Originally Posted by
pdlamb
I'm a trained scientist, but I don't pretend that science as we know it today explains everything.
Look at the way fire science is now looking at native practices similar to "controlled burns" to mitigate wildfires, just in the last 10-15 years. Or the articles on reintroducing beavers, and the benefits to flood control, water retention, and biodiversity in the last five years. Those are a far cry from the Corps of Engineers straightening and armoring (via concrete viaducts) creeks and small rivers when I was younger.
Sure, but that doesn't mean phlogiston was wrongly omitted from the Periodic Table.
So my wife was fascinated to find New Zealand hospitals include a small garden with bare soil so natives (and other patients) can walk barefoot on dirt as part of their recovery. There's no evidence that it doesn't work, and thousands of years of native healing behind the practice. (She was less enthused by birds flying through open windows and down the halls, FWIW.)
It facilitates introduction of beneficial parasitic nematodes.