropriation of science.

[innerbrat]

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Comments

[apiphile]

Ah yes. Why on earth should there be a short, convenient term for "things which are not supported by any empirical tests but persistently pushed as effective and aggressively defended by people with huge emotional and financial stakes in them"? Then we might be able to get onto the discussion part more quickly! What an awful word "woo" is.

[innerbrat]

Really? That's the definition? What's wrong with the word 'bullshit'?

[apiphile]

Bullshit is something different. Bullshit exists to deceive others; woo (or woo-woo, or whatever - it's deliberately childish because the premise "it just works, okay?" *HUFFSTAMP* is childish) exists to deceive the self as well.

[innerbrat]

Is it more childish than the "it just doesn't work, OK?" attitude with which I've seen it used?

[apiphile]

"It just doesn't work" = Multiple well-managed trials backing up the fact that is no better than placebo. I'm sorry that the sceptical community are apparently as tired of having "PROVE IT" barked at them as the feminist community are, but I am disappointed that one is worthy of your defence and the other isn't.

NB: I don't actually approve of lumping religion in with "woo" as my understanding is that religion is to do with culture and personal development whereas "woo" involves preaching something as a replacement for tested and proven medical treatments.

[innerbrat]

NB: I don't actually approve of lumping religion in with "woo" as my understanding is that religion is to do with culture and personal development whereas "woo" involves preaching something as a replacement for tested and proven medical treatments.
Noted.

Your definition of 'woo', therefore, doesn't coincide with the use in the example and doesn't explain the quantification, which appears to be arbitrary.

[apiphile]

That's because I wasn't taking issue with your opinions on your link, just your objections to what I find quite a useful term.

[innerbrat]

I got very annoyed and stressed out in the last hour, and I think it was because of that misunderstanding. Thanks for the claricifation and I'm sorry I snapped at you.

[apiphile]

I just deleted a four-paragraph COMMENT O'RAGE to your friend so I suspect we both need a cup of tea and some fresh air. O_O

[innerbrat]

I think you're speaking sense. No if only there was any of that 'fresh' air stuff around here.

[confusiontempst]

As someone who got their undergraduate degree in Pyschology, I have to ask:
What's so fundamentally wrong with meta analysises?

[davegodfrey]

This was going to be my question. Even as a non-statistician I can see the value of going through the literature picking apart papers with faults in control groups/stats/etc, and then lumping the results together.

It doesn't just have to be applied to medical trials either. It would be very interesting to see it applied to all kinds of science experiments.

[confusiontempst]

Oh, meta analysises aren't run like that, they're run against chunks of literature in attempts to find trends and other thigns that aren't significant on a paper by paper basis.

But see Mr Hickey's response as a good reason not to trust them.

[davegodfrey]

Ah. I think I'm confusing the "Cochrane Review" pat of things which might be different. But it was 8 in the morning before work and I hadn't had my coffee...

I'm probably still wrong though.