Great video. Great reasoning. But I think it's wasted on Tyson. I've seen a few other NDT videos, and his arrogance often dictates his position; he comes off as didactic and infallible. I think NDT is a bright guy, but he is quite often flawed in his rhetorical approach, which ends up obscuring his primary point.
I don't think he intended to blast physicians, his point was we shouldn't assign God as an answer to something unknown. But he failed because he ended up just bashing doctors. Sad.
Don't put into peoples mouth words that they didn't say. Tyson didn't say that the doctors are idiots, just that their reputation in American society - that it must be God's intervention when 3 doctors are wrong - is overrated. I heard this lecture - nothing in it indicates that Tyson condemns all your community.
His anecdote wasn't the point, it's that people will believe god did something rather than a misdiagnosis, you jumped on a minor point, got offended and miss the whole point.
@MarcoArsenault "His anecdote wasn't the point, it's that people will believe god did something rather than a misdiagnosis, you jumped on a minor point, got offended and miss the whole point."
I completely agree. It usually happens when a a particular group is singled out for an anecdotal point...then someone from that group may think that it is ALL about them and foam at the mouth over this supposed slight of the establishment to which they are most likely a part of.
@Yuri92001 Your defense is best seen in Christian fundamentalists who attack scientists with ad hominems, and opinions, rather than evidence, in order to attack their work. Using doctors, and the medical profession, to make a point about being skeptical and questioning of the unknown is on an unsound footing.
It's frightening that so many lay people weigh-in in defense of Tyson without considering the facts of cancer diagnoses. Truly frightening.
@MarcoArsenault You're right, people did miss the main point. And they were offended. But that was Tyson's fault. He used an attack on doctors to make a very weak case. I'm not a doctor, and not offended. But what I did notice is that instead of making his point of selecting viable, reasonable, explanation to describe events, he chose an unsound anecdote.
Clearly, increased longevity in cancer patients is best described as an outlier, which you'd know if you had a science background.
You are leaving out the part about people believing GOD had something to do with their regression of cancer. Tyson's point is that some people make a HUUUUGE leap of faith of saying that god cured them, when they don't even consider any other explanation. He wasn't bashing doctors as much as he is religious people. The point is, doctors are fallible, yet are held up on such a high pedestal that limited people don't question them. This isn't a bash against doctors.
Tyson doesn't train doctors- he teaches physics which is a pre-med requirement. It is like saying a high school teacher trains doctors. Not all pre-med students become physicians. Physicians look at multiple data points - but a diagnosis is simply a hypothesis. I hear Tyson has a new gig on some tv channel- I think that is his passion
Dr Simpson, it's interesting to note that while Tyson has a following within the lay public he has no fans within his field. He's not exactly a Leonard Susskind. My burning question is, what has Tyson published that makes him anything more than man making a lucrative living selling books for the general public and making appearances on television talk shows?
As you see by the comments made here by the Tyson faithful, he's done little to encourage independent thinking and scientific skepticism.
@Jeebaah I recommend you listen to Tyson's video again, especially the part where he talks about the 3 opinions being just one - the product of the same system, "just nuanced by the [flavor]... what the person had for breakfast that morning." If you listen with an open mind, you might change your mind.
Dr Simpson makes very valid points. While Tyson consistently paints his view of the world with very broad strokes. His is not a good scientific approach but his style resonates with lay people.
@AllknowingGuitarGuru I usually do keep an open mind, but I'll check it out again. I'm not defending all of what Tyson said (I really haven't looked into much of his work), but like I said, I didn't recall him condemning the entire field.
Just a remark: let's not forget the practice of case studies in medicine. A doctor presents a case study to her/his peers as an interesting anecdote in order to point out specifics, decisions, common and uncommon aspects of that case etc.
As I understand it, case studies are a way to deepen knowledge and to contest one-size-fits-all thinking. Example from astrophysics: papers about freak star clusters, irregular galaxies. If you like, take the platypus as an interesting »anecdote« in biology.
I think he was just trying to make a point that some people are find fault in the wrong place. Doctors know a great deal but are not infallible and can make mistakes just like everyone else. He was making the point that people think that a doctors word is correct if it comes from three different sources. Those people then give god thanks for fixing them.
At 0:45 you say: here's the real deal. You want to discuss how physicians are trained, I'd be happy to debate it with you.
