Clinical Significance

[John.S.Mill]

@magillaG

My understanding is that traditional chinese medicine was effectively invented by mau because china did not have enough western style physicians. It’s claim to effectiveness is grounded in an appeal to “tradition” rather than evidence. This even though there is really no single tradition of chinese medicine. Instead different parts of china have historically had very different traditions.

This is news to me.
I think most Chinese know of Chinese medicine to be based on Bencao Gangmu - Wikipedia

[Nick_Papagiorgio]

I think in the case of accupuncture it probably makes people feel good because they learn to relax with needles stuck into their muscles. I have found the biggest benefit of Yoga is not that I get more flexible but that I have learned what it means to be relaxed. Before Yoga I had an incorrect notion of what relaxed means because I didn’t understand tension. You can’t truly understand tension without knowing what lack of tension means. I think stuff like accupuncture helps in this way. In a clinical setting the bar is higher than just an indirect connection like that. Maybe accupuncture needs a qualifier.

[John.S.Mill]

@magillaG

Pseudoscience masquerades as modern science. Unlike science, conjectures of pseudoscience do not conform with facts as much as possible. In practice this usually means not working within the mainstream scientific community.

That’s because science seeks to maximize the probability of working.

You can rewrite my previous post as a frequency severity comparison, say at alpha = 0.5%

1. something that only shows 1% effectiveness across the board, essentially useless
2. something that only works 1% of the time, with 100% effectiveness, but otherwise 0% effectiveness

Scenario 1 is basically pseudoscience.
One can argue that scenario 2 is not pseudoscience, but no doctor in good conscience will recommend it.

[magillaG]

I don’t pretend to be an expert on chinese medicine.

However, i don’t think that your post contradicts my claim. Why should we believe some document created in the 17th century? i think this is supplemented by the idea that chinese medicine has been widely practiced in china. again based on that article i posted, it has not been.

[magillaG]

@John.S.Mill

That’s because science seeks to maximize the probability of working.

I do not think this is a particularly good description of science.

Not that any philosopher has been able to definitely define science.

But science has a large theoretical component that is not uniquely constrained by experiment. You have to account for that somehow.

[John.S.Mill]

@magillaG

Why should we believe some document created in the 17th century?

The book is just a compendium. It doesn’t mean that Chinese medicine hasn’t been practiced for millennia (it has, it dates back to ancient myths). I’m no expert on Chinese medicine either, though.

[magillaG]

Right, according to that article it has not been practiced for millennia all across china.

Summary

But exporting Chinese medicine presented a formidable task, not least because there was no such thing as “Chinese medicine.” For thousands of years, healing practices in China had been highly idiosyncratic. Attempts at institutionalizing medical education were largely unsuccessful, and most practitioners drew at will on a mixture of demonology, astrology, yin-yang five phases theory, classic texts, folk wisdom, and personal experience.
…
Mao understood he needed to deal with criticisms like those of Lu Xun, Wang Qingren, and Wang Chong in order for Chinese medicine to be taken seriously, both domestically and internationally. His solution was a two-pronged approach. First, inconsistent texts and idiosyncratic practices had to be standardized. Textbooks were written that portrayed Chinese medicine as a theoretical and practical whole, and they were taught in newly founded academies of so-called “traditional Chinese medicine,” a term that first appeared in English, not Chinese.