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The article itself already covers that fairly well:quote:There are those who would blame Lu’s skepticism on the Western-style medical education he received in Japan. Rightfully wary of ethnocentrism, some scholars have suggested that negative judgments about Chinese medicine result from the misapplication of “Western” criticisms to “Eastern” thought. In the words of anthropologist Judith Farquhar: “The standards of argument by which we judge our own most rigorous explanations cannot be applied to Chinese medicine.”
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 15:10 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 15:07 |
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MrNemo posted:I think it was another Sinica episode, the first had traced the origin of the rise of TCM to the Communist's booklets on medical care that included traditional remedies as a last ditch option in case there was nothing else. On that Sinica episode they said it was a holdover from the Nationalist days because when the Nationalists tried to abolish TCM they found they had nowhere near enough properly trained doctors and Chinese rednecks (i.e. 96% of China any time before 1980 let's not kid ourselves) flipped their poo poo at the idea of not having a doctor to clap their hands and rub caterpillars on their butts. The Nationalists institutionalized it as its own thing separate from Western medicine and the Communists ran with it. I'm not sure any of them expected that it would continue and grow into the enormous snake oil industry it is today. And yeah the concept of logic as a Western thing that doesn't apply to the mysterious East is hella orientalist. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jun 6, 2014 |
# ? Jun 6, 2014 16:05 |
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Smeef posted:I'm sure someone will pop up with arguments about deconstructing logic as a Western social construct (but it's too hard to do and none of you would understand it so let's just mention it in passing and move along) in response to this article on 'traditional' Chinese 'medicine', but here ya go. Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine I did not suggest that logic as such, is a uniquely Hellenistic social construct. Quite the reverse. I like the article. It does a nice job of removing conflation and making some distinctions that deal with orientalism as well as the propaganda internal to China. In addition to all the comments on the selling of amazing and efficacious tiger's penis and snake gall there is another difficulty arising from the Cultural Revolution. The functional distinction on the second page is the difference between anesthesia appropriate to a surgical procedure and a regimen appropriate to recovery. If I decided I needed surgery I would certainly not want acupuncture before hand. Hypnosis and acupuncture are both effectively used in dentistry. Not for me. On the other hand I have had very effective treatment during recovery from injuries (car accident) where there was not a good western treatment. For pain in particular, but to some extent for the rehabilitation of tendons and ligaments where surgery was seen to have roughly the same efficacy as conservative approaches. Another example is if you happen to have a history of substance abuse or are prone to addiction. There are difficult choices to make there. In the ’80s I had a research grant and lived in China for several years independent of any university or institutional relationship other than my grant. I was researching the effects of modern ideology on traditional cultural practices. I was looking primarily at Marxism, capitalism, and technology on Taiwan, in HK and the PRC. At one point in the PRC almost all cultural practices were made illegal. I think that can be traced through Marx to Feurbach. Then coming out of the revolution the Party decided this was a mistake. To correct for this mistake they then sought to create state sanctioned versions of the practices (showing the glory of the motherland). All other forms of practice were literally illegal and could not be taught. In the process a funny thing happened. In order to create the state sanctioned forms they would gather the (surviving) luminaries on the topic and takes them with creating an integrated practice overseen by the caring and benevolent eye of the Party. Of course in most cases the way practices had been maintained and taught was based on a lineage system. Instead of offering up the "secrets" of whatever lineage it was commonly the case that the committees ended up offering something, but keeping what they considered the most valuable parts of the practice to themselves. This is both a cultural effect and you can imagine that many of these people neither loved nor trusted the benevolent interests of the Party who had only the People's best interests in mind. I can't imagine why. They had a long time in the idyllic countryside to reflect in this. My own biased impression of the responses in the thread to the things I have written are that they are responses to someone who is defending TCM in the way people religiously defend naturopathy. I am not and don't feel I have written anything that could be remotely construed in that way. The unexamined fervor with which TCM and such practices are often defended as cultural artifacts, and how that plays into personal motivations and the damaging nature of all that is clear. It's a kind of chauvinism. I have also worked a great deal in the R&D portions of many of the largest pharma companies for a decade or so and there is a similar chauvinism there in my experience that has these same qualities, though expressed differently. There is a danger