Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.[0]
What else would you have done in their position? If you were the health authorities? Do nothing? At its heart, I think this issue is the same one as social science experiments being replicated with lower strength results: We naturally want to handle information as if the truth value is binary, as in mathematical logic and and IF ... THEN statements, true or false. Wouldn't that be wonderful and easy? When the information is imperfect, it seems like we feel justified in targeting our emotions at the offender, but they are doing the only thing they can - acting under uncertainty. Was telling people to eat onions a bad choice, given their choices, and in foresight?
As everyone knows from personal experience, if you are giving medical advice, doing scientific research, or making a decision for your startup, the information and possible conclusions are not like in the textbook - they are unclear and messy. You can't wait for the perfect stuff.
There's a big difference between thinking or saying "I know what I'm doing and there is no risk," when you're clueless, and saying "We are facing a known unknown and have to take a risk." For one thing, if the blowhard eventually comes across the real answer he'll ignore it because he thinks he already understands the situation.
The problem is that sometimes you don’t have the luxury of being honest with people. Sometimes if you try to give the honest, nuanced picture of the situation, then you just end up making them nervous or you’ll sound ridiculous or flip-floppy in one of the ways that normal honest people often sound ridiculous. At the next election, voters’ll dump you for a Real Man who will ‘talk straight’ to them.
Facing the ethical reality, if your team doesn't want to take a certain risk (based on their estimation of their own risk-tolerance), you're not lying for their own good if you convince them that the risk isn't there. If they do want to take the risk, then you can inspire a pretty cool culture by making the importance of the task at hand clear to everybody.
For similar reasons I look at 'politician' as a real, honorable professional with its own set of professional skills. First, you need to understand any issue that might cross your desk. Then, amidst the insanity of the political environment, you need to maintain your own clear vision, maintain a nuanced, up-to-date feel for your constituency's opinions and for the forces in the halls of power, triangulate and anticipate all of it in order to judge what is possible, and then have the skills to lead/nudge/guide/push/negotiate all those forces simultaneously in order to execute what you think is possible.
The trend of hiring outsiders for the job is absurd, IMO. Few things impress me more than a skilled politician at work (i.e., one who uses their skills to accomplish things).
In North Carolina, young Dan Tonkel had taken to wearing a bag of asafetida around his neck, in the belief that the stinking extract would protect him. “It smelled to high heaven,” he recalled. “People thought the smell would kill germs. So we all wore a bag of asafetida and smelled like rotten flesh.”
For most of human history, we thought that germs were spread by certain odors. So to counteract them, we would often use aromas: this is why plague doctor masks had the horn which was filled with herbs.
EDIT: I meant diseases were thought to be spread by odors, as we didn't yet have a germ theory of disease.
It's fascinating to me how some of these "cures" continue to persist with modernized marketing script. See e.g. some of the claims made about essential oils ([1] contains a concise list for example), many of which were thought to be curative in antiquity mostly because of their powerful aromas:.
The problem is that there are only few controlled trials for herbs and supplements, mainly because there is no money to be made because the substances can't be patented. If company A finances a controlled trial, then company B can just copy the claims.
Another problem is that these herbal cures may work initially (through placebo effect or a real mechanism), and then stop working. However, at that point the word has already been spread. This is especially troubling in the internet age, where people post reviews after one day of trying something.
And the funny thing is, plague doctor masks were actually fairly effective - it turns out that a beak stuffed full of herbs is actually a pretty serviceable medieval-era substitute for a surgical facemask at preventing you from inhaling aerosols.
Yeah, it's kind of funny how we arrived at some of the right answers for totally the wrong reasons. The whole "bad air" concept? Total hokum, but an abundance of fresh air will help control airborne transmission.
If you realize that experiment generally orecedes theory, it's completely sensible. Experiments are reproducible, theories are