Ben Goldacre - Health Scares and the Media

[WhelkDoctor1]

@MrCapopp Qualified Drs like Dr Shipman?

[WhelkDoctor1]

Dear Dr Goldacre, although I'm not normally a fan of the science fiction genre, I recently looked at your website. I noted with interest that around 90% of the contributors are male, a majority of which appear to (judging by the comments) have an emotional age range of between 12 and 14 years. As an expert, I was wondering whether you could tell us whether we should read anything of significance into this.

[MrCapopp]

No, we don't need to learn about science for ourselves. We need medically qualified doctors - and only medically qualified doctors - to learn about these things and give us the information. That's their job. The problem is that, for some reason, we allow uneducated, unqualified idiots (homeopaths etc.) to interefere in this process.

(I have a maths & stats degree but even I have given up trying to make heads or tails of all the alt med trials out there. I just don't have the time).

[benthejrporter]

@MrCapopp You knock homeophathy, but I've used it before to treat dermatitis and it worked, when hydrocortizone and urea cream failed. Now, I know you'll say that this is just the Placebo Effect. Well I can't prove that that is not the case, and I know about "ultradilution" too; that there is only 1 molecule in a glass of water a quarter of a light-year across etc, But the fact is it WORKED, however it did. And as long as it keeps working I'm going to keep using it.

[benthejrporter]

@benthejrporter I also eat as much organic food as I can and I've never felt better!

[radicalatheist]

@benthejrporter

Regression to the mean.

[benthejrporter]

@radicalatheist If my experience with homeopathy regresses to the mean then presumably sooner or later it will stop working. If it stops working I'll stop using it. If it continues to work I'll continue to use it ;-)

[radicalatheist]

@benthejrporter

But how do you know it's the homeopathy making you better? How do you know your symptoms wouldn't have got better (regressed to the mean) by themselves anyway?

[benthejrporter]

@radicalatheist Because I tried not taking it a few times and the symptoms persisted. I'm looking at both sides of the story, like the Fisher-Goldacre Debate, but I have to also take account of my own experirnces. I don't just use homeophathy, but also herbs and hands-on psychic healing. Again I've had some good results with them. Not that I don't use modern medicine if necessary. I'm a hospital porter so I work within the modern medical system myself.