MISSING THE POINT. ;-) Tyson doesn't want to dismiss the profession or their training. He is responsible for some of the training for some physicians himself! He wants to dismiss the religious conclusion of a patient that god must exist if 3 doctors are apparently wrong.
Get over yourself, and watch Tyson's videos. He most certainly deserves it, probably more so than you.
his anecdote was that doctors can be wrong and that doctors all learn from the same sources. so if one doctors source and resulting diagnosis is wrong. it is very likely that all doctors source and diagnosis will be wrong.
you are disagreeing with is Tysons affirmation that doctors are fallible... YOU DON'T THINK DOCTORS ARE FALLIBLE?
if you actually don't understand what Tyson is getting at, and you are also a doctor. then you are living proof that some doctors are total morons. (and biased)
I agree with "accord21" I wonder how many wrong diagnosis you've made. How many patients have you pushed new untested drugs on to make a profit. This is your second recording in response to Dr. Tyson. The 1st in your office, and the 2nd later in the evening at home. Did it keep you up?
This comment has received too many negative votesshow
I agree with your sentiments.........this Neil deGrasse Tyson is a grandstanding loudmouth..........I'm starting to doubt whether his Ph.D. in Astrophysics is even real because he spends all his time giving lectures to lay people and hasn't published any research articles on astronomy.
This moron Tyson has been given a lot of exposure on TV and the internet and people seem to respect his opinion about things he's clueless about.......such is the sad state of modern media & mass communication.
If you really listen to some of his interviews, he admitted that he has been spending too much time on the media and lesser time on his research. He says that the ratio of his time spent on the media to that spent in research is probably around 80-20. But he the says that now, he really wants to push that figure up to around 60-40. There is a reason why he is chosen to be on TV and give lectures, and that reason is his knowledge and understanding of stuff in this world.
I went to college........and everyone knows a professor doesn't get respect from his students or colleagues unless he publishes research findings in peer-reviewed journals........"publish or perish" is the old adage.........Tyson doesn't publish anything so he doesn't deserve much respect.........if he wants to be a media personality and make money, that's his problem........but stop acting like he's a prestigious academic.
You misinterpreted what he was saying. For you to take it so personally and be so closed minded about it, makes me wonder what kind of person you are and how you practice medicine. This doesn't look good for you.
What is your understanding of Chinese Internal Medicine and do you ever reference it? Do you know a CIM practitioner? Details and questions or always welcome. Even one word short answers. Thank you and I understand your both yours and Dr. Degrasse's perspective and believe both of you make a valid point. Thank you for your response.
Neil Degrasse Tyson was joking. Loosen up doc. Besides, physicists have long been a bit arrogant. It makes them interesting: "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." - Ernest Rutherford
this is the only time in our history where we are giving patients drugs where the side affects are FAR more worse then the affliction.Watched any drug commercials lately?? look at the side effects. why dont we put more time into PREVENTATIVE health care? why dont we stop people from getting sick in the first place. OH YEA!! because then the drug companies would make less money.take your heads out of your asses people.
@quagmire1032 True to a degree . I recall a drug company had a drug in which it was no longer selling so it made up a disease in order to sell the drug again. That disease was called " Restless Leg Syndrome. " The drug company placed nationwide adds prompting individuals to ask their doctors about their drug in order to treat their restless leg condition. This was clearly a scam. Yes, the U.S. spends ~ 16% GDP on sickness compensation payments instead of preventative healthcare.
Medicine is not a science; it's an empiric practice. That's because it is unethical to experiment on humans. Doctors don't have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning that one finds in pure science.
Neil evidently knows very little about the philosophy and development of democracy. In the same speach, talking about teaching the Bible in classrooms, he said he doesn't think much about separation of church and state issues, and didn't think it was such an issue..
He should care about separation of church and state; because, if the fundies succeed in tearing down that wall, Tyson, and a whole lot of other types of scientists, will be out of a job. His physics will be replaced by the "physics" peddled by the New Age woo-woo queens who prattle on about "quantum consciousness". If you're not familiar with that term, lookup it up at the website of the Maharishi Universitly.
You obviously can't follow a simply line of logic. I did not say "doctors don't have experience following abstract lines of reasoning". What I did say was "Doctors don't have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning that one finds in pure science." The first sentence is an absolute; the second is a statement of relative comparison. You have committed an error in logic that would not be made by a sophomore.
