User:Adoconeday

Writter in 2007: My interests include cometic surgery, aesthetics, and public health issues related to body image, which includes modeling, diet/weight loss, exercise/fitness, physiology, and alternative medicine. I am active in herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, martial arts as fitness, and various forms of biofeedback including augmented reality.

My latest interest is anti-quackery quackery. Allow me to explain.

There is a rather militant group of people on Wikipedia (and also loose in public), who act as if destined to expose "quacks" in the health profession. They define a "quack" and then assign attributes to quackery and then go to great lengths to legitimize their attacks on so-called quacks via wikipedia and other venues. Truth is, when you look closely at their behavior, you see that they themselves are "quacks" by their own definition. A mob of anti-quacks.

They write elaborate exposes about what they frame as quackery, and in some cases they have been exposed as having taken funds from interests that benefit from such anti-quackery. Look at the pseudoscience group or the quackery group and it's cult-like. Just as they attack so-called "quacks" with so-called "reason", they themselves seems fixated on their "reason" with a cult-like devotion.

Of course they spend inordinate amounts of time advancing their cause, while others are helping sick people. Who can fight militant devotees with nothing better to do than refine their craft of propaganda?

Acupuncture is not quackery, although it may be that many acupuncturists are cheaters. But many psychologists are cheaters, so do we call them quacks? The scientific method is NOT the answer to everything, just as "faith" is not the answer to everything. You are free to believe that faith is the answer to everything, but are you free to enforce your belief upon me, too? So why do these pseudoscience and quackery people go around imposing their beliefs on wikipedia?

Look at what they write when they "explain" why quackery exists:

Reasons quackery persists
There are several reasons quackery continues to be a part of healthcare:
 * Ignorance: An uneducated consumer is more likely to fall victim to implausible treatments.
 * The placebo effect: Medicines or treatments known to have no effect on a disease can still affect a people's perception of their illness. People report reduced pain, increased well-being, improvement, or even total alleviation of symptoms. Both the practitioner and consumer can draw the wrong conclusion that the treatment was effective.
 * The regression fallacy: Certain "self-limiting conditions", such as warts and the common cold, almost always improve, in the latter case in a rather predictable amount of time. A patient may associate the usage of treatments with recovering, when recovery was inevitable.
 * Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: One recovers after taking a specific medicine or treatment, and therefore it is assumed the recovery is caused by the medicine or treatment. In reality, however, it is not necessarily caused by the specific medicine or treatment.
 * Distrust of conventional medicine: Many people, for various reasons including the risk of side effects, have a distrust of conventional medicines (or of the regulating organizations themselves such as the FDA or the major drug corporations).
 * Fear: The perception that a great variety of pharmaceutical medications and medicinal herbs can have very distressing side effects, and many people fear surgery and its consequences, so they may opt to shy away from these treatments.
 * Price: There are some people who simply cannot afford conventional treatment, and seek out a cheaper alternative.
 * Desperation: People with a serious or terminal disease, or who have been told by their practitioner that their condition is "untreatable," may react by seeking out treatment, disregarding the lack of scientific proof for its effectiveness, or even the existence of evidence that the method is ineffective or even dangerous.
 * Pride: Once a person has endorsed or defended a cure, or invested time and money in it, they may be reluctant to admit its ineffectiveness, and therefore recommend the cure that did not work for them to others.
 * Fraud: Manufacturers, fully aware of the ineffectiveness of their medicine, may intentionally produce fraudulent scientific studies and medical test results, thereby confusing practitioners and consumers as to the effectiveness of the medical treatment.
 * Anti-elitism: Quacks often portray themselves as members of the "common people" who care about those in need. The medical establishment is cast as an insular elite that cares more about financial gain than healing the sick. In this case the quack's lack of medical certification is a valuable asset.

and look at how easy it is to edit that to explain why "anti-quackery" exists:

Reasons quackery persists
There are several reasons quackery continues to be a part of healthcare:
 * Ignorance: An uneducated consumer is more likely to fall victim to implausible treatments. A partially-educated wikipedian is more likely to defend scientific maxims, for lack of insight into the grander scheme of life or more advanced knowledge of how seemingly disparate systems interact.
 * The placebo effect: Medicines or treatments known to have no effect on a disease can still affect a people's perception of their illness. People report reduced pain, increased well-being, improvement, or even total alleviation of symptoms. Both the practitioner and consumer can draw the wrong conclusion that the treatment was effective. If anti-quackery denies a connection between patient belief and physical manifestation of disease, then the anti-quack can proclaim a modality to be quackery no matter how effective it might be. The "placebo effect" goes both ways.
 * The regression fallacy: Certain "self-limiting conditions", such as warts and the common cold, almost always improve, in the latter case in a rather predictable amount of time. A patient may associate the usage of treatments with recovering, when recovery was inevitable. Similarly, scientists must make population assumptions to ensure validity of the statistical assumptions they must make to overcome such things as placebo effect and regression fallacy. Most scientific review of scientific review find significant flaw with the scientific methods employed by scientist (especially in radomized, controlled clinical trials). Each patient is a unique human being, just like every other patient.
 * Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: One recovers after taking a specific medicine or treatment, and therefore it is assumed the recovery is caused by the medicine or treatment. In reality, however, it is not necessarily caused by the specific medicine or treatment. in anti-quackery, the lack of scientific proof is assumed to mean it is not provable.
 * Distrust of conventional medicine: Many people, for various reasons including the risk of side effects, have a distrust of conventional medicines (or of the regulating organizations themselves such as the FDA or the major drug corporations). Consider distrust of alternative medicine as a cause for anti-quackery.
 * Fear: The perception that a great variety of pharmaceutical medications and medicinal herbs can have very distressing side effects, and many people fear surgery and its consequences, so they may opt to shy away from these treatments. Anti-quackery seems to involve similar trust issues, with respect to alternative medicines.
 * Price: There are some people who simply cannot afford conventional treatment, and seek out a cheaper alternative. There are some anti-quackery people who cannot accept that unconventional treatments might cost more than conventional treatments, however incorrect that logic.
 * Desperation: People with a serious or terminal disease, or who have been told by their practitioner that their condition is "untreatable," may react by seeking out treatment, disregarding the lack of scientific proof for its effectiveness, or even the existence of evidence that the method is ineffective or even dangerous. As for anti-quackery, has anyone assessed the pyschological status of the anti-quackery brigade?
 * Pride: Once a person has endorsed or defended a cure, or invested time and money in it, they may be reluctant to admit its ineffectiveness, and therefore recommend the cure that did not work for them to others. Thsi one's easy. Once someone has invested trust and faith in the traditional medical system, it is very difficult to accept that it might be flawed, incomplete, or downright deceptive.
 * Fraud: Manufacturers, fully aware of the ineffectiveness of their medicine, may intentionally produce fraudulent scientific studies and medical test results, thereby confusing practitioners and consumers as to the effectiveness of the medical treatment. Likewise, scientists, under severe professional pressures from the medico-industrial machine that drives the world health economy, may attack unconventional techniqus as a way of defending the status quo.
 * Anti-elitism: Quacks often portray themselves as members of the "common people" who care about those in need. The medical establishment is cast as an insular elite that cares more about financial gain than healing the sick. In this case the quack's lack of medical certification is a valuable asset. This one's easy, too. Anti-quacks often portray themselves the same way. They are helping to protect the ignorant, fearful, distrusting, etc as described above.

Wikipedia should delete these pseudoscience and quackery groups. This stuff doesn't have anything to do with a neutral point of view, but actually imposes upon attempts to maintain a neutral point of view.

The policalization of wikipedia is very advanced.