The Right Way to Debunk

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At some point in the future I'm sure I'll be willing to discuss my own beliefs here again. At the moment I'm very clear where I stand and where you think I should stand but I don't feel like getting the skeptics' grilling again right now.

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When you come to understand that the way you think about alternative health is exactly the same as the way your opponents on that other board think about the Theory of Evolution, you will have a much more rational, consistent place to stand.

I think I'm doing OK over there despite my lack of scientific background. There are a lot of websites that specialise in debunking creationist claims, this one and TalkOrigins being the ones I use most.My system of deciding what seems to be true and what isn't, is not the same as yours. This is probably an obvious point. But I don't think it necessarily follows that my system is therefore fatally flawed. Do you not ever get any hunches or gut feelings? I believe those have their place. Enough said on that topic for now maybe. Want to come talk about Richard Dawkins singing Christmas carols? I can think of lots of things to say there.

But whether or not Buz's flood ideas are supported by any evidence, I agree that the discussion technique I suggested should work for any position in any debate when confronted with someone who only repeats their basic position. For example: It is now time for the creationist to revert to merely stating his position until the evolutionist gives some indication of wanting to move the discussion forward, e.g.: Voil! And this avoids the appearance of bias when a moderator has to show up and force the recalcitrant evolutionist into discussing constructively.--Percy

Well, DUH! Are we talking about science? If so, then yes, of course hunches and gut feelings and dreams and inspirations and guesses and intuition have their place. These provide a continual source of ideas for science. But the hunch is the beginning of the science, not the end. After the hunch the scientist goes out and finds the evidence that proves his hunch either correct or incorrect or perhaps somewhat correct.Your problem, a huge one condemning you to a life of confusion, is that you give as much credibility to hunches and anecdote as to scientific evidence. There is one best method we know of to establish what is likely to be true about the real world, and that is to gather and analyze objective evidence using the scientific method, and then to replicate the process multiple times. Scientific evidence is also the best way to debunk a position, given an opponent not operating in parrot mode.I have always believed, ever since I discovered that "skeptic" was a label people were applying to themselves with pride, that it is a horribly misleading term. When people hear "skeptic" they don't think "honest seeker of truth," they think naysayer, doubter and dour negativist, and that's not what skeptics are. A skeptic is someone who requires quality evidence for what he believes to be true about the real world, and that's all.--Percy

No argument about the basic idea here, though my own doubt comes in your last sentence. Some aspects of science can be more subjective than others. It's hard to have bias about a radiometric date for a rock; it's a simple fact (providing, of course, that all due consideration has been taken for possible contamination and other errors). What I was doing with y'all earlier was engaging in the battle of the clinical studies. If you always go with what the mainstream says because statistically they must be correct, then you risk missing out on some important ideas because in some cases it might just be the the minority opinion which is correct.I'm going through life in a haze of confusion am I? I hadn't noticed. Well it doesn't seem to be harming me or anyone else. I don't believe I am being willfully blind. On the contrary, seeking truth is one of the guiding principles of my life. Sadly I think that statement is only going to make you laugh. It means ruling out a lot of other possible sources of evidence because they don't fit into the scientific box. We really must have that conversation about Sheldrake and morphic fields sometime.

That quality evidence has to fit into a logical, consistent framework as well. The evidence may be high quality but not fit the framework, and that is cause to be skeptical about one or the other.Enjoy.Having fun with Russ? There's a test case for methods of debunking ...

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You can say this while in the midst of a debate with creationists about the age of the earth? Of course it's possible to be biased about radiometric dating, and much else, apparently. Actually, the battle was trying to get you to tell the difference between good and bad evidence. If you could do that then you would be able to differentiate between a good study and a poor one. But your criteria for accepting a study's results is not the quality of the study but the degree to which it confirms what you already believe. In fact, you don't even need a study or even science to accept something, just a popular press book. No, LindaLou, it does not mean that. Anything in the universe that we can detect through our senses, directly or indirectly, can be the object of scientific study. That excludes nothing.The same approach to studying the universe, namely science, produced both the evolutionary views you agree with and the medical views you do not. Yes, you are very confused because your perspective contains a severe contradiction which you're unable to acknowledge. You can't defend the science that supports evolutionary views while criticizing the science that supports medical views, because at heart they are the same science. These contradictory qualities are readily apparent to people on both sides of the fence, both here and over at la-la land, as is evidenced by the fact that you're receiving fairly similar treatment in both places.I truly hope your views don't end up hurting you, but herbs are dangerous because they are dirty drugs, and rejecting the scientifically established findings of science carries additional dangers. The greatest risks probably stem from eschewing traditional medical treatment for some condition that in the end turns out to be serious and to have required timely treatment. The increased health and longevity of modern populations is due to advances in traditional medicine, not alternative medicine which never produces any advances except in the size of the wallets of those selling to their gullible adherents. Rejecting the findings of something that has been as incredibly successful as mainstream medicine is unlikely to produce positive results.In your debate with Russ you're well aware that he's trying to sell you snake-oil, but at least Russ is consistent. He sells snake-oil not only in debate, but in real-life, too.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor clean up.

