Middle Medicine

I found an interesting post and comment thread at scienceblog.com (http://tinyurl.com/3zgatd). It seems that a study involving drugs and acupuncture for hot flashes due to cancer therapy found that acupuncture was as effective at relieving hot flashes as the commonly-used drugs, had other beneficial effects such as increased libido and energy, had no side-effects, and produced a longer-lasting effect than the drugs, and is more cost-effective.

The data from this study are clear. What is interesting are the varied “skeptical” responses, which ranged from denouncing acupuncture as religious and superstitious, to saying it was all a placebo effect. Without needing to dispute any of these charges, I feel a need to ask a question: How can it be that a placebo is so superior to a tested drug? (1)

Skepticism is not the automatic gain-saying of certain classes of claims. It is the ability to retain critical thought, in particular of one’s own self. Simply calling one’s attitude “skeptical” does not make it so. Many other behaviours masquerade as skepticism: cynicism, egoism, narcissism – it’s tricky. For this reason the power of skepticism must be turned in on itself a good portion of the time. The word comes from the Greek skeptomai, which means to look about, or to consider; to not be rigid or fixed in one’s point of view.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia:
A Philosophical Skeptic makes certain propositions about (a) an inquiry, (b) a method of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing, (c) the arbitrariness, relativity, or subjectivity of moral values, (d) the limitations of knowledge, (e) a method of intellectual caution and suspended judgment.

Also from Wikipedia:

The “Skeptikoi” were a school of philosophers of whom it was said that they “asserted nothing but only opined.” In this sense, philosophical skepticism, or Pyrrhonism, is the philosophical position that one should avoid the postulation of final truths. Turned on itself, skepticism would question that skepticism is a valid perspective at all.

1. Alleviation of Hot Flashes With Increase in Venlafaxine Dose
Prasad R. Padala, Srinivas B. Rapuri, and Kalpana P. Padala
Prim Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry. 2007; 9(1): 70–71.
PMCID: PMC1894834