If the Yanks can do it.......
Hi Guys,
I am fed up waiting for someone to start this forum off, we need lively discussions and heated debates as seen on the SGU forums... So let me see if I cannot goad a little action out of you.
"Homeopathic and other natural interventions should be available from the health service" Discuss........
Several points;
1) there is nothing "natural" about homeopathy.
B) I'm all for natural remedies etc being available from a health service providing there is evidence to support claims made.
Hi Uniflex,
Now I am no troll, but I will play devils advocate!
What is Unnatural about water?
The effect of homeopathy is supposed to be dependant on water having a 'memory'. The human brain is excellent at forming and retaining memories. The human brain is 80% water. What more evidence could you want?
and
"Ahhh but the act of measurement interferes with the subtle effects of these 'treatments'.Therefore, we should limit testing to demonstrable harm only!"
Devils advocate? Why bother?
Nothing. We're not talking about water. We're talking about homeopathy.
Correct. It's also been well established that this does not exist.
False analogy. The brain doesn't form and retain memories in the structure of the water.
This is what we call bullshit.
I'd prefer if some assured, provable and replicable benefit could be demonstrated. This has yet to happen though.
Something I've idly wondered about on occasion is whether it would be worth merging this forum with the Skeptics in the pub one, if for no other reason than it would make my trolling easier (I jest, I jest! But only a little). At the moment it seems both are just spread a little thin and are probably trying to hit a similar group of people.
Equivocation
Fallacy of Division
Special Pleading
Non Sequitur. This would only tell you if the treatment caused harm, not if it worked.
Seriously if you want to troll, or play devil's advocate on, a skeptics board you have to be a lot more subtle about it. It can't just be 'spot the fallacy'. More succesful approaches arise from asking within the context of politics or ethics where, although science can inform them, whether or not a conclusion is right will depend on things that can't be scientifically justified and even skeptics tend to disagree on some of the fundamentals within them.
I just cannot argue from this side of the fence. I don't even have the succour of a true belief to sustain me. You are quite right it is utter BS.
This is a good idea - we've also been offered to merge with ASF:
http://www.australasianskeptics.info/index.php
Which has a larger userbase to start with...
I was thinking about this the other day and I reckon it'd be interesting to see some research on the critical point (number of users) needed for a forum to be busy.
You may want to listen to the latest Rational Capital. Start listening from 27:40 if you want to jump straight to the section. They recently pulled their podcast from the AS forums due to just one member. I have to admit that the user in question is also the main reason I don't bother with that forum.
If you want a section on NZSitP I'm open to the idea.
I had a quick look around the site and he didn't seem to say anything overly outrageous. Is there some post I missed where he said something daft?
You didn't look too far.
I think it's more is personality than anything else. He's obnoxious, whines a lot, contributes less to a conversation than someone not participating in it, has an ego the size of a planet, is never wrong (you can tell by how frequently he twists previous statements to mean different things). He's already been banned from the AFA forums and has posted a very mature open letter to them about it.
When you get down to it while the guy is still wasting oxy he's a waste of good bio mass.
If he showed up on the NZSitP site I'd be forced for add a feature to allow for members to be able to blacklist other members.