Re: (Tears) Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner

On Fri, 17 May 2024 11:17:25 +0100, Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

On 29/04/2024 16:23, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:10:39 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:
 

On 28 Apr 2024 17:29:06 GMT, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
<tednolan>) wrote:
>

Is GS a fallacy?  Certainly it seems to have been a fad, but also to still
be around in a less high-profile manner and accepted as providing some
useful insights.

>
Among the fallacies examined in Gardner's book is _chiropractic_. As
he notes, though, lots of chiropractors do useful things that help
patients, but when that discipline originated, it included notions
like curing, say, tuberculosis by addressing subluxations of the
vertebrae.

 
Sounds like an illustration of the statement "if all you have is a
hammer, everything looks like a nail".

>
I don't particularly hesitate to interpret
a proposition that "All diseases are
fundamentally caused by ____" as bunk,
without scrutiny.  And likewise
"effectively treated by".  Say, stem cells.
Diseases are diverse.
>
I am getting anxious about the wide
application of vaccines to diseases which
don't look like a thing to get vaccinated
against.  However, the theory seems to be
to persuade the patient's immune system to
pick a fight against something that it
usually ignores which is a disease component.

The diseases will adapt (Natural Selection) and the Medical Industry
will make money, not just with the current vaccine, but with the next
and the next and the next ...

What's not to like?

I wonder what a vaccine against sugar would do
to public health?

--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"