“The placebo effect is a real phenomenon, and most likely accounts for the (very) limited success of those “alternative” medicines.”
Isn’t the placebo effect “alternative” medicine? Science does not understand it well enough (yet) to make it a reliable treatment.
“Whenever I see someone urging people to reject evidence-based science and embrace “alternative” medicine developed on the basis of ... well, I don’t know, but it makes me cringe and despair for the state of scientific education these days.”
I don’t despair as long as they are the ones who suffer the consequences.
However, it’s also important to be aware of science’s very real limitations. Its realm is restricted to what’s repeatable and reproducible. It can’t deal with one-time events, or those that seem totally spurious. So “miracles”, “seers” that might predict a future event, in other words all the “paranormal” space is outside science’s scope, even though it is part of reality.
However, it’s also important to be aware of science’s very real limitations. Its realm is restricted to what’s repeatable and reproducible. It can’t deal with one-time events, or those that seem totally spurious. So “miracles”, “seers” that might predict a future event, in other words all the “paranormal” space is outside science’s scope, even though it is part of reality.
No, the placebo effect is very understandable within the realm of medical science. It is very well established that a person's mental attitude affects their health, and the placebo directly affects a person's mental attitude.
In contrast, "alternative" medicine is marketed on the basis that it is NOT supported by science, and that its effectiveness is based on mysterious principles unknown by "mainstream" science.
Most of what would be called "supernatural" is not actually outside the realm of science (which is the art of observing the physical world around us). Just because an event is "one-time" doesn't mean that it was caused by some non-natural agent; in order for a scientist to observe something, they first have to figure out the conditions under which it occurs. A rare enough event might not be observable scientifically. Ditto with "miracles." It would be called a miracle, for instance, if someone would recover from incurable cancer. Yet, despite the fact that it rarely happens, there is no reason the body can't mount an effective immune response against cancer. And with "seers"--there are any number of reasons they might predict a future event. Many fortune tellers, for instance, are good judges of human nature, who can ascertain that certain events are likely in a person's life just by asking a few pointed questions and watching their body language while they answer.
I know that it is not very romantic to reject the supernatural. But the natural world around me is teeming with such wonders that I don't need to turn to the supernatural to find the amazing.