We can always use more case studies of insanity that aren't religion, right?
Well, Miracle Mineral Supplement is my new go-to example for Bad Things happening to people with low epistemic standards. "MMS" is a supposed cure for everything ranging from the common cold to HIV to cancer. I just saw it recommended in another Facebook thread to someone who was worried about malaria symptoms.
It's industrial-strength bleach. Literally just bleach. Usually drunk, sometimes injected, and yes, it often kills you. It is every bit as bad as it sounds if not worse.
This is beyond Poe's Law. Medieval blood draining via leeches was far more of an excusable error than this, they had far less evidence it was a bad idea. I think if I was trying to guess what was the dumbest alternative medicine on the planet, I still would not have guessed this low. My brain is still not pessimistic enough about human stupidity.
Calling something one thing versus another doesn't alter the reality being described. However, choice of nomenclature does affect how people tend to think about things, and I think does take its toll on discourse over time, by creating pockets of cognitive dissonance and subtle miscommunication.
The fact that not only a term like "preventative medicine" but also a word which literally means "like the disease" don't instantly generate mental pointers to vaccines as an obvious and superb positive example of both of these things, seems like a pretty good illustration of words having gone horribly wrong. (Incidentally, vaccines do in some cases cure existing conditions, e.g. rabies.)
Vaccines function by well understood mechanisms that stand in sharp contrast to the magic water kind of homeopathy. That's the whole point as to why I would consider vaccines a stronger example for the darned word (it being an etymologically generic sounding word which aptly describes the notion that -- in at least some cases -- "what has the best chance of curing the disease is something that resembles the disease"). Permitting an etymologically unrelated meaning to become the primary definition, especially if that is a valueless and silly thing, is linguofiscally irresponsible. Latin roots don't grow on trees (well, perhaps they sort of do, but my point is that there are costs to this sort of thing).
Debunking "homeopathy" in a way that respects the idea of the word being synonymous with Hahnemann's magic water is an unnecessarily weak approach. To defeat an argument you ought to use the strongest face-value interpretation, not just the one you think the other person probably means by it (or even what the history books say they mean by it). Start by saying "your so-called homeopathy isn't even a consistent concept, otherwise you guys would be championing vaccines". Complain about the use of a word to mean an unrelated concept. Then move on to disprove the magic water hypothesis with a different (mutually acceptable) word being applied like "dilutive persistence" or some such thing.
This is an interesting set of points which I'll need to think more about. My immediate reaction is that a) you overestimate the level to which the vast majority of people are actually influenced at all by the roots of the words they hear. b) The statement about the rabies vaccine isn't really accurate- it doesn't cure rabies. If you actually get serious symptoms the vaccine is essentially close to useless. The vaccine is given to people after they have been bitten because the immunity it induces can often be enough before the virus has had a large chance t... (read more)