I gave a reason for my statement that medicine is not a science. You did not bother to attempt to refute that point. I am expected to accept your unsupported assertion?
Medicine is definitely science based, in that scientific investigation provides us with drugs, information about human physiology, etc., which is why we can definitively state that tribal "medicine" and Ayurvedic "medicine" are not scientific. But, in the end, it is an empiric practice.
Agree - error. However, I would disagree that we do not have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning ... What do you think a diagnosis is.
I was not intending to be disparaging. It is unfortunately true that people with expertise in one field tend to be just as illogical as the rest of us when they step outside their chosen field. James Randi has pointed this out many times when he debunks "psychics" who have managed to fool university trained researchers. We see this also in the Discovery Institute, where Creation Science is peddled by scientists with no credentials in evolutionary sciences.
Tyson seems to have made a few egregious errors in this short speech, himself. He seems unaware of the concept of biodiversity, which hinders doctors from making precise and exact predictions about how a given drug or a given medical procedure will work out in a specific patient. You always give estimates.
I would also guess that most doctors have little interest in physics, because it doesn't have much bearing on medicine. That would explain why they don't do as well in these courses.
I can't tell you the number of times I've heard proponents of "alternative" medicine begin an attack on Western medicine by launching a diatribe against the way we in the West tend to treat doctors as High Priests, treating their pronouncements as Revelations from God. I would suspect that this is the concept Tyson was trying to get at.
He doesn't seem to realize that the status of doctors and science in general has been plummetting along with a general rise in anti-intellectualism recently.
Much as I appreciate the efforts of the New Atheists and the various science popularizers such as Dawkins, I wish they would study the history of recent anti-intellectualism and the philosophy of science with as much diligence as they studied in their original fields of expertise.
For instance, Dawkins' evolutionary psychology is nothing but sociolbiology dressed up, and sociobiology is nothing but eugenics dressed up. See "Not in Our Genes" - Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin.
Empiric science is defined as something that relies on experience and disregards basic science - while some physicians do this, it is not how they are taught. This would be more what homeopathic physcians do. WHen you say it is unethical to experiment on humans - that is not true - we do that daily - both in the practice of medicine, as well as we have protocols set up for human experimentation all the time.
Dictionaries of standard English have "quackery" as a secondary meaning , which is what an empiric position in philosophy can lead to in practice. Your description of medicine "We don't have an equation for the human condition - we have a series of observations, we have tests, we have bell curves." is actually a description of empiricism in the philosophic sense.
Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy, revealed the underlying premise of homeopathy thus, " The partisans of the old school of medicine flattered themselves that they could justly claim for it alone the title of rational medicine, because they alone sought for and strove to remove the cause of disease ... [but]]the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore not perceptible to the senses. (2)".
Hahnemann's statement is based on intuitionism, revealed wisdom, and idealism - the exact opposite of empiricism. For a discussion of empiricism, see The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online. I particularly recommend "The Historical Controversies Surrounding Innateness", "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", "Einstein's Philosophy of Science".
It seems plain to me that Neil Tyson was not critizing MDs, he was critizing those that take their diagnosis as fact (rather then hypothesis) and their prognosis as deterministic. Some of those people have weirdly concluded the existence of magical beings to explain their recovery rather then the known or unknown mechanisms of medicine (or even the possible error of MDs).
You sound like a conspiracy theorist "AMA lobbies."
Second, what data about 50th percentile for intelligence - that does not correlate with medical school admission records. Third, sorry your 3 decades (how old are you) came to that conclusion. Sometimes we are idiots, sometimes we don't observe - a diagnosis is a hypothesis we test.
In the past 3 decades of experience, i've come to the conclusion that most medical doctors are indeed idiots. Time and time again, i've been appalled at how poor their powers of observation are, how unable they are to assimilate information to build a diagnosis, how common sense escapes them.
When those studies came out saying MDs typically rank in around the 50th percentile for intelligence, suddenly it all made sense. Clearly the system is broken. Which is why the AMA lobbies.
Patient: "My doctors said X would happen, but then Y happened, therefore divine intervention is possible."
Tyson: "I have known several doctors who are complete idiots, therefore you can't assume that the doctors were correct, and divine intervention is not necessarily true."
You shouldn't use adecdotes to FORM generalizations, but you can use anecdotes to REFUTE generalizations.
