tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post3284302284518272534..comments2023-07-15T04:39:59.759-07:00Comments on Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience: Everything in this journal is wrongSteven Salzberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-51864937826099495742016-06-09T06:59:40.967-07:002016-06-09T06:59:40.967-07:00You say "they'd never have gotten away wi...You say "they'd never have gotten away with it" as if no allegedly "real" science was ever published without being reproduced (because really, reproducibility is what you're addressing here. Researchers can and should research whatever they choose without anyone stopping them; we just have to look at all the other studies of the same kind and see how those fared.) Research is published every day in respected medical journals that are one-hit wonders, if you will. Not reproducable or nobody has bothered to try. These happen to be the ones picked up by the media and circulate as being fact because, well, it's a "study" and to the lay man, that magical term somehow means infallible, solid, never-changing fact. Those of us in science and research understand that this is not how science works (riiiiight?), so we take studies of this nature with a grain of salt. <br /> I'm curious as to what you're after here. The BMJ to stop publishing Acupuncture in Medicine? For readers/practitioners to boycott the BMJ until they fall in line with your ideal of science? That the scientific community stop regarding certain health care practitioners (accupuncturists, chiropractors, and homeopaths) as legitimate practitioners? A scaling back of research topics themselves/not allowing studies to be performed when the topic involves something that Western cultures writes off as being nonsense? It continually baffles me to hear other science-minded people so up in arms and using the term "pseudoscience" simply because they cannot understand the value of the topic. Science is open-ended. Test a theory, get results, tweak theory, test again, and so on. The entire point of science is to gather data. And even "failed" theories are valuable to a good scientist because that's where we figure out what works and what doesn't. That very process itself is WHAT science even is! We should not seek to place our subjective limits on science. Just because I may not see the value in studying X, doesn't mean that it isn't important, that there's nothing to be gained by studying it, or that it isn't valuable to someone!<br /> As a side note, I have personal experience with moxibustion. Nearing week 38 of gestation, I was becoming disconcerted by my baby's transverse position. There are many methods that can be attempted to turn a baby vertex, and I did some handstands and hanging off furniture in awkward positions to try to get baby to turn vertex. Physicians use ECV (external cephalic version) to turn a baby, which is quite painful for the mother. When reading about moxibustion, I thought "What could it hurt?" So we tried indirect moxibustion. This is purely anecdotal, of course, and could have more to do with many other factors, but within two days of trying moxibustion, baby was vertex. Western culture recognizes mugwort for its action on circulation (ancient Eastern cultures say "changes the balance of yin-yang energy of the blood,") and that increased circulation to the uterus can cause contractions, aiding in fetal position change. Right or wrong (and we don't know, because not enough research has been done on it, period,) moxibustion - as most Westerners use it - is harmless, kind of fun, and interesting. Kaitlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03114474979380967165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-62871970806686948112013-03-15T18:47:18.616-07:002013-03-15T18:47:18.616-07:00Janet: thanks for the comment - I would have given...Janet: thanks for the comment - I would have given more detail, but I'm afraid the study doesn't really have enough detail itself to figure out where the experimental bias crept in. A rigorous reviewer would have insisted on much more of such detail, but Acupuncture in Medicine doesn't seem to have such reviewers (not surprisingly). So from what they say in the paper, it does look like moxibustion worked. In a real peer-reviewed journal, they'd have never gotten away with this. That's the danger of having BMJ publish a pseudoscience journal that has all the trappings of real science.Steven Salzberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-48605088230218771122013-03-15T13:58:50.441-07:002013-03-15T13:58:50.441-07:00I wish you had given more detail in critiquing the...I wish you had given more detail in critiquing the "study". Superficially, to my idiot altie friends, this looks great! Way more women had babies in the correct position after the "treatment", they will say. I don't think they'll be impressed by the factors you list without further detail.<br /><br />What's with the BMJ anyway--is anyone in Britain complaining?Janet Camphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645361065385918800noreply@blogger.com