Dirty drugs? Bloody hell. And you sit there and lecture me about how scientists use logic and are not biased. If you looked into it you'd find plenty of people who have actually been helped by herbs, including me. BTW when was the last time you examined figures for iatrogenic illness and death in the US? That's acceptable is it?Come on, we've talked about these things already. This thread is not the place to resurrect them. I'm well aware that you see inconsistency in my position on various things. I've been aware of it myself for quite some time but at the heart of it I'm beginning to see that the apparent inconsistency stems from the system I personally use to filter what seems true to me. It is a system that a mainstream scientist and skeptic would never accept and I'm sure I'll be lectured about it ad nauseam by people here but that doesn't mean you've got the patent on what's real and true either. That starts to branch into spirituality and philosophy, which I believe can provide important clues to the truth but both of which I've also heard dismissed as delusions and wastes of time by skeptics here.Science was wrong about many things in the past. Medicine was too. People used to think the world was flat, and doctors used to prescribe heroin and cocaine. They prescribed cigarettes not long ago. As more evidence came to light, these ideas were changed. Science and medicine still don't have it 100% right and it takes someone to question the system and stake their reputation on proving it wrong, to move things forward. I hope we will see intravenous vitamin C in IVs as standard practice in hospitals some day in the near future, for example, and that isn't a totally off-the-wall idea. It's one that holds promise if people become willing to make a paradigm shift and stop ignoring the evidence that already exists.You can't be a visionary and an orthodox practitioner at the same time. They're just not very compatible. Which again is why Rupert Sheldrake and his ideas appeal to me. I've been reading on his website again tonight. I expect I'd be bad at debating them because I don't have the technical expertise of a geneticist or a molecular biologist, but he's trying to conduct serious scientific experiments in areas that orthodoxy would consider ludicrous. Good on him.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Thanks

How about something like this for debate format:Paulk: "Everyone knows that you are running away on yourt assertion that the Flood messed up all the dating methods....."Buz: The Buzsaw position is that if there was a ww flood, the water had to come from someplace. The Biblical flood model clearly implicates a pre-flood canopy atmosphere which was the source of the water.PaulK: "that prove that the Earth is old."Buz: The Buzsaw position is that the age of the earth is unknown according to the Biblical model as stated repeatedly and that nothing of this sort is ever proven by either side.Paulk: "........there is no substance to your assertion."Buz: The Buzsaw position is that since the Biblical flood model clearly implies a substantially different atmosphere than post flood, dating methods based on modern atmospheric properties and arrangements would not accurately calculate things pertaining to the Biblical model to which creationist's hold.Paulk: "But you lack the honesty......."Buz: The Buzsaw position is that proponents of each model be allowed to debate according to their own model and their interpretation of what is observed relative to their model.The Buzsaw position is to show a reasonable amount of respect to members debating different models than their own. Edited by Buzsaw, : show Percy quote

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Too bad you were the first one along after the warning post.Edited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.

I think you have to decide which side of the fence you're on. The same spirit and methods of scientific discovery gave us both evolution and mainstream medicine. There is at heart no difference between evolutionary scientists and traditional medical researchers, nor in the quality of their science.If those over at la-la land are correct about the bias of medical researchers then they are also correct about the bias of evolutionary scientists. It cannot be the case that some fields of science that study real-world evidence can be biased and others not, because they're all looking at evidence from the same place: reality.Evolution and medicine can even both be considered in the broader field of biology - it's not like we're comparing psychology and geology. There is no significant real-world difference in the quality of evolutionary and medical science, and the only reason you see a difference is that you agree with one and not the other.I don't know why you took sudden issue with my reference to herbs as dirty drugs. I've explained this before. The problem with herbs is that rather being a distillment of a single or at least a few known active elements like traditional drugs, they instead contain hundreds of chemicals, many of the effects of which are unknown. In many cases the only proof we have of the safety of these compounds is experience and anecdote, which is incapable of teasing out subtle or long-term effects, and as seen with ephedra the unknown effects can even be short term and fatal.This is the kind of evidence that successfully debunks claims that herbs are generally safe, and the only answer you've had for such evidence is to call upon anecdotal evidence to which you give equal weight with scientific evidence. Until you stop marching into debates with inferior evidence of the worst kind you'll continue to get beat up. I've never lost sight of the topic, I'm just using examples familiar to you. The best way to debunk a position is with scientific evidence and argument. It's clear you still don't understand that this is the primary point, because you go on to say: The claim has ever been that science and medicine are never wrong, most of all because this is obviously not true. The claim is that scientific methods are the best way by far to find out what is most likely true about the real world. When science and medicine are wrong the correct answers are not to be found in hunches and anecdote, they're to be found in better and more rigorous science and medicine. In particular, you do not go off on a debunking mission armed with hunches and anecdote, you go off armed with science. It doesn't matter whether you're debunking creationists or naturopaths, science is the only effective debunking tool. These are categories and rules of your own invention. A primary requirement to doing science is to pay attention to the evidence from reality and follow it where it leads, and from this simple approach we've had visionaries from Galileo to Newton to Pasteur to Einstein. When you ignore reality, the habit of alternative medicine practitioners, actual contributions to human knowledge about our universe are impossible, and you get things like homeopathy and chiropractic that are perpetuated by ignorance instead of knowledge.You should look into Sheldrake's ideas with the goal of debunking them by demanding real world evidence for claims. There's nothing to fear from this approach, for if Sheldrake's ideas are true representations of reality then the evidence will be there.--Percy

