SilasBarta comments on Guilt by Association - Less Wrong

1 Post author: Annoyance 24 June 2009 05:29PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 26 June 2009 05:51:28PM 1 point [-]

I was about to lecture you on how wrong you are, until I realized I've never encountered a counterexample.

Comment author: Annoyance 26 June 2009 05:55:30PM *  0 points [-]

Please note that I do not rule out the possibility that we derive a net benefit. It's just that it isn't obvious that we do.

A counterexample of my being right? Or a counterexample relating to medicine?

Comment author: SilasBarta 26 June 2009 06:02:01PM 2 points [-]

A counterexample of my being right? Or a counterexample relating to medicine?

As in, "I have never encountered a doctor that actually understood the limits of his knowledge and how to appropriately use it, nor a clinical practice that wasn't basically the blind leading the blind."

Comment author: Annoyance 26 June 2009 06:08:35PM 2 points [-]

Okay. I was unsure if your statement was meant to be a personal insult or a comment about medicine - your comments have cleared that up for me.

If I may offer a suggestion:

Access NewsBank from your local library, go to the "search America's newspapers" option, and do some searching for the phrase "nasal radium". There will be lots of duplication. You may find it useful to only search for articles written between 1990 and 1995, just to get a basic understanding of what it was.

Then realize that the vast majority of surgical treatments where introduced in pretty much the same way, and had the same amount of pre-testing, as nasal radium.