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Coincidence? I think not…but maybe I should.
Posted on July 23rd, 2008 8 commentsAnecdotes are entertaining and can be pretty convincing — I’ve been caught up in many of them myself — but they’re no substitute for scientifically-derived evidence. Michael Shermer explains why they’re so powerful:
The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.
[Scientific American via RichardDawkins.net]
Old habits die hard. Unfortunately, humans don’t. What’s the Harm? documents cases where critical thinking — as opposed to magical thinking, superstition, or trust in authority — could have saved people’s health, money, or life.
8 responses to “Coincidence? I think not…but maybe I should.”
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There’s harm in everything. I could die by a piano falling on my head tomorrow. Nothing is ever 100% safe and every human is different.
You need to read “A Peaceful Warrior.” There are no ordinary moments.
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What’s important is having the ability to estimate the likelihood of harm.
You don’t knowingly engage in dangerous behavior like running across busy streets without looking for cars first, do you? Of course not. That would be stupid. You know the chances of being hurt or killed doing that are pretty high. You also wouldn’t slap your grandma around to try to exorcise “demons” that are causing her arthritis, because you know that “demons” don’t cause arthritis. How do you know that? Science.
Death by piano is extremely rare, while death or paralysis by stroke caused by arterial dissection during chiropractic neck adjustments in otherwise healthy (and often young) people is common enough that I know better than to go anywhere near a chiropractor for that kind of treatment.
Similarly, the chance of, say, a homeopathic treatment of having any effect whatsoever on a person’s cancer is exactly 0%. If they follow their faith in homeopathy rather than seek proven treatments in scientific medicine, their health will deteriorate just as if they had done nothing at all, while there’s a good chance that their cancer could be mitigated or even eradicated entirely if they use evidence-based medicine, which they sometimes fall back on anyway after it’s too late to do the good it could have done earlier while they were wasting their time and money with woo-woo treatments.
Unnecessary chelation therapy for “toxins” has killed many people, as documented at What’s the Harm?. Life is dangerous enough without subjecting oneself to ineffective or harmful treatments when treatments exist that have been developed through science to cause the least harm possible and that have proven efficacy.
As you’ve acknowledged, there are very few sure things. That’s why it’s important to have a grasp of probability, because without it you’re liable to believe that anything is just as likely as any other to help or harm you, which just isn’t the way it works.
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Dude…you don’t know my grandma. I’d slap her around.
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Oh yes, and by the way…chemo killed my grandpa. That’s science for ya sometimes!!! It was his time, however, I can’t help but feel if he wouldn’t have ravaged his system with synthetic materials that he would have been here just a bit longer.
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His death was directly caused by the chemo? Or he began chemo, and then later died? They’re not necessarily the same thing.
Chemo is harsh, but it has a proven track record with many successes as well as many failures. It’s a measured risk that he willingly undertook, right? Some people opt to avoid chemo and let the cancer take its course; some die quickly, others live for quite a while. There’s no way of knowing how long a person would have survived the cancer without chemo once they begin chemo. There must also be a statistical probability of complications from chemo causing death in cases where the cause of death can be directly attributed to chemo.
Chemo is risky, but does that mean that chemo is bad for everyone? More or less risky than untreated cancer? How would we know? We do, however, know the effectiveness of all non-evidenced-based (sometimes called “alternative”) treatments in treating cancer: zero.
It seems like you’re implying that because science doesn’t always solve the problems it attempts to solve and sometimes causes other problems, that it’s no more helpful than nonscientific approaches. That’s not true. Again, it’s a matter of probability, and not all risks are equal.
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Truth is a matter of perception yes? Perception is a matter of how we have trained our minds to react to the world yes?
I’m not denying science in any way…I’m saying that every human is different. Perhaps for one, chemo works, perhaps for another reiki. Althought there may not be any “data” I know a handful of people who have done all alternative therapies and no longer have cancer. So was it magic? What happened? Maybe the human body does just know how to take care of itself sometimes.
I surround myself with people who use their intuition and what works for them. You surround yourself with reading blogs and internet articles and reading. Neither is good, nor bad. There is no judgement. But we are both products of our environment, beliefs and experiences. That’s just human nature. And human nature tells me that I’m glad we have each other to keep playing in this big grand illusion of life.
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Sure, truth is a matter of perception, if you subscribe to relativism, which I don’t. Even if you believe that, shouldn’t an overwhelming consensus, especially a scientific one, weigh more heavily than a personal opinion when evaluating an assertion’s truth? I believe that truth is something that is outside any one person’s belief or opinion. Think about the consequences of believing that truth is always completely subjective. That allows you to wander around in a fantasy completely of your own making, if you so choose…which may be blissful and fulfilling, but it’s also insane. While there may be no such thing as “objective reality,” there is definitely a “consensus reality” upon which the overwhelming majority of people agree. Things like the fact that the ground is solid under our feet, the earth is shaped like a sphere… Those who deny consensus reality are marginalized, and in most cases rightly so. Saying that truth is a matter of perception just redefines truth to be the same as belief, which makes the word “truth” meaningless.
When I used the word “truth,” I was referring to something known. Knowledge is belief backed by evidence. We know that evidence-based medicine is more effective than “alternative medicine.” Even if you don’t believe that, it can be repeatedly and consistently demonstrated to you. You can then choose to ignore the evidence, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Cancer can go into spontaneous remission. Yes, in some cases the body can fend cancer off without outside influence. But correlation does not equal causation. The alternative therapies played just as much a part in the healing process as the fact that they tied their shoes before leaving the house and went to sleep when they were tired, and there’s absolutely no evidence to show otherwise. Things like lying down and relaxing can reduce stress, which has a measurable effect on the nervous and immune systems, but the person waving their hands around nearby isn’t adding anything to that process but showmanship. People receiving reiki, acupuncture, and the like benefit from the relaxation response and the placebo effect that comes with their belief in its efficacy, but that’s all it is.
“What works for them” is different to “what they believe works for them,” and anyone who is willing to accept things without evidence cannot possibly tell the difference. I didn’t call anything “good” or “bad.” There’s opinion and there’s fact, and I stay in that realm. There is no judgment involved — no subjectivity.
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Why so serious?
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Jess July 23rd, 2008 at 23:07