Gathering place for osteopaths
Causes, effects, and why science is failing us... and why osteopathy might not be that different.
I found a fascinating article in Wired magazine (online), which talks about Pfizer abandoning trials of its drug torcetrapib. It's a really interesting article about the limitations (rather than flaws) of reductionist methodology, but it also goes on to discuss what cause and effect is.
The article in full is here:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/02/features/trials-and...
and I'd draw attention to the following three paragraphs:
"There are two lessons to be learned from these experiments. The first is that our theories about a particular cause and effect are inherently perceptual, infected by all the sensory cheats of vision. Hume was right that causes are never seen, only inferred, but the truth is we can't tell the difference. And so we look at moving balls and see causes, a melodrama of taps and collisions, chasing and fleeing.
The second lesson is that causal explanations are oversimplifications. This is what makes them useful -- they help us grasp the world at a glance. For instance, after watching the short films, people immediately settled on the most straightforward explanation for the ricocheting objects. Although this account felt true, the brain wasn't seeking the literal truth -- it just wanted a plausible story that didn't contradict observation. There's a fundamental mismatch between how the world works and how we think about the world.
The good news is that, in the centuries since Hume, scientists have mostly managed to work around this mismatch as they've continued to discover new cause-and-effect relationships at a blistering pace. This success is largely a tribute to the power of statistical correlation, which has allowed researchers to pirouette around the problem of causation. Though scientists constantly remind themselves that mere correlation is not causation, if a correlation is clear and consistent, then they typically assume a cause has been found -- that there really is some invisible association between the measurements."
and then I'd ask how we as osteopaths separate ourselves from the rest of the medical profession. Specifically, I'd ask whether our "holistic view of the patient" is different from that performed by orthodox medicine (allegedly), or are we espousing merely a more complicated "plausible story that didn't contradict observation"?
Of course, it's worth noting that the fact that "the patient got (worse)better" does not make our diagnosis (in)correct any more than it does our entire diagnostic philosophy.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on -
I'd say he's fallen into the very trap he's identified, suggesting that the tools of science (eg statistics) are what have saved us from the problems of our own perception. No, they have not, he's misplaced cause and effect in his own thesis. Those very tools are also used to hide cause and effect, to confuse, obfuscate, confabulate, and even to defraud, and sometimes quite intentionally.
The main thing that keeps scientists on track is their honesty, decency and common sense. The tools of scientific enquiry are only valuable when they have a greater interest in the truth than in proving themselves right. As long as they have those, they will sooner or later begin to recognise when their approach is flawed, their instincts will help bring them back on track. Without those things, you can demonstrate the 'scientific truth' in anything, whether or not it is true. A few minutes on a sceptics forum is enough to see this.
Going on the excerpt above, I'd say yet another author has failed to recognise the importance of the observer's point of view and human qualities - having brought them into the argument, the only way he can view them is troublesome or negative. Funny how the faculties brought to us over eons of development for one purpose only - to help us to cope with the real world - are time and again deemed insufficient for dealing with the real world.
When 2 + 2 = a bumblebee that can't fly, it is only our human qualities that recognise the absurdity, and they do so instantly and effortlessly. Putting our lab tools and mathematical instruments first is wrong, they are servant not master.
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on
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Just reminds me that a satnav does not see the route from a to b in the same way that a human brain can. In fact it performs a very crude, lengthy and inefficient calculation process, the results of which still need evaluating by the driver. When he drives off a cliff, the rocks at the bottom won't listen to his excuses.
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on -
I think you need to read the article again. There is no implication that statistics saves us from the problem of causation - to "pirouette around the problem of causation" does not mean that statistics takes us through a problem. It means that the real problem has been dodged until later, has not been addressed and that it has not has been obfuscated through (mis)use of mathematics.
