What does disliking or liking alternative medicine have to do with anything. Most here decide on critical appraisal of the evidence behind what she is saying.
...
Can we please have a discussion on the merits of what is presented on a website without all the misdirection/accusations.
It would be naive to believe that people's opinions or ideological allegiance on a topic or person do not color their appraisal. If someone does not like the ideology or principles of a topic or person, they are going find anything they can to criticize. And if they do by chance come across some good qualities or features about that topic or person, they will omit to mention those good features, because they don't want to provide any material that is supportive, only material that is negative.
And you can have the same issues in reverse: if someone greatly admires a topic or person, they may well turn a blind eye to any faults, and not provide criticism where it is due. And that can be just as bad, in terms of providing an even handed appraisal.
I think ideological allegiance is similar to the conflict of interest issues you get in science: it would be very naive to believe that industry-sponsored or industry-employed scientists are going to be unbiased in their appraisal of their industry's products. That's why in published scientific papers, the scientists involved are obliged to declare any conflict of interests. It brings out into the open what could be a hidden agenda.
If anyone has allegiances to one side or the other of any debate, you are never going to get from them an even handed analysis, even though ostensibly they are only "critically appraising the evidence". Such a person is out to "score points" for their side of the debate; they are not really interested in trying to get to the truth of the matter.
In the case of the conventional medicine versus alternative medicine arguments, I find that where people are polarized to one side or the other, it is usually caused by ignorance and lack of personal experience of the other side of the debate. By ignorance I don't mean lack of intelligence, I mean, as per the dictionary definition of that word, a lack of knowledge or experience of a subject.
And you see such ignorance on both sides. I cringe when I see people ignorantly criticizing the achievements of modern scientific medicine. But equally, I am dismayed by the arrogance of statements like the one
@Laelia just posted
here:
"CAM is a political ideological entity, not a scientific one. It is an artificial category created for the purpose of promoting a set of dubious, untested or fraudulent health practices. It is an example of the (successful) use of language as a propaganda tool." - Steven Novella
Or the arrogant and ignorant intro of the Wikipedia alternative medicine article that I post earlier:
Alternative medicine
See also: Quackery, Pseudoscience, and Pseudomedicine
I see an amazing dumbness in such statements, a dumbness that I would not have expected from supposedly scientific minds. That's not to say that there are not pseudoscientific and quack practices within alternative medicine; there are. But that's one reason why you need a discerning mind to get the best out of alternative medicine: to separate the dross from the gold.
You would think Myhill invented mitochondrial research into ME/CFS. She didn't. And by the way, I wonder why out of the 77 references provided in the Naviaux research paper that Myhill's groundbreaking brilliant research isn't mentioned once.
Sure, the idea that mitochondrial and energy metabolism dysfunction might be involved in ME/CFS goes back for some decades. In a quick PubMed search just now, the earliest study on ME/CFS energy metabolism I could find is
this 1987 paper, which failed to find any defects. But
this 1991 paper by Prof Peter Behan et al did find mitochondrial abnormalities in muscle biopsies in ME/CFS, and the paper states: "the findings described here provide the first evidence that PFS may be due to a mitochondrial disorder precipitated by a virus infection."
However, for me the interesting thing about the Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard paper is how much more in-depth it is compared to any previous work, and the fact that it uncovered mechanisms possibly explaining how an energy metabolism dysfunction in ME/CFS actually arises. Specifically, it found that translocator protein (the adenine nucleotide translocator) appeared to be at fault, and it found problems in oxidative phosphorylation.
The Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard paper also provided an interesting theory to explain PEM, based on the temporary loss of ATP molecules. I suspect that Dr Norman E. Booth may have been the originator of this intriguing theory of PEM; as a physicist, he might be accustomed to devising theoretical models like this.
Previous works on energy metabolism dysfunction in ME/CFS did not provide any such in-depth investigation and analysis of the possible mechanisms.
Thus in the best traditions of science, the Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard proposes actual theories that might explain ME/CFS and PEM. That's what in my mind makes the Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard paper groundbreaking in this area of energy metabolism research.
Of course like any theory or experimental results in science, these theories need to be tested and validated. But that is what science is all about: proposing a theory or experimental result that then gets either validated or refuted by further research. A replication study is underway, so we will soon see whether their work is validated or refuted.
And by the way, I wonder why out of the 77 references provided in the Naviaux research paper that Myhill's groundbreaking brilliant research isn't mentioned once.
I can't see a great deal of significance to that. Fluge and Mella's ME/CFS energy metabolism
paper does cite the Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard paper.
I'm not sure what you are saying.
I am saying that ironically, you often find that people who use alternative medicine are engaged in testing and observation experiments (the basis of science), albeit in simple a simple homespun way. This is something you don't really find in people who delegate everything to their doctor and get a conventional medicine treatment.
Of course, you also find alternative medicine advocates that are embarrassingly non-scientific, and some who are quite incompetent when it comes to testing and observation.
Nevertheless, I think skeptically-minded critics of alternative medicine often do not appreciate this that done properly, alternative medicine is a sort of homespun science.