I am not going to defend all doctors - but diagnosis is a hypothesis - we test them. We don't have an equation for the human condition - we have a series of observations, we have tests, we have bell curves. You are correct regarding anecdotes, but Tyson is incorrect in knowing how doctors work
I agree that he should have been clearer, as many an anti-vaxer, med-community demonizer would grab this and make their own bit of "Neil skeptical of Big Pharma" headline or some crap. However, I still think the point's made, and amusingly so, that Occam's Razor isn't applied as often as it should.
Thumbs down didn't watch. Have a good day :).
WarKoreanZombie 1 week ago
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Great video. Great reasoning. But I think it's wasted on Tyson. I've seen a few other NDT videos, and his arrogance often dictates his position; he comes off as didactic and infallible. I think NDT is a bright guy, but he is quite often flawed in his rhetorical approach, which ends up obscuring his primary point.
I don't think he intended to blast physicians, his point was we shouldn't assign God as an answer to something unknown. But he failed because he ended up just bashing doctors. Sad.
Tessasdadd0 1 week ago
Don't put into peoples mouth words that they didn't say. Tyson didn't say that the doctors are idiots, just that their reputation in American society - that it must be God's intervention when 3 doctors are wrong - is overrated. I heard this lecture - nothing in it indicates that Tyson condemns all your community.
BandytaCzasu 6 months ago 2
His anecdote wasn't the point, it's that people will believe god did something rather than a misdiagnosis, you jumped on a minor point, got offended and miss the whole point.
MarcoArsenault 7 months ago 6
@MarcoArsenault "His anecdote wasn't the point, it's that people will believe god did something rather than a misdiagnosis, you jumped on a minor point, got offended and miss the whole point."
I completely agree. It usually happens when a a particular group is singled out for an anecdotal point...then someone from that group may think that it is ALL about them and foam at the mouth over this supposed slight of the establishment to which they are most likely a part of.
Yuri92001 6 months ago
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@Yuri92001 Your defense is best seen in Christian fundamentalists who attack scientists with ad hominems, and opinions, rather than evidence, in order to attack their work. Using doctors, and the medical profession, to make a point about being skeptical and questioning of the unknown is on an unsound footing.
It's frightening that so many lay people weigh-in in defense of Tyson without considering the facts of cancer diagnoses. Truly frightening.
You're clearly a Tyson homer.
Tessasdadd0 1 week ago
@MarcoArsenault
The means does not justify the end. We know what his point was. Condemning doctors to make it was a bit over-zealous.
Mrmoc7 3 months ago
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@MarcoArsenault You're right, people did miss the main point. And they were offended. But that was Tyson's fault. He used an attack on doctors to make a very weak case. I'm not a doctor, and not offended. But what I did notice is that instead of making his point of selecting viable, reasonable, explanation to describe events, he chose an unsound anecdote.
Clearly, increased longevity in cancer patients is best described as an outlier, which you'd know if you had a science background.
Tessasdadd0 1 week ago
ne his point was that he is surprised people are more likely to believe in god intervention than a doctor making a mistake
DragOzze 7 months ago 6
You are leaving out the part about people believing GOD had something to do with their regression of cancer. Tyson's point is that some people make a HUUUUGE leap of faith of saying that god cured them, when they don't even consider any other explanation. He wasn't bashing doctors as much as he is religious people. The point is, doctors are fallible, yet are held up on such a high pedestal that limited people don't question them. This isn't a bash against doctors.
lambyiii 9 months ago
@lambyiii The point of Tyson's speech was NOT that doctors make mistakes sometimes.
lambyiii 9 months ago
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franck77able 1 year ago
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franck77able 1 year ago
It is true that Mr. deGrasse applied to Harvard Med School?
jatiles007 1 year ago
Tyson doesn't train doctors- he teaches physics which is a pre-med requirement. It is like saying a high school teacher trains doctors. Not all pre-med students become physicians. Physicians look at multiple data points - but a diagnosis is simply a hypothesis. I hear Tyson has a new gig on some tv channel- I think that is his passion
tlsimpson 1 year ago 6
To all Docs bashers, next time you're having chest pains call Neil deGrasse Tyson, to treat it.
jatiles007 1 year ago
Dr Simpson, it's interesting to note that while Tyson has a following within the lay public he has no fans within his field. He's not exactly a Leonard Susskind. My burning question is, what has Tyson published that makes him anything more than man making a lucrative living selling books for the general public and making appearances on television talk shows?
