Honestly, a lot of the points you make about SBM (the blog) are quite disturbing to me, as it is one of my primary resources as a lay-person to keep up with developments in woo, quackery and general commentary on popular medical reporting.
I hope you don't see these questions as confrontational because I genuinely would like to be pointed in the right direction for the some of these claims. (speaking as a relatively liberal person who recently joined a host of strongly conservative forums to get a picture of "the other side"...)
> Ever look up how respected skepticism is within the larger philosophical community?
I gather this means that it's not respected? Why is that? I find it hard to believe that scientific skepticism (and not the truther/birther/moon-landing-was-a-hoax kind) can find widespread opposition in any sort of critical thinking community.
> Instead they just spin it in order to trick people who are predisposed to have faith in modern medicine.
Are there any examples of this from the blog? I was (and am) under the impression that a lot of writing is backed up by fairly solid reasoning, references and such.
> What science-based medicine does (again, the blog, not the concept) is really no different than what the evangelical megachurches do, it's just dressed up in different language.
How so? This analogy sounds suspiciously like fundamentalists' claims of "scientism" and "science is just another religion!". If you mean something else, then do elaborate.
Firstly, skepticism is basically just a new name for a discredited philosophical movement called 'logical positivism', in the same way that intelligent design is basically just a new name for creationism.
The section on positivism here has a brief summary:
I'm not sure where the best place to go for information on this would be though to be honest. Wikipedia has a brief article also but it's not especially helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
"Are there any examples of this from the blog?"
- "It turns out that physicians view pharma funding sources negatively"
When there is disclosure that the studies were pharma funded. Often times this isn't disclosed even though it's supposed to be. Additionally, it's been proven beyond a doubt that pharma reps, dinners, gifts, etc. influence doctor's prescribing habits, but this is never mentioned, even though the point of the blog post is supposedly to show that it's rare for doctors to be under the influence of pharma.
- "On the other hand, this study also made me wonder if perhaps we place too much confidence in research funded by the NIH. [...] NIH funding is not a guarantee of quality science by any means."
Again the research unambiguously shows that pharma-funded research is vastly for more likely to find positive results for the drug in question than NIH research.
- "For example, a recent study found a correlation with government funding of a trial and positive results, and another study found no higher likelihood of positive outcomes in industry-sponsored trials but a higher likelihood of reporting double-blinding"
Even when he mentions that pharma sponsored studies are 'associated with' increased likelihood of favorable results, he cites one or two minor studies instead of the most important meta-studies on this topic.
- "Moreover, several studies have suggested that from a methodological standpoint industry-funded studies published in peer-reviewed journals are of equivalent or higher quality than clinical trials funded by other mechanisms."
Citation needed.
- "This is not surprising, given that many clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies are done for the purpose of winning FDA approval for a drug, either initially or for expanded indications, and the FDA has stringent requirements for these clinical trials."
So what he's really saying is that he's comparing apples and oranges.
- "Indeed, as I mentioned, this NEJM study doesn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know"
The classic tactic of claiming that everything negative isn't important because it's 'something we already knew'
- "I’ve come to the conclusion that most doctors, at least in this sample, probably have it about right or may even be a little more skeptical of pharma than necessary."
You've got to be freaking kidding me. Again, look at the list of the most prescribed drugs, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric. And then look at what percentage of those are actually better than placebos or generics.
> "If you mean something else, then do elaborate.
In this case I was kind of referring to how preachers will get up on stage and do the gish gallup as an attempt to discredit evolution, as well as using emotional arguments and emotional tricks rather than facts or logic.
I generally do think that a lot of science falls into the category of scientism, but that isn't what I was getting at here. I also generally think there are good reasons for considering science to be a religion, but that's also not what I was getting at.
>Firstly, skepticism is basically just a new name for a discredited philosophical movement called 'logical positivism', in the same way that intelligent design is basically just a new name for creationism.
The section on positivism here has a brief summary:
http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html
That doesn't really shed any light. It merely asserts, without proving, that the modern skeptic movement is equivalent to logical positivism, and provides neither an argument for that, nor an argument against logical positivism. Now, I'm familiar with Popper and Quine's criticisms of logical positivism, and there are other criticisms that I'm probably not aware of, but I don't see how those criticisms relate to the modern skeptic movement.
By the way, I do agree with many of the criticisms of the modern skeptic movement from that link, but I don't think that most of it has anything to do with whether the skeptics are correct in criticizing certain treatments and advocating others.
I hope you don't see these questions as confrontational because I genuinely would like to be pointed in the right direction for the some of these claims. (speaking as a relatively liberal person who recently joined a host of strongly conservative forums to get a picture of "the other side"...)
> Ever look up how respected skepticism is within the larger philosophical community?
I gather this means that it's not respected? Why is that? I find it hard to believe that scientific skepticism (and not the truther/birther/moon-landing-was-a-hoax kind) can find widespread opposition in any sort of critical thinking community.
> Instead they just spin it in order to trick people who are predisposed to have faith in modern medicine.
Are there any examples of this from the blog? I was (and am) under the impression that a lot of writing is backed up by fairly solid reasoning, references and such.
> What science-based medicine does (again, the blog, not the concept) is really no different than what the evangelical megachurches do, it's just dressed up in different language.
How so? This analogy sounds suspiciously like fundamentalists' claims of "scientism" and "science is just another religion!". If you mean something else, then do elaborate.