The next few sentences actually reinforce this point. It argues that whilst one "correlation does not imply causation", current scientific practice then makes the fallacious step of saying that says that if enough studies find a correlation, then causation is present. It's like adding zero to zero enough times and ending up with something more than zero.
The problem with the "honesty, decency and common sense" argument, is that these qualities cannot be verified through anything more substantive than self-refentiality (i.e. I can tell I'm honest because I am!), or collective self-referentiality (i.e. he's honest because I'm can honestly say he is, and I'm honest about myself being honest). After all, it's extremely difficult to distinguish these qualities from a set of preconceptions so insidious that you don't even realise that that is what they are (like realising that you are in a dream whilst you are in it).
Your final point is that we are good at detecting absurdity - I think you'll find that the entire article is actually about recognising absurdity (which was my point to begin with). It's just that we have not solved the problem - like the scientist's use of statistics claimed in the article, we have sidestepped the fundamental issue until later, hiding behind the observer's point of view, without rigorously defining the observer (leaving that to "common sense" which is as much of an instrument of detection as any "mathematical instrument", and which as previously stated may be undetectably unreliable). As a result, we cannot claim categoric separation between our philosophy and that espoused by reductionism in science. We're still on the same spectrum of being wrong.
Small Fry said:
I'd say he's fallen into the very trap he's identified, suggesting that the tools of science (eg statistics) are what have saved us from the problems of our own perception. No, they have not, he's misplaced cause and effect in his own thesis. Those very tools are also used to hide cause and effect, to confuse, obfuscate, confabulate, and even to defraud, and sometimes quite intentionally.
The main thing that keeps scientists on track is their honesty, decency and common sense. The tools of scientific enquiry are only valuable when they have a greater interest in the truth than in proving themselves right. As long as they have those, they will sooner or later begin to recognise when their approach is flawed, their instincts will help bring them back on track. Without those things, you can demonstrate the 'scientific truth' in anything, whether or not it is true. A few minutes on a sceptics forum is enough to see this.
Going on the excerpt above, I'd say yet another author has failed to recognise the importance of the observer's point of view and human qualities - having brought them into the argument, the only way he can view them is troublesome or negative. Funny how the faculties brought to us over eons of development for one purpose only - to help us to cope with the real world - are time and again deemed insufficient for dealing with the real world.
When 2 + 2 = a bumblebee that can't fly, it is only our human qualities that recognise the absurdity, and they do so instantly and effortlessly. Putting our lab tools and mathematical instruments first is wrong, they are servant not master.
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on
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To be honest, I'm a little sorry I piped up. These sorts of question are interesting, but they lead to headaches sooner than answers. But we can't be entirely wrong if we're still here. If people struggle with decisions, they will concoct endless formulas for getting out of them, only to discover that they can't. We can't logic our way out of our own responsibility to choose. This is the human condition, to fail to embrace it is not to escape it.
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on
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Yes, the answers arrive after the headaches ;-)
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Permalink Reply by Stanley Rosenberg on -
A nice presentation of the fundamental issues.
The philospher Karl Popper said that we can never prove anything. However, if enough people try to prove something wrong, then there is a better chance that the theory might be correct.
Our surgical treatment of pace pain is a perfect example of how an over simplification can generate a multi billion dollar industry employing lots of people for unnecessary back operations.
There was a study of 98 people (statistically significant) published in New England Journal of Medicine about 20 years ago. They did not have and never had back problems. Two thirds of them had a prolapsed disk. One third of them had two or more prolapsed disks - but no pain.
There are many causes of back pain, for example referrred pain. There are two that I find in back patients. When I treat these two issues, their back pain disappears: a displaced tail bone and a kidney ptosis. http://stanleyrosenberg.com/kst_laerebog/pdf/kap26_the_mysterius_ba...
On most scannings, they end at L5 and do not include the poisiton of the sacrum or the tailbone and they do not examine the position of the kidneys.
Stanley Rosenberg
© 2012 Created by Ronan O'Brien.