in the type of reductionism that relates to this question as if it were an either/or question, which is not not unique to a western ideology. There is a lot that is systematically deleted in the process. I have said several times that the effort to engage in a reflective deconstruction is not the same as an effort to refute. It is an effort to become conscious of how the world view is produced such that distortions and deletions endemic to that process can be understood and accounted for. Typically it also requires personally coming into contact with how we ourselves are beneficiaries of such a world view and considering that. That does not mean abandoning it, treating it as categorically wrong or something. Quite the reverse. Such an unexamined reaction is part of the world view and not useful to the process at all. The efficacy of the world view, as expressed in practice, is directly and systemically related to the deletions. This is true paradigmatically of generalized epistemologies, but equally true for some activity like driving a car. It's not a "problem" to be solved. It is a condition to account for. Functionality arises from that process, but equally so do a set of deleted consequences. Such consequences when perceived at all are thought to be independent of the systematic functionality. They are problems which if solved would then allow the system to function correctly, rather than understood as being produced by the system itself. One of the things about a positivist epistemology is that it is incredibly powerful, particularly through the application of control for the sake of predictable outcomes. This creates wonders. The nature of deleted manifestation and consequences is equal to that power though. This is not some big controversy or radical statement. It is one of the key areas of research at the NSF. Essentially it necessary to understand the nature of this in order to address the increasingly complex consequences such as climate effect. Again this does not mean occupying some sort of moral stance about the evils of the epistemology. That is simply not helpful. Sogol fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jun 6, 2014 |
# ? Jun 6, 2014 18:27 |
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I watch too many Chinese movies, but TCM is depicted very favorably. A very common trope was foreigners inviting a Chinese medicine man to lecture them on TCM, then laughing at the guy's speech; The guy ends up saving the day with his kung-fu or whatever. Herb stores are great, you can ask for tonic made from the weirdest poo poo. I didn't know non-old people still believed in it. Femur fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jun 6, 2014 |
# ? Jun 6, 2014 19:44 |
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I don't think anecdotal evidence of TCM in pain relief is useful to the discussion of its validity. Pain is notoriously effected by placebo in all blinded clinical trials. If you put placebo(sugar pill) vs. a 1 billion dollar neurological inhibitor of pain, placebo will get you about 50% reduction in pain and the actual medicine will get you about 70% reduction. If you subtract out the control of a placebo, you get a paltry 20% effect which is actually real but lower than placebo. That's what you get when you study a subjective thing like pain. So just because someone experienced pain relief while on TCM doesn't mean that the effect is anything more than placebo.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 19:56 |
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Vladimir Putin posted:I don't think anecdotal evidence of TCM in pain relief is useful to the discussion of its validity. Pain is notoriously effected by placebo in all blinded clinical trials. If you put placebo(sugar pill) vs. a 1 billion dollar neurological inhibitor of pain, placebo will get you about 50% reduction in pain and the actual medicine will get you about 70% reduction. If you subtract out the control of a placebo, you get a paltry 20% effect which is actually real but lower than placebo. That's what you get when you study a subjective thing like pain. So just because someone experienced pain relief while on TCM doesn't mean that the effect is anything more than placebo. For very specific pain types acupuncture performs better than placebo. There is not some big controversy over that. The problem is the sort of huge claims for other things. Also, anecdotal information grounded in ones own experience is in fact useful. See the HIV/AIDs activism and how that radically changed practice to understand why. This is still not really engaging the conversation though and is the easy part in my view. Sogol fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 6, 2014 |
# ? Jun 6, 2014 20:07 |
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Sogol posted:For very specific pain types acupuncture performs better than placebo. There is not some big controversy over that. The problem is the sort of huge claims for other things. Also, anecdotal information grounded in ones own experience is in fact useful. See the HIV/AIDs activism and how that radically changed practice to understand why. I doubt that acupuncture is better than placebo in any valid clinical trial. I'd like to see how those studies you are talking about reach statistical significance and how they considered a statistical noninferiority/superiority margin.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 20:20 |
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Sogol posted:anecdotal information grounded in ones own experience is in fact useful. ...and all credibility goes straight out the window
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 20:40 |