As you see by the comments made here by the Tyson faithful, he's done little to encourage independent thinking and scientific skepticism.
AllknowingGuitarGuru 1 year ago
I don't seem to recall hm condemning all of medicine, but okay.
Jeebaah 1 year ago
@Jeebaah I recommend you listen to Tyson's video again, especially the part where he talks about the 3 opinions being just one - the product of the same system, "just nuanced by the [flavor]... what the person had for breakfast that morning." If you listen with an open mind, you might change your mind.
Dr Simpson makes very valid points. While Tyson consistently paints his view of the world with very broad strokes. His is not a good scientific approach but his style resonates with lay people.
AllknowingGuitarGuru 1 year ago
@AllknowingGuitarGuru I usually do keep an open mind, but I'll check it out again. I'm not defending all of what Tyson said (I really haven't looked into much of his work), but like I said, I didn't recall him condemning the entire field.
Jeebaah 1 year ago
Just a remark: let's not forget the practice of case studies in medicine. A doctor presents a case study to her/his peers as an interesting anecdote in order to point out specifics, decisions, common and uncommon aspects of that case etc.
As I understand it, case studies are a way to deepen knowledge and to contest one-size-fits-all thinking. Example from astrophysics: papers about freak star clusters, irregular galaxies. If you like, take the platypus as an interesting »anecdote« in biology.
virumoz 1 year ago
I think he was just trying to make a point that some people are find fault in the wrong place. Doctors know a great deal but are not infallible and can make mistakes just like everyone else. He was making the point that people think that a doctors word is correct if it comes from three different sources. Those people then give god thanks for fixing them.
boostingcav 1 year ago
At 0:45 you say: here's the real deal. You want to discuss how physicians are trained, I'd be happy to debate it with you.
MISSING THE POINT. ;-) Tyson doesn't want to dismiss the profession or their training. He is responsible for some of the training for some physicians himself! He wants to dismiss the religious conclusion of a patient that god must exist if 3 doctors are apparently wrong.
Get over yourself, and watch Tyson's videos. He most certainly deserves it, probably more so than you.
KryzMasta 1 year ago
his anecdote was that doctors can be wrong and that doctors all learn from the same sources. so if one doctors source and resulting diagnosis is wrong. it is very likely that all doctors source and diagnosis will be wrong.
you are disagreeing with is Tysons affirmation that doctors are fallible... YOU DON'T THINK DOCTORS ARE FALLIBLE?
if you actually don't understand what Tyson is getting at, and you are also a doctor. then you are living proof that some doctors are total morons. (and biased)
guymella 2 years ago
You have a nice voice.
Goremorah 2 years ago
He was just making a joke, come on now. He wasn't even criticizing doctors and that was clearly during some sort of comedy performance.
pro404 2 years ago
I agree with "accord21" I wonder how many wrong diagnosis you've made. How many patients have you pushed new untested drugs on to make a profit. This is your second recording in response to Dr. Tyson. The 1st in your office, and the 2nd later in the evening at home. Did it keep you up?
ZirePhotography 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
I agree with your sentiments.........this Neil deGrasse Tyson is a grandstanding loudmouth..........I'm starting to doubt whether his Ph.D. in Astrophysics is even real because he spends all his time giving lectures to lay people and hasn't published any research articles on astronomy.
This moron Tyson has been given a lot of exposure on TV and the internet and people seem to respect his opinion about things he's clueless about.......such is the sad state of modern media & mass communication.
Hunkola 2 years ago
If you really listen to some of his interviews, he admitted that he has been spending too much time on the media and lesser time on his research. He says that the ratio of his time spent on the media to that spent in research is probably around 80-20. But he the says that now, he really wants to push that figure up to around 60-40. There is a reason why he is chosen to be on TV and give lectures, and that reason is his knowledge and understanding of stuff in this world.
javisj2000 2 years ago
I went to college........and everyone knows a professor doesn't get respect from his students or colleagues unless he publishes research findings in peer-reviewed journals........"publish or perish" is the old adage.........Tyson doesn't publish anything so he doesn't deserve much respect.........if he wants to be a media personality and make money, that's his problem........but stop acting like he's a prestigious academic.
