My humanist society recently hosted a talk by Abhijit Chanda, founder of “Rationable,” a YouTube channel. (The name does not refer to things subject to rationing, but rather rationality.) He zoomed in from India, speaking about “Alternative Health Practices and Pseudoscience.”
A starting point was to query reasons for the popularity of “alternative” medicine as opposed to the conventional (real) sort. Chanda characterized the latter, in America, as not exactly user-friendly. People recoil from giant institutions like government, insurance companies, and big pharma. Mainstream doctors often seem cold and brusque, in contrast to “alternative” practitioners exuding warmth. Many people take modern medicine for granted, while venerating “traditional” treatments as better fitted to their beliefs, philosophies, and psychologies. As opposed to critical thinking.
But he suggested that critical thinking doesn’t necessarily correlate with intelligence. In that regard, he cited Steve Jobs, certainly a very intelligent guy, who insisted on treating his cancer outside of mainstream medicine. Bye bye, Steve.
There’s also the appeal of the word “natural,” with the idea that it equates to “good.” Wow is that wrong; Chanda called it the “naturalistic fallacy.” Humanity’s whole history is a battle against nature; it can kill you. That’s not to say we don’t get some useful treatments from nature, like penicillin. But it requires science to separate what’s good from what’s bad.
Proponents of “alternative” treatments often do make scientific claims. But Chanda was pretty dismissive of that. It’s typically window-dressing rather than real science, producing the conclusions the “researcher” wants to get. He cited the example of a Covid cure touted as 100% effective in trials. Well, to start with, 97% of people don’t get Covid in the first place. (The huckster eventually backed off the claim, instead saying his snake oil “boosts immunity.” Whatever that might actually mean.)
Yet numerous people insist that even practices like homeopathy help them. Homeopathy entails the dilution of a substance to such an extent that there’s zero molecules of it left. Thus it’s literally no treatment at all. Though of course homeopathic “cures” work via the placebo effect, which is quite powerful. It throws a monkey-wrench into any attempt at rational discussion. And homeopathy is actually harmful because it diverts users from genuine medicine, thus killing vast numbers. Yet we can’t get rid of it because its flunkies constitute a huge invested infrastructure. Like religions.
Another word often thrown around is “energy.” (Chanda displayed a website piling on the feel-good lingo, hawking “Holistic Calming Energy.”) He said these folks actually don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to “energy” (which is actually not some Jedi-like force, but prosaically defined as “the ability to do work”). Related here is the notion of a “life force” that somehow emanates within us (“vitalism”). That just ain’t how things are.
Chanda focused particularly on “Ayurveda” practice, originating in India. The word loosely translates as “knowledge of life.” Another of his targets was Reiki, which he said is not, contrary to common belief, some “ancient wisdom,” but invented in the 1920s by one Mikao Usui. Who lived to the grand old age of 60. Quite the advertisement for Reiki’s health benefits.
The basic problem with all this stuff is that it’s grounded in ignorance of the true causes of disease and illness. Ayurveda is ancient — long predating germ theory! And, typically, it relies on the archaic concept that illness is caused by some sort of imbalance among bodily “humours.”
Such thinking, for centuries, made bloodletting an all-purpose treatment for any malady (it killed George Washington). We now know it’s complete bunk.
Chanda’s final takeaway: Just let science do its thing. (What world is he living in?)
