Originally Posted by
livedarklions
I'm being very, very clear why that was cherry picking. You deliberately left out the part of the schtick I was objecting to. I have never once objected to people using visualization if it's helpful. That does not for a second provide a good argument for polluting scientific discourse and objective information with crappy metaphors being treated as if they're real. People can and do take other implications for that and invent other applications from this "alternative science" that can be harmful and/or unnecesarily wallet-draining. It also may dissuade people from taking other more effective steps if they're constantly being told there's nothing special about science-based medicine and much that's supposedly being kept hidden from them. Just ask Steve Jobs, oh, wait, you can't.
...cherry picking is when you select out one or several instances of a cash revenue marketing gimmick, and use it to condemn everything written about a topic. Like this:
Originally Posted by
livedarklions
By your rationale here, my selecting out the portions of that web link (which I included), that were pertinent to my point, is "cherry picking". I think you are wrong in that. Were I engaging in that practice, I would hardly have linked you to the entire page and suggested that you read it. "Cherry picking, as such, is a deliberate practice to deceive, by omitting pertinent information from a source. In this case, the other stuff is hardly relevant to my chosen subject of visualization techniques to address chronic pain. I might have missed it, but it appeared to me that all of it was offered for free, on the internet. And none of it contained advice to avoid any other method or source of treatment. I think you're just making **** up now. Again, I have no idea of why.
If it's in an effort to defend the less sophisticated from quackery, I would suggest to you that's a very tall order. I hope you're up to it, because there are a lot of places you need to visit on the internet before you're finished.
Originally Posted by
livedarklions
I almost posted some of the comments on the debunking article I linked, because I think they actually illustrated some of what it is I'm actually getting at, and I think you're somewhat too dead set on being mad at me for some reason that you don't really ralize we're really disagreeing about very little.
These people were actually calling themselves "barefooters" and they were extolling the benefits of walking around barefoot in all sorts of environments. What was interesting was that they were actually thanking the author for debunking the pseudoscientific nonsense as they thought that all making wild claims about it curing inflammatory diseases and improbable mechanisms was accomplishing was to make it harder for people to appreciate the real effects it had on their mental state, posture, comfort, whatever. In other words, by tying the thing up with a buch of BS that clearly has more to do with selling shoes without rubber soles or whatever than anything real it was just easier to write off anyone saying "hey, try walking barefoot" as a crank.
I said above I had no problem with people trying walking around barefoot to see if it helps them. I have a big problem with lying to people about what is and what isn't science, that never ends well. This isn't being presented to people as a metaphor, it's being sold them as a true electrical connection with the ground vs. fake connections with the ground. And lo and behold, if you buy the special leather-soled athletic footwear or whatever, you're going to be cured is not a message I'm going to get behind.
And yeah, I'm not going to feel bad if I discourage someone from buying overpriced crap like this:
https://www.earthing.com/products/grounders-yoga-mat
...I suspect our main disagreement is that you seem to feel there is a danger from keeping an open mind on stuff like this. I understand that there are various levels of crazy, but I don't feel qualified to solve the problem. And I would hate it, if someone who might actually benefit from something like this, were put off from trying it, simply because portions of it are not currently demonstrated or refuted by science. Human pain is a complex and poorly understood phenomenon. And it's not like you can't get into serious trouble searching out a solution to chronic pain in the standard, allopathic medical treatment model.
Not everyone who looks for a solution to chronic pain ends up as a victim of some greedy pain clinic owner, writing endless scripts for Oxycontin. Similarly, not everyone who explores this "earthing" business will end up poorer and wearing special shoes.
Again, I won't speculate on why your view of this might be what it is. We're all different.