Recent criticism of Prince Charles support of CMA by Prof Baum at BMA

[Guest guest]

Re: Challenging Baum on the scope of his methodology

 

Michael Baum's " chastisement " of Prince Charles needs to be challenged for

no other reason than he is wrong to suggest alternative medicine is the

result of inferior thought and lacking in scientific credentials.

 

Laying the groundwork for his argument Baum puts great play on the 'new

skills' learnt by doctors in the last 20 years including " epistemology ..

the nature of proof. " . Baum then goes on to give a very brief account of

modern scientific method (what is in fact Popperian falsificationism) which

is at the root of so-called 'null hypothesis methodology' the cornerstone of

modern statistics employed by scientific research. OK. So far so good. Then

he states:

 

" You [Prince Charles] promote the Gerson diet whose only support comes from

inductive logic-that is, anecdote. .. "

 

and ..

 

" .. I do beg you to exercise your power with extreme caution when advising

patients with life threatening diseases to embrace unproven therapies. "

 

Braun then proceeds to differentiate between the more simplistic inductive

process, and falsificationism (or refutation) on which modern research is

built. It is textbook stuff alright. Just one thing Michael Baum forgets -

all primary knowledge is based on anecdotal experience.

 

We naturally 'associate the positive' in our experience. To

characteristically or habitually 'deny the negative' (this would be

'refutation of the null hypothesis' in Popperian terms) is virtually

impossible because we are 'creatures of contact' and not abstract entities.

The schemata of formal reasoning arrive much later in life and even then we

communicate our experience in terms of affirmation, rather than denial. This

is quite evident in the syntax of language: even the language that Baum

uses:

 

" If their [CAM] proponents lack the courage of their convictions to have

their pet remedies subjected to the hazards of refutation then they are the

bigots who will forever be condemned to practise on the fringe. "

 

The juxtaposition of positives: IF <conditional statement / cause> THEN

<conclusion / effect> makes intuitive sense to all regardless of

mathematical ability or inherent truth - there is no better way to express

an IDEA, but this is not refutation - it is affirmation. How then, does this

phenomenology of experience and communication relate to medicine and

epistemology? Simply this: Our knowledge, intuition and feeling about the

world from the moment we begin to experience it is based on a substrate of

proof by association, not denial by refutation. In this way, the

'methodology of the anecdote' serves as a vital link between the solipsism

of the womb (extreme relativism) and the archaic world paradigms that have

survived the vicissitudes of time and modern science to give us a great

wealth of viable alternative and traditional medicines. Popper himself went

to great lengths to make the point that falsificationism has a limited

context and to apply the notion incorrectly leads to a fragmentation of

knowledge [1].

 

I hope this brief exposition will stimulate Michael Baum and others in the

mainstream of medicine to consider the merits of alternative medical

paradigms per se, rather than attempting a transplant into the unnatural

surroundings of a controlled trial that is bound to suffer either rejection

or total suppression. This does not imply a return to witchcraft or

spiritism (indeed traditional chinese medicine - rejected that path

thousands of years ago in the Nei Jing, a famous text of antiquity). Rather

we should understand the 'methodology of the anecdote' as a kind of

time-conditioned (dare I say dialectic-historic) filtering of evidence that

the laboratory is incapable of reproducing.

 

I'd say respectfully to Michael Baum that " A little knowledge is a dangerous

thing " and ask him not to forget where Popper's falsificationism

originates - in a sound scepticism of the pretentious, both ancient and

modern [2]. Let us applaud Prince Charles for fighting the corner for CAM.

Thank you Sir! We owe you a great debt for helping to keep alive these

ancient treasures in a throwaway world.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Mr. G.A. " Sammy " Bates

www.prostateman.org

 

1. " The fact that most of the sources of our knowledge are traditional

condemns anti-traditionalism as futile. ..... without tradition, knowledge

would be impossible " Karl R. Popper: Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge

1963. ISBN 0-415-28594-1. p. 28

 

2. " For the simple truth is that truth is very often hard to come by, and

that once found it may easily be lost again. Erroneous beliefs may have an

astonishing power to survive, for thousands of years, in defiance of

experience, with or without the aid of conspiracy. The history of science,

and especially of medicine, could furnish us with a number of good

examples. " Karl R. Popper, from his lecture " On the Sources of Knowledge and

Ignorance " first delivered before the British Academy in 1960. Proc Br Ac

46.

 

Competing interests: None declared

 

 

You can see Prof. Baum's full text and the responses he got on the BMA web

site at: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/329/7457/118#66496