tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post5239688563814297586..comments2023-07-15T04:39:59.759-07:00Comments on Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience: pseudoscience alertSteven Salzberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-52217174008366508152007-05-14T05:23:00.000-07:002007-05-14T05:23:00.000-07:00Well, as it turned out, it wasn't too bad - Bill C...Well, as it turned out, it wasn't too bad - Bill Clark from Harvard, who chaired the Symposium, spent many hours with the Ayurveda speaker (Darshan Shankar) and basically rewrote his abstract and re-did his slides, so they were a lot better.<BR/> Nonetheless, Shankar spent a lot of time talking about the importance of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and did go into some hocus-pocus about Ayurveda. It's too nutty for me to reproduce here, but Shankar spoke quite slowly and unconvincingly, and he was really unimpressive. He is also clearly a true believer - he thinks Ayurveda really means something when it's just gobbledygook.<BR/> Here is one of his many logical fallacies: he asserted that 40% of people in the world still ask for or use CAM for at least part of their medical treatment, and therefore that CAM "is here to stay". Even if you accept that 40% figure (which I don't), then it doesn't imply that CAM is here to stay, of course. History shows that mistaken practices can be really widespread, but people give them up once them become educated enough to know better. Let's hope the same is true of CAM. <BR/> Shankar also used the NIH's NCCAM to support the need for more work on CAM. That's another topic I'll try to blog on at a later date - NIH should shut down NCCAM, as it's a ridiculous waste of precious NIH funds.Steven Salzberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-30430606266171104082007-05-12T15:16:00.000-07:002007-05-12T15:16:00.000-07:00So, how bad was it?So, how bad was it?Jonathan Badgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921990886076027719noreply@blogger.com