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quote:I watch too many Chinese movies, but TCM is depicted very favorably. A very common trope was foreigners inviting a Chinese medicine man to lecture them on TCM, then laughing at the guy's speech; The guy ends up saving the day with his kung-fu or whatever.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 21:53 |
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Oracle posted:You've just watched too many Wong Fei Hung remakes, is all. I'm going to go ahead and say that was the peak of Jet Li's career. Or maybe one or two films after the last in the series. Then everything after has been crap.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 22:02 |
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I have all his movies, but still think Romeo Must Die and The One are pretty good. Even if Shaolin Xiaozi is cooler in a lot of ways.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 22:16 |
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duodenum posted:...and all credibility goes straight out the window Are you familiar with what I am talking about within the HIV/AIDs movement? It seems you may not be. Again people are essentially both cherry picking and creating straw men. The person you seem to imagine yourselves talking to is not actually here and you haven't really engaged most of what I have written beyond running a kind of script you would run if you were speaking with someone who was defending TCM or in some way did not understand the nature of the scientific method. I am not defending TCM, which if you read what I have written should be clear. I am really not unaware of the nature of the scientific process or clinical trials. So far people have tried to educate me about China by referencing pop material. Assumed I am unfamiliar with the scientific process when I essentially make my living funded by NSF efforts dealing with exactly that in technical universities. Assumed I am unfamiliar with the nature of clinical trials when I have worked with pharma R&D (both AZ and GSK) off and on over the course of a decade, specifically looking at the overall design of those processes and the implications of that. Assumed I am some sort of staunch defender of an entire category of something you are imagining when I have said something specific and simple. You are then debating (mostly with yourself) about that one tiny specific without ever engaging the larger questions. That is your prerogative of course, but I would rather not pretend that is not happening. E:typos Sogol fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jun 7, 2014 |
# ? Jun 6, 2014 23:12 |
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I'm sorry, you're right. You did say "useful." You didn't imply that Jenny McCarthy has evidence.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 01:04 |
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I don't care what your background is, but if you do have that type of background then you sure as poo poo should know better than to be advocate for "anecdotal experience". BTW anecdotal experience is/was a fundamental part of the HIV/AIDS denial movement Puff out your chest and proclaim that you're oh so misunderstood, but being a proponent of anecdotes and asserting your mastery of the scientific method at the same time is bizarre.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 01:10 |
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Redgrendel2001 posted:I don't care what your background is, but if you do have that type of background then you sure as poo poo should know better than to be advocate for "anecdotal experience". BTW anecdotal experience is/was a fundamental part of the HIV/AIDS denial movement Yes, of course it is used prejudicially. Treating anecdotal information as if it were a generalizable conclusion is essentially the basis for racism and most forms of discriminatory ideology. However to contend that idiographic data does not constitute data in all cases, has no bearing or role and that the mere mention of such data or approaches constitute and end to any possibility of being in a conversation with someone is ignorant. It borders on religious zeal. One of the functions that idiographic data and situated experience play is to humanize in a process that is specifically and intentionally objectifying. The efficacy of the process itself comes from that objectification, an assertion of fungible subject and the structures required for that. This is the basis for systemic deletion of experience, etc. These are not morally evil or something within the bounds of the process taking into consideration the specific use orientation of the process. It does have consequences. Those are seen in case of HIV/AIDs case and the activism, idiographic in nature by definition, was intended to and successfully addressed those consequences. It was initially very upsetting to much of the scientific community involved of course. I am old and wheezing from all that rabid chest puffing. It was pretty hard work. I am not asserting mastery by any means. I am responding to the apparent assertion that to even consider the idiographic useful implies some sort of belief in voodoo or blatant ignorance. duodenum posted:I'm sorry, you're right. You did say "useful." You didn't imply that Jenny McCarthy has evidence. Yes, the conversation for me is in part about use orientation. That conversation leads to a kind of practical consideration about the nature and consequences of epistemologies. It is not a conversation that asserts the unilateral value of some particular epistemology. One of the characteristics of a positivist epistemology is that it typically involves an assertion of competition as a contextualizing and given dynamic. Again, incredibly useful, not apodictic and has consequences many of which are systematically deleted by those very sources of efficacy and utility. I referenced the whole thing about "The Book of Triangles" and linked that strange piece by Jung both of which could be considered directly pertinent to the conversation and this thread in particular. I figured the Jung, which goes into some of this stuff in an amusing way, would have been at least moderately interesting. Instead what happens is a kind of circling of the wagons. This could simply be due to my being a raging rear end in a top hat, for which there is ample anecdotal evidence, but no statistical significance. It could be something else or both.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 02:26 |
