Anti-woo commentators are a bunch of smug and condescending...

[naturallyselected]

439. I can only speak for myself

This is why the alternative medicine/ anti-pharma posts bother me. They remind me of the Fox News hosts that say global warming is a hoax because they drove to work in a snowstorm.

Has the drug approval process been corrupted by the desire for profit? Of course. Does this mean most drugs produced by the pharmaceutical companies are worthless or worse? Absolutely not.

Could there possibly be very beneficial alternative treatments? Of course. Does someone saying that they successfully stop colds with homeopathic drugs convince me that there could possibly be something to homeopathic treatment? No. Homeopathy cannot work. It's a physical impossibility that water with no molecules of the homeopathic substance could have anything but a placebo effect.

I was raised in Christian Science. Go to your local Christian Science church (if you can still find one - that religion is dying a well-deserved death) on a Wednesday night and listen to the testimonials. "I had what Mortal Mind calls a cold, and I meditated on the perfect nature of our souls and realized that perfect beings cannot have diseases. Five days later my so-called cold was gone."

Science can show whether alternative treatments work or not. Is enough scientific effort put into the objective evaluation of alternative treatments? I don't think so. And the fact that there is more money available for funding research into pharmaceutical drugs is a huge part of that.

A frequent question asked in these threads is that why can't we science folks just leave the alternative medicine crowd alone. On a personal basis, I am happy to. In the bigger scheme of things, I feel obliged to point out that science is not "woo" and never has been. It doesn't matter to me personally whether people believe that humans were created in their present form, but when textbooks delete all references to evolution because of this pervasive nonsensical belief, it becomes an issue to me. If people choose not to get immunizations for themselves, that's their business. When they force these beliefs on their children (remember, I was raised in Christian Science) and infect society at large, it becomes an issue to me. If that Fox News commentator wants to believe that the snowstorm he drove to work in is evidence that there is no global warming, fine. When that belief becomes so pervasive in the culture that there is no good environmental policy, it becomes an issue to me.

Believe what you want, but don't pretend that the anti-science societal attitude it contributes to has no effect on others.

I'll now get off my smug, condescending soapbox, and go find someone else to bully.