PRC research

[Guest guest]

Rosenberg " <zrosenbe@s...> wrote:

> > I think Ken's point is that if we are unable to read the Chinese

> > medical literature and try to decide for ourselves what is

> valuable and

> > what is not, what is the point of criticizing or believing hearsay

> > about these studies?

 

 

Z'ev and Ken,

I think that we need to consider more carefully why people might read

research, or want to use it. If it is to see what sort of treatments

might be considered suitable for certain problems in the PRC, then a

great deal of PRC literature could be useful, as could case studies.

If the aim is to try to determine the rate of efficacy for treating

certain conditions, then accuracy is important. Moreover, a sceptical

biomedical audience might want proof (or disproof!) that CM works for

certain conditions, whereas CM practitioners might not require this,

but something else.

 

I must admit that I can't see why the issue of whether one is able to

read it in Chinese is particularly relevant, and would like to be

enlightened on this point. If we're concerned about veracity, I also

can't see that one can do much more than guess whether a piece of

research has been conducted honestly from reading the study itself,

unless perhaps the results are poor.

 

Am I missing something here?

 

Wainwright

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/13/2003 1:30:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

kenrose2008 writes:

Hard to say. The point about dismissing

an entire body of literature without ever

having read it on the basis of what

" reputable sources " have to say about it

is what I was talking about.

 

I think there's nothing more complicated

here than pointing out the rather obvious

point that if you can't read something, you

can't really make up your own mind about

it. It's another way in which the members

of the profession who are trained in schools

and as part of an entire professional culture

that has ignored the language and the literature

suffer from the lack of access to the bulk of

the knowledge that has accumulated in the

field.

 

I was responding to a couple of things.

One was the sheer inadvisability of acting

this way, i.e., listening to what a few pundits

have to say it all means and dismissing out

of hand what an entire country full of writers

has to say because of the falsification of

information present in an admittedly non-trivial fraction

of studies published there.

Ken,

 

I haven't seen anyone suggest we should dismiss out of hand the entire

country full of writers.

Why would you choose to seemingly exaggerate comments to that degree?

What I meant, and what I read into others comments, is to beware of the

possible flaws in studies and review the data to the best of your ability.

Some studies have been purposely been doctored to reflect the desired

outcome. This is unfortunately, fairly common. We should be aware of this.

This doesn't mean we should dismiss the entire volume of info. That

would be absurdly silly.

There are of course difficulties in translation of another cultures

language and nuances of treatment. This doesn't mean that we can assume that

since

we are not the ones doing the reading, that we cannot understand aspects of

the writings. There are fairly simple concepts that translate fairly well.

Of course, there are concepts that are more ingrained in culture that

without the understanding of the culture, history and lifestyle of the people,

would be next to impossible to understand completely.

I would question the ability of anyone outside the culture to completely

translate the meaning of ancient writings. Even if they could read the words.

 

Not meaning to be hard here. But I would really appreciate the intent of

our writings to be represented in followup posts.

 

Thanks,

Chris