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Sogol, I know your posting style from the Paradise Lost thread so I'm used to it and find it informative, but it probably reads as long-winded. Maybe that's why people seem to take umbrage. But when we ask to see the studies showing acupuncture provides real pain relief in very specific cases, we're not calling you out; we genuinely want to see them. For me, it would be useful when dealing with some friends, one of whom is a nursing instructor but has her mood turn dark at any disparagement of TCM.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 03:08 |
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Imperialist Dog posted:Sogol, I know your posting style from the Paradise Lost thread so I'm used to it and find it informative, but it probably reads as long-winded. Maybe that's why people seem to take umbrage. But when we ask to see the studies showing acupuncture provides real pain relief in very specific cases, we're not calling you out; we genuinely want to see them. For me, it would be useful when dealing with some friends, one of whom is a nursing instructor but has her mood turn dark at any disparagement of TCM. It has literally been (many) years since I did the initial research or in a community of people doing that. I will go looking and ask around though. I confess it it is a bit of an aside from what I was wanting to say. (It is long winded. I tend to write long form and "umbrage" is a really good word.)
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 04:29 |
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It's not that your writing style is long-winded. Considering this is a forum where half the posts include emoticons like and the typical voice is casual and even in serious discussions laced with humor, it's needlessly dense and comes across as very poseur at best and more often comes across as deliberate obfuscation. It makes it much more of an effort to engage your arguments and at times reminds me of automatically generated postmodernist essays. Appeals to your background in pharma R&D don't make your arguments stronger. Just say what you mean in clear, simple sentences.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 05:15 |
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Sadly I have many irredeemable character flaws. That my writing seems clear and readable sentences to me is just one of many. The pharma stuff I did was all in the context of a serious attempt at both AZ and GSK at different points to redesign the R&D process beginning to end so it was not dependent on a blockbuster drug strategy. The blockbuster strategy has a lot of bad side effects, so to speak. The head of R&D at the time in both cases wanted to be able to provide generic treatments in the 3rd world in great part in response to the controversy about this in South America at that time. The work produced a lot of good and was viewed as successful, but from my point of it was failure since the degree of transition intended was not accomplished in any meaningful way. In terms of the acupuncture. It seems there was a rush of sham trials, which had not been done before the last decade and the German reimbursement decision process referred to up thread. Both are pretty interesting. I am trusting that there is not the same sort of controversy concerning herbs in and of themselves, though the same cultural difficulties abound? Just initially searching and reading here is a set of articles. One from small on from Oncology the rest from JAMA. The last one from JAMA is interesting because it is about the difference between sham trials and other placebo. The second to last ken is a kind of interesting meta data analysis. There are a bunch of articles that seem really just directly pointed toward getting reimbursement decisions in different places around the world at different points. I read those, from both sides, with some skepticism. I tried to stick with fairly recent articles from within a decade. There are also some published conference proceedings of practitioners considering the nature of the trials. They are interesting, but I feel they might be a bit crazy making and not so useful. Acupuncture for Pain and Dysfunction After Neck Dissection: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial Acupuncture in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain A Randomized Controlled Trial German Acupuncture Trials (Gerac) For Chronic Low Back Pain Randomized, Multicenter, Blinded, Parallel-Group Trial With 3 Groups Acupuncture for Chronic Pain Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis Differential Effectiveness of Placebo Treatments A Systematic Review of Migraine Prophylaxis Sogol fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jun 7, 2014 |
# ? Jun 7, 2014 06:41 |
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Out of interest - and because of the last few posts about orientalism - are there any Chinese people in the thread?
