Thread: Indian man 'survives without food or water for decades'

Originally Posted by juroara

Okay, I can understand that. But that wasn't the experiment . Each child was rubbed with the poisonous plant and each child was rubbed with a non-poisonous plant. The arm that developed the minor rash (it wasn't poison ivy) was rubbed with the non-poisonous plant, and the arm rubbed with the poisonous plant, developed no symptoms. Why children? I don't know. Except that maybe they are extremely gullible and perfect subjects for the placebo effect. The children were lied to ahead of time which plant was poisonous and which wasn't.

Well that sounds a lot less remarkable than the way you had originally put it. It is kind of old news that certain individuals can develop a light rash if they truly believe it will happen and then they worry about it. And the fact that these were children would probably make them more suceptible to this phenomenon. As for not developing the rash, some people are simply not allergic to poison ivy. I used to get it when I was a kid, but my brothers and my friends who were frolicking in the poison ivy right next to me would be unscathed. Now that I've had it so many times I think I'm immune to it because I haven't had it since I was in about second grade but I still spend a lot of time around it. He would have to test a large amount of kids and he would first need to make sure they were allergic to the plant before he can prove anything with this test.

Originally Posted by juroara

I don't think so. Not if its working at the cellular level.

Maybe it's more powerful for you, but for the average individual the resutls usually range from subtle to completely ineffective. And what do you mean working at the cellular level? When is it not working at the cellular level?

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

These links here are very interesting articles that are very applicable. Because you don't understand what I mean, you say that I am backpedaling. These articles are about science, avery enjoyable and enlightening read:

The limitations of science and its methods

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

You believe in scientism, which is not a truly scientific attitude.
When you say that I am backpedaling, that is because you cannot see beyond your scientism.
Because I do not think that science is the sole authority in answering the questions of reality.
So, by you always trying to debate on your terms, by demanding only scientific evidence,
which is from a paradigm I do not subscribe,
I have to point out that your dogma is not the only interpretation or explanation of phenomena.
And by insisting that the debates end up on your terms, from a position of scientism,
our arguments tend to devolve also into scientism and pseudoscience.
And then you say that I am back pedaling.
The remark I made that prompted you to accuse me of backpedaling
was not a response to my conversation, but offering an insight into your and
Juroara's conversation. But on retrospect, it is equally applicable to my conversation.

Haha, I've never heard it put that way before. I'm a scientismist? Just to clear things up, I said you back pedal a lot based off of your collective postings that I have noticed since I've been a member here. Your posts usually catch my attention because they sometimes claim things that are so obviously untrue, then you kind of change your stance once you are challenged. I can remember one post in particular where you claimed that Saddam Hussein didn't get a trial and then that George Bush had him beheaded in public, I believe you also claimed George Bush was responsible for 9/11 in that post. That was so far from the truth that I had to blink really hard before I read it again to make sure I got it right. That's just one example of my first encounter with you, so it isn't just this thread that makes me say that.

As for the limitations of science, I agree with you to an extent. Science can't really know what is beyond our senses, if anything exists beyond our senses. I will say however, technology could possibly give a glimpse into realms that we can't physically sense. With technology we can see colors that are naturally beyond our spectrum of visible light. Mathematics tells us that there are dimensions that we can't sense or even comprehend. Given enough time, I can't justify putting a limitation on science that says it can't know the universe. The list of limitations deal mostly with subjective, human issues. Human emotions and ideas have no effect on the overall composition of the universe. They are more like limitations of humans rather than science itself. The scientific method would work equally well for an alien species. So does our subjective need to know "why" and our unique set of morals also limit an aliens use of science to explain the universe?

One of the listed limitations is that science can tell "how" but not "why." Why does it need to explain "why?" That is purely a human need and it doesn't limit sciences ability to know the true state of a natural phenomenon. Another limitation they listed is that science is amoral. That is a true statement, but not necessarily a limitation. We aren't supposed to use the scientific method to make everyday, human decisions. Science can however, explain the origin of morality and the development of morality. You can also use reason and logic to argue for a universal set of morals inherent to all humans despite their cultural upbrining. Another limitation they had is that science can't deal with the unique. That is simply not true. If a unique event is measured or observed, it falls into the realm of science. Science usually does not bother with unique, "one-of-a-kind" situations because they are usually just random events that have no special meaning and are not worthy of study. The one about the scientific method being limited by time is also true, but that doesn't mean a scientific explanation can't be formulated. Note that most of these limitations are a critique of the scientific method rather than science in general. I think the only true, timeless limitation presented in that article is the limitation of our senses, though that may be overcome by technology given enough time.

