velocity's partner

[Tim Y]

No arena of study is so inundated by charlatans as medicine. Clowns,
eager to cash in on the emotional haze many sick/injured/incapacitated
individuals enter when not feeling well, fleece these poor people who
are blinded to the objective evaluation of what they are getting into.
The worst of these pariahs go after those unfortunate individuals who
are terminal (taking them, for example to the radium caves in Texas)
and suck the last few dollars out of them in their emotionally damaged
state.

I cannot tell you the number of times I had to plead with patients NOT
to follow up on completely BOGUS "therapies" or bogus "ideas" over the
course of my practice. Just in these areas alone, the data is so
overwhelming against rational conventional thought that it is a wonder
more people don't just bust out laughing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew..._vaccine_0605\
07/20060705?hub=Health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_life_regression
live red cell microscopy the ability, so promoted, as to realize one's
total health based upon a single field of ones' red blood cells
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...2181106AAQ0dT2

Sadly, I see the loss of rational thinking increasing exponentially
and of late was curious to find a thesis the might explain how
ideologies promoting completely ludicrous ideas (Intelligent Design)
are allowed to be placed on a equivalent platform to ideas represented
by 150 years of scientific substantiation (evolution).

Two authors have brought forth explanations that are reasonable:
Robert Hofsteader "Anti-intellecualism in American Life"
Susan Jacoby, "The Age of American Unreason."

In the latter text she points out the 'infotainment' aspect of today's
lifestyle that is eating away at critical thinking i.e. "the greater
accessibility of information through computers and the internet
fosters the illusion that the ability to retrieve words and numbers
..also confers the capacity to judge whether those represent truth.
lies of somewhere in between."

It is a sad day for education when blind acceptance of ideas without a
shred of critical scientific evaluation can attain socially accepted
prominence in our society. ANY IDEA has to stand the test of critical
thought and rise or fall on a discerning public.

Ideas should NEVER be accepted as a blanket truth but tested by the
recipient to establish their own credibility.

She goes on to say, p. 209 "At the dawn of the 20th century,
scientists like my great grandfather made the entirely reasonable
assumption that the expansion of knowledge about every aspect of the
natural world would produce a less credulous American public. They
assumed that the growing availability of scientific, historical, nd
anthropological evidence would deter the spread of both religious and
nonreligious beliefs that not only lacked a basis in reality but
frequently CONTRAINDICATED reality. That assumption reasonable as it
seemed at the time, was wrong."

This sad fact screams out all the time in many areas of critical
evaluation including the relative mundane aspect of thoroughbred
handicapping.