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 08:00 |
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Hong XiuQuan posted:Out of interest - and because of the last few posts about orientalism - are there any Chinese people in the thread? Yeah, all of Unit 61398 lurking and studiously taking notes.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 08:32 |
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Hong XiuQuan posted:Out of interest - and because of the last few posts about orientalism - are there any Chinese people in the thread? Yes there are. Hong Kongers, mainlanders, overseas Chinese all. Don't think there are any Taiwanese though.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 09:26 |
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Bloodnose posted:Yes there are. Hong Kongers, mainlanders, overseas Chinese all. Don't think there are any Taiwanese though. Good good. Thought it would be a bit weird back and forthing about orientalism without any Chinese voices.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 09:52 |
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Hong XiuQuan posted:Good good. Thought it would be a bit weird back and forthing about orientalism without any Chinese voices. I had a friend from college in Taipei recently come up to me and say, "Have you read Edward W. Saïd's book?" And I was like, "yeah, parts." He said, "Because I realized that all the things that westerners do to us, we also do to them. Maybe more so these days. I feel really uncomfortable now, but I don't know why." And thus, "Chinese guilt" was born.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 10:44 |
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Bloodnose posted:Yes there are. Hong Kongers, mainlanders, overseas Chinese all. Don't think there are any Taiwanese though. I have a ludicrously thick Taiwanese accent!
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 10:54 |
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Barto posted:He said, "Because I realized that all the things that westerners do to us, we also do to them. Maybe more so these days. I feel really uncomfortable now, but I don't know why." It's nice to see someone gets it.
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# ? Jun 7, 2014 14:49 |
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sincx fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Mar 23, 2021 |
# ? Jun 8, 2014 23:48 |
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Franks Happy Place posted:In my experience (so grain of salt and all), mainlanders are far more likely to try new/western religions than to go back to Daoism/Buddhism/Confucianism. So you see a lot of Christian churches opening up, both government-sanctioned and "grey market" ones, while the increase in domestic tourists going to places like Tai Shan are a lot less.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 03:03 |
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Sogol posted:Sadly I have many irredeemable character flaws. That my writing seems clear and readable sentences to me is just one of many. Most of the studies you posted are either improperly controlled or dont show statistical significance. The only one that is even remotely convincing is the meta-analysis which shows a modest effect. You have to wonder why the meta analysis shows a clear effect when individual studies dont. But on the other side of that Ive seen meta analysis that shows accupuncture isnt better than placebo. I have to admit I dont have a deep understanding of the math involved in weighing individual studies in meta-analysis.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 03:53 |
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Vladimir Putin posted:Most of the studies you posted are either improperly controlled or dont show statistical significance. The only one that is even remotely convincing is the meta-analysis which shows a modest effect. You have to wonder why the meta analysis shows a clear effect when individual studies dont. But on the other side of that Ive seen meta analysis that shows accupuncture isnt better than placebo. I have to admit I dont have a deep understanding of the math involved in weighing individual studies in meta-analysis. Yes, I think the meta analysis and the the last one showing the difference in sham and other placebo are the most interesting. That last one is is interesting because the studies showing minimal difference between placebo are usually based on sham methods. The Oncology one is interesting, but the sample size is tiny. And I agree about the meta analysis as well, though they are very transparent about selection criteria. That is what can throw meta analysis. The German reimbursement studies seem to also suffer from a lack of control, though sample sizes are enormous.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 04:21 |
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Sogol posted:S It's interesting how you mention GSK, when their research efforts in China have ended up being a burning pit that they keep shoveling money into. Sogol posted:Yes, I think the meta analysis and the the last one showing the difference in sham and other placebo are the most interesting. That last one is is interesting because the studies showing minimal difference between placebo are usually based on sham methods. If an effect keeps getting smaller the more closely and carefully you look at it, it probably didn't exist in the first place. Sogol posted:The German reimbursement studies seem to also suffer from a lack of control, though sample sizes are enormous You can't make up for a lack of quality data by compensating with volume. norton I fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jun 9, 2014 |
# ? Jun 9, 2014 04:43 |
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Y-Hat posted:My ex told me that older people (like her grandmother) are more attracted towards Christianity because it gives them a more tangible version of an afterlife, while younger and middle-aged business-minded people (like her mother) tend to go Buddhist because I think there's more tradition that's followed in that demographic. Maybe that's just her family, though. For the record, my ex is atheist. I've never met a Chinese young person anywhere in Greater China that legit believed in Buddhism. The closest I got was a grad school classmate from Shenzhen who, when asked what religion she identified with, answered "semi-Buddhist."