So you don't subscribe to the scientific method. What do you subscribe to? The extreme bias of your own mind? The intuition of your feelings at the present moment? Perhaps that's why you are so wishy-washy. Is it so much to ask for a rational argument? Something based in reason and logic if you don't have evidence? You are trying to use these articles to validate your misguided belief system, but I don't think either one is an argument for the existence of supernatural forces, if that's what you are getting at. What you are doing is advocating a philosophy of ignorance and then grasping for any pit-falls of the opposing viewpoint to justify your belief. What are your motivations? Logically your viewpoint makes no sense. Not only does it not make sense, but it can be downright dangerous to teach people to disregard science, unless you only make exceptions for certain situations. Then I would ask why do you make exceptions? Science explains perfectly well that a man cannot survive a lifetime with no food or water, why are you so quick to denouce the scientific viewpoint in this case? It makes more sense to side with the rational idea first, and then lay the burden of proof on the irrational idea, that way you'll know for sure which one is right. If the irrational idea proves itself, your knowledge shifts.

I also think you are confused about the definiton of dogma.

Like I said, I just did a quick search, and found a lot of stuff saying that.

Well you've at least included the sources which is something. However, I took a look at them and they are extremely dubious (ZOMG SCIENCE COVERUP).

I was only able to take a very quick glance at the first link but the figures given out are comletely at odds with those gleaned from far more reliable sources such as the CDC or WHO. The tone is also not impartial which you would expect from a legitimate scientific publication, and the cited "Nutrition Institute of America" on page 2 does not appear to have any credibility. Indeed there is some reference to it being a questionable organisation, though I've yet to be able to find out on what basis this claim is made.

The citations are extremely sparse and does not provide adequate references for the figures, which would result in the publication being rejected in any serious scientific journal. Furthermore I did notice that the one citation I checked was published in PubMed but also had a rebuttal written criticising the study. I haven't been able to check the papers myself yet but the credibility of the study would appear to be under some doubt.

Additionally the journalism was very bad, swapping between figures and sources, and failing to reference them. For example

"The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year"
Easily falsified; see more reliable figures from WHO for example.

"It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697)"
Again, completely false.

"This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year"
No reference for what these reactions were is given. These could be very common but mild side-effects such as nausea or headaches, but the implication is that these are serious reactions.

To top it all off, you even end up with the site claiming that about 40% of all deaths are due to medical error. Approximately 2 out of 5 people in the U.S. dying of medical errors? No one can seriously believe that ... right? Those figures are so at odds with ones from credible sources that it's laughable.

So she isn't just pulling it out of her ass, apparently there are a lot of articles saying things like that.

There may well be many articles saying that, but quantity has no bearing on facts. As I said, many people claim Elvis is still alive, or they've been visited by UFOs, or any number of experiences. That doesn't make them true. The number of people making a claim is irrelevant, it's only the evidence behind the claims that carries weight.

The problem here is basically, people who don't know about science are unable to understand what is a good source and what is a bad one. It's easy to use (or misuse) terminology to give the impression of knowing what you're talking about. It's very understandable why people get confused over this, but unfortunately such people lack the expertise to realise why these sources are rejected by science, leading to the conspiracy theories bullshit.

Essentially this why people ignorant of science should not criticise the methodology. You don't know good science from bad science. You don't understand the methodology by which real scientists separate the two (or even the basic premises behind science, despite what juroara mistakenly believes she knows). You don't know how to tell someone who appears to be a scientist (like 'Dr' Kent Hovind) from a real scientist who knows what they are talking about. And this is why such opinions on scientific matters are useless.

Intelligent people would realise if they don't know much about science, they are best keeping quiet on the subject instead of accusing an entire domain of coverups because they read something else somewhere, instead leaving it to actual scientists to figure out what is true from what is false, which they have a very good record of doing. There is a reason why becoming a scientist involves a large amount of training.

Edit: This stuff isn't a problem in the scientific domain simply because it won't be taken seriously due to the massive flaws. It is however a huge pain when someone has to explain to those who do not understand science why the article is bad and not taken seriously, It is a waste of time because science has already done the hard part of figuring out what is accurate or not.

Edit: It's also far harder to debunk this than it is to link to or write this crap in the first place.

I actually kind of suspect that the numbers they took may have been world wide instances of it. In which case 800,000 deaths a year, world wide from medical errors and stuff sounds reasonable. That would still put it fairly high on the causes of death however.

Scientist American claims to be a scientific magazine and they claim 200,000 people die each year from medical mistakes and infections.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...ror-2009-08-10

WHO actually backs that claim of about a 100,000 people die each year from medical mistakes. The other 100,000 would be from infections.

http://www.who.int/patientsafety/inf...ass_orange.pdf

So even if you remove the infections you are still left with 100,000 deaths a year. Which would still put it in the top 5. Even if you are unsure of some of the sources, the general trend seems to be that it is fairly high.

I suspect the reason its not listed on most lists for leading causes of death, is because most lists don't group medical mistakes as a cause. If a mistake causes you to have heart failure, you are counted as having died from heart failure, not medical mistake.