What you are saying makes perfect logical sense, and it always has done. I'm also not quite sure what to say that isn't going to get a warning from NosyNed. I still think you are mostly OT here, especially with your assertions about herbs.I never said I'd actually walk into a debate advocating anything other than the logical, scientific approach you have outlined. This is the only way debates are won. But winning a debate doesn't mean the truth has been arrived at. Of course I got pasted here for the way I was trying to argue. Those who won, no doubt felt satisfied, and were maybe hoping they'd taught me a thing or two. They did, but not in the way they would have believed. I'm not going to debunk Sheldrake in any way. I'm going to watch his experiments unfold and see what data comes out of them. It's fascinating and original work. You fail to see the bias in your own thinking Percy, but it's a bias that many well-meaning and intelligent people share. You believe that the end results of the scientific process usually point to the truth but you ignore the human element which is always essential in the equation. You have refused to entertain any ideas that once people -- with the beliefs, judgements, personal experiences, knowledge, ignorance, and so forth that are inherent in the human condition -- get us from point A (the subject under study) to point B (the conclusion), the result is usually a pure reflection of a pure truth. Balderdash. Human beings are not robots. They have opinions, loyalties (sometimes ideological, sometimes financial), desires, and they have the ability to make mistakes. Yes there are procedures in the scientific method to filter out mistakes but not all of them are always going to be picked up. Your lectures to me about science always leading us to truth, and our foolishness to consider otherwise, are based in the Platonic universe rather than the one we live in.In short, you have faith in the relative flawlessness of the scientific system, which was designed by human beings and is administered by them at every stage. You have faith that where the flaws do occur, there are failsafe mechanisms that usually eliminate them. I don't share your faith. And I do think the "truth" of some areas of science is more in doubt than in others, because some areas require more interpretation and conjecture than others. For example, the actual truth is that no expert can list you all of the effects that a medication causes in the body, because everyone is different (hence different side effect spectrums) and because we don't understand the body 100%. And where there is interpretation, there is room for error. It is entirely possible for scientists or doctors to become so complacent and arrogant that they have something sorted out, when in reality they are hugely mistaken. You seem to think this is a rare occurrence. I think that we understand rather less about the nature of reality than we like to believe.Ned I wanted to respond to this . . . I'm not honestly sure what's being considered OT here anymore. Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

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My system of deciding what seems to be true and what isn't, is not the same as yours. This is probably an obvious point. But I don't think it necessarily follows that my system is therefore fatally flawed.

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It is when it comes to that which can be explored scientifically....such as health claims, paranormal claims, etc.

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Do you not ever get any hunches or gut feelings? I believe those have their place.

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Of course they do. I use gut feelings and hunches when I'm trying to figure out the office politics, or picking out a Christmas present for my six year old niece.Of course, hunches and gut feelings are pretty much guaranteed to give you terribly biased, incorrect results when you are trying to figure out the truth regarding medical issues or paranormal claims. They are likely to result in me being wrong about the office politics or the gift, too, since they are so fraught with my own personal bias.It is simply incredible to me that you have no problem simply assuming that any scientific results of a medical nature are likely biased, yet you blithely mention hunches and gut feelings as if they are somehow generally valuable.

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Some aspects of science can be more subjective than others. It's hard to have bias about a radiometric date for a rock; it's a simple fact (providing, of course, that all due consideration has been taken for possible contamination and other errors). What I was doing with y'all earlier was engaging in the battle of the clinical studies. If you always go with what the mainstream says because statistically they must be correct, then you risk missing out on some important ideas because in some cases it might just be the the minority opinion which is correct.

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Science is science, LindaLou. The basic method is the same no matter if it is a Paleontologist studying fossils or a Organic Chemist studying organic compounds or if it is a researcher running drug trials.The distinction you make is your own bias and is based in faulty reasoning, anecdote, and emotion, not fact.

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It means ruling out a lot of other possible sources of evidence because they don't fit into the scientific box.

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But this is exactly what the creationist Evolution-deniers say, LindaLou. You expect them to only accept evidence from the "scientific box" when it comes to Evolution, yet you say that there's all kinds of non-scientific evidence for your health and paranormal beliefs.You are so completely schizophrenic, it is really remarkable to observe. Edited by nator, : No reason given.