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 04:45 |
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norton I posted:It's interesting how you mention GSK, when their research efforts in China have ended up being a burning pit that they keep shoveling money into. Yes. Actually all the German reimbursement studies were against successful reimbursement and they suffer from what you are suggesting. I consider the pharma companies in their current forms one of the great evils. I don't think that is what the sham placebo study shows. That particular study seems to show a difference between sham placebo and other placebo for various forms of sham. The sham has a higher responder rate independent of type of sham compared to other placebo. I am glad people held my feet to the fire though. I was unaware of all these sham based studies that happened in the last decade and they are interesting.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 05:08 |
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Bloodnose posted:I've never met a Chinese young person anywhere in Greater China that legit believed in Buddhism. The closest I got was a grad school classmate from Shenzhen who, when asked what religion she identified with, answered "semi-Buddhist." I don't really think that can be used as any kind of metric. I know quite a few that take their faith in Buddhism quite seriously. Especially some of the Taiwanese.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 05:16 |
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You're absolutely right. Anecdotes aren't data. I just think it's interesting. I'd like to meet some young people to talk Buddhism with, but the ones I've met have always treated it as superstition from the older generation or a way to extort money out of gullible people. Christianity is modern, hip, and based on real faith in a real god-thing.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 05:19 |
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GlassEye-Boy posted:I don't really think that can be used as any kind of metric. I know quite a few that take their faith in Buddhism quite seriously. Especially some of the Taiwanese. Taiwanese aren't exactly Chinese for all practical purposes- they're normally quite religious (as religion goes in East Asia). They all typically go to the temple at one point or another during the year, believe in traditional fortune telling practices, and a ton have their own personal shrines to their ancestors. Every ghost month, there's a ton of people outside burning paper money and you can see most businesses and homes giving sacrifices to the 地基主 (the house god) on the regular. Barto fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Jun 9, 2014 |
# ? Jun 9, 2014 07:12 |
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Bloodnose posted:You're absolutely right. Anecdotes aren't data. I just think it's interesting. I'd like to meet some young people to talk Buddhism with, but the ones I've met have always treated it as superstition from the older generation or a way to extort money out of gullible people. Christianity is modern, hip, and based on real faith in a real god-thing. Buddhism at its purest, original form, its more of a philosophy than religion. So is Taoism. Chinese people are not very religious.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 20:32 |
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whatever7 posted:Buddhism at its purest, original form, its more of a philosophy than religion. So is Taoism. Chinese people are not very religious. Only if your definition of religion must include an Abrahamic God.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 20:33 |
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Is Christianity a big thing there? Are we talking mass adoption among young people or basically a cult, only notable in comparison to the old traditional religion?
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 20:41 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 15:07 |
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computer parts posted:Only if your definition of religion must include an Abrahamic God. Abrahamic religions are both philosophies and religions. Confucianism seems more like people who revere the teachings of Socrates more than anything else.
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# ? Jun 9, 2014 20:42 |