Hunkola 2 years ago
He published many books and the most recent one was about him playing his role in the demotion of pluto as a planet.
javisj2000 2 years ago
You misinterpreted what he was saying. For you to take it so personally and be so closed minded about it, makes me wonder what kind of person you are and how you practice medicine. This doesn't look good for you.
accord21 2 years ago
What is your understanding of Chinese Internal Medicine and do you ever reference it? Do you know a CIM practitioner? Details and questions or always welcome. Even one word short answers. Thank you and I understand your both yours and Dr. Degrasse's perspective and believe both of you make a valid point. Thank you for your response.
addadhdnarc 2 years ago
your an idiot. Your probably christain.
davesevaw 2 years ago
omg omg omg
newen85 2 years ago
Neil Degrasse Tyson was joking. Loosen up doc. Besides, physicists have long been a bit arrogant. It makes them interesting: "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." - Ernest Rutherford
eapst28 2 years ago
the whole medical industry is fucking scam.
this is the only time in our history where we are giving patients drugs where the side affects are FAR more worse then the affliction.Watched any drug commercials lately?? look at the side effects. why dont we put more time into PREVENTATIVE health care? why dont we stop people from getting sick in the first place. OH YEA!! because then the drug companies would make less money.take your heads out of your asses people.
quagmire1032 2 years ago
@quagmire1032 True to a degree . I recall a drug company had a drug in which it was no longer selling so it made up a disease in order to sell the drug again. That disease was called " Restless Leg Syndrome. " The drug company placed nationwide adds prompting individuals to ask their doctors about their drug in order to treat their restless leg condition. This was clearly a scam. Yes, the U.S. spends ~ 16% GDP on sickness compensation payments instead of preventative healthcare.
chroniclerofthe70s 6 months ago
My twitter name is terrysimpson.
Good place for this discussion
tlsimpson 3 years ago
@tlsimpson THE FACT YOU MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT OF HIS COMMENT YOU ARE CLEARLY ONE OF THE IDIOTS HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.
greywolf424 1 year ago
Medicine is not a science; it's an empiric practice. That's because it is unethical to experiment on humans. Doctors don't have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning that one finds in pure science.
Neil evidently knows very little about the philosophy and development of democracy. In the same speach, talking about teaching the Bible in classrooms, he said he doesn't think much about separation of church and state issues, and didn't think it was such an issue..
pirbird14 3 years ago
He should care about separation of church and state; because, if the fundies succeed in tearing down that wall, Tyson, and a whole lot of other types of scientists, will be out of a job. His physics will be replaced by the "physics" peddled by the New Age woo-woo queens who prattle on about "quantum consciousness". If you're not familiar with that term, lookup it up at the website of the Maharishi Universitly.
pirbird14 3 years ago
You are dead wrong. Medicine is a science, and you are dead wrong when you say doctor's don't have experience following abstract lines of reasoning.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
You obviously can't follow a simply line of logic. I did not say "doctors don't have experience following abstract lines of reasoning". What I did say was "Doctors don't have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning that one finds in pure science." The first sentence is an absolute; the second is a statement of relative comparison. You have committed an error in logic that would not be made by a sophomore.
pirbird14 3 years ago
I gave a reason for my statement that medicine is not a science. You did not bother to attempt to refute that point. I am expected to accept your unsupported assertion?
Medicine is definitely science based, in that scientific investigation provides us with drugs, information about human physiology, etc., which is why we can definitively state that tribal "medicine" and Ayurvedic "medicine" are not scientific. But, in the end, it is an empiric practice.
pirbird14 3 years ago
Agree - error. However, I would disagree that we do not have the same experience with following lines of abstract reasoning ... What do you think a diagnosis is.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
I was not intending to be disparaging. It is unfortunately true that people with expertise in one field tend to be just as illogical as the rest of us when they step outside their chosen field. James Randi has pointed this out many times when he debunks "psychics" who have managed to fool university trained researchers. We see this also in the Discovery Institute, where Creation Science is peddled by scientists with no credentials in evolutionary sciences.
pirbird14 3 years ago
Tyson seems to have made a few egregious errors in this short speech, himself. He seems unaware of the concept of biodiversity, which hinders doctors from making precise and exact predictions about how a given drug or a given medical procedure will work out in a specific patient. You always give estimates.
