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Post by comradesch47 on Mar 14, 2018 19:46:00 GMT
For those of you who aren't aware, YouTube has a large amount of "paranormal", "alternative medicine" and similar videos that peddle things like Orgonite, wishing machines, crystal therapy, etc. And at times try to steer people away from science-based medicines such as vaccines and similar. (Examples: Look at basically anything said by the channel Spirit Science).
What are your thoughts on these videos?
As for my personal take, as long as it's not actively harming people- Such as having crystal therapy or using a wishing machine instead of proper cancer treatment- And it's harmless stuff like misusing a camera, EMF meter and text-to-speech device to search for ghosts that aren't really there, I have no real problem with it. But harming people by encouraging psuedoscientific and ineffective treatments of illnesses, I feel, is arguably not only fraud, but responsibility for getting someone ill or killing them.
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Post by maximgunn on Mar 16, 2018 9:49:05 GMT
We must never lower our standards to protect the dumbest of us. Instead, we should offer both lines of thought.
If a person decides to ignore scientific methodology and instead decides to put their faith in crystals and tree fairies, then we have a problem that solves itself.
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Post by bigmonmulgrew on Mar 16, 2018 15:49:36 GMT
The problem I think comes when someone presents non-scientific methods as scientific methods. There have been plenty of cases where people died of treatable disceases because they followed some "alternative medicine". They were shown fake, or incomplete evidence that it works an died as a result.
The word for alternative medicine that works is medicine. Doctors are always looking for stuff that works so when something can actually be proven to work its distributed as medicine. That said there are a few cases where studies and research on something is resisted for political or idealogical reasons. I have seen some people argue against cannabis research for example because they think it is moraly wrong.
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Post by spartacus on Mar 16, 2018 18:21:34 GMT
There's an easy and simple litmus test here. Wild theories, why not? Falsified facts like in the vaccine debate, or the gluten madness actually damages, even kills people. Wild theories and speculation is protected speech, and it's good that way, like bigmonmulgrew points out, what could happen if we stopped researching the beneficial effects of cannabis is that we miss out on a great cure for god knows what. Falsified facts are not protected speech, which makes some basic sense as otherwise you couldn't get legal recourse to stop someone from spreading libellous and slanderous lies about you. Problem with these things is that it's the collective that is the injured body, so who will enforce it? Where there is no accuser, there is no judge. I don't think it's reasonable to expect YouTube to be happy to go out and enforce this, as they will look like mean spirited censors. It's up to 'the people' and their representatives to take care of the problem. Sad true story: Steve Jobs only died because he believed in 'alternative mind based medicine' to cure his pancreatic cancer. There are two forms of pancreatic cancer, one is almost impossible to cure, the other not. Jobs had the curable variety, but refused the 'traditional' cure for so many months that it metastasised to his liver and killed him. A sad waste... |
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