I would also guess that most doctors have little interest in physics, because it doesn't have much bearing on medicine. That would explain why they don't do as well in these courses.
pirbird14 3 years ago
I suspect you are correct. My issue was that he made a generalization based on teaching pre-med students.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
I can't tell you the number of times I've heard proponents of "alternative" medicine begin an attack on Western medicine by launching a diatribe against the way we in the West tend to treat doctors as High Priests, treating their pronouncements as Revelations from God. I would suspect that this is the concept Tyson was trying to get at.
He doesn't seem to realize that the status of doctors and science in general has been plummetting along with a general rise in anti-intellectualism recently.
pirbird14 3 years ago
Much as I appreciate the efforts of the New Atheists and the various science popularizers such as Dawkins, I wish they would study the history of recent anti-intellectualism and the philosophy of science with as much diligence as they studied in their original fields of expertise.
For instance, Dawkins' evolutionary psychology is nothing but sociolbiology dressed up, and sociobiology is nothing but eugenics dressed up. See "Not in Our Genes" - Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin.
pirbird14 3 years ago
Empiric science is defined as something that relies on experience and disregards basic science - while some physicians do this, it is not how they are taught. This would be more what homeopathic physcians do. WHen you say it is unethical to experiment on humans - that is not true - we do that daily - both in the practice of medicine, as well as we have protocols set up for human experimentation all the time.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
Dictionaries of standard English have "quackery" as a secondary meaning , which is what an empiric position in philosophy can lead to in practice. Your description of medicine "We don't have an equation for the human condition - we have a series of observations, we have tests, we have bell curves." is actually a description of empiricism in the philosophic sense.
pirbird14 3 years ago
Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy, revealed the underlying premise of homeopathy thus, " The partisans of the old school of medicine flattered themselves that they could justly claim for it alone the title of rational medicine, because they alone sought for and strove to remove the cause of disease ... [but]]the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore not perceptible to the senses. (2)".
pirbird14 2 years ago
Hahnemann's statement is based on intuitionism, revealed wisdom, and idealism - the exact opposite of empiricism. For a discussion of empiricism, see The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online. I particularly recommend "The Historical Controversies Surrounding Innateness", "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", "Einstein's Philosophy of Science".
pirbird14 2 years ago
his point is about there being on GOD
wes1441 3 years ago
It seems plain to me that Neil Tyson was not critizing MDs, he was critizing those that take their diagnosis as fact (rather then hypothesis) and their prognosis as deterministic. Some of those people have weirdly concluded the existence of magical beings to explain their recovery rather then the known or unknown mechanisms of medicine (or even the possible error of MDs).
newtonphile 3 years ago
Depends on what I had for supper.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
Are you always so humorless?
catflasher 3 years ago
You sound like a conspiracy theorist "AMA lobbies."
Second, what data about 50th percentile for intelligence - that does not correlate with medical school admission records. Third, sorry your 3 decades (how old are you) came to that conclusion. Sometimes we are idiots, sometimes we don't observe - a diagnosis is a hypothesis we test.
tlsimpson 3 years ago
In the past 3 decades of experience, i've come to the conclusion that most medical doctors are indeed idiots. Time and time again, i've been appalled at how poor their powers of observation are, how unable they are to assimilate information to build a diagnosis, how common sense escapes them.
When those studies came out saying MDs typically rank in around the 50th percentile for intelligence, suddenly it all made sense. Clearly the system is broken. Which is why the AMA lobbies.
SaganAppreciationSoc 3 years ago
Anecdotes are not completely off limits.
Let's reword things:
Patient: "My doctors said X would happen, but then Y happened, therefore divine intervention is possible."
Tyson: "I have known several doctors who are complete idiots, therefore you can't assume that the doctors were correct, and divine intervention is not necessarily true."
You shouldn't use adecdotes to FORM generalizations, but you can use anecdotes to REFUTE generalizations.
dgdfhfghgfhgfgffjhj 3 years ago
I am not going to defend all doctors - but diagnosis is a hypothesis - we test them. We don't have an equation for the human condition - we have a series of observations, we have tests, we have bell curves. You are correct regarding anecdotes, but Tyson is incorrect in knowing how doctors work
tlsimpson 3 years ago
I agree that he should have been clearer, as many an anti-vaxer, med-community demonizer would grab this and make their own bit of "Neil skeptical of Big Pharma" headline or some crap. However, I still think the point's made, and amusingly so, that Occam's Razor isn't applied as often as it should.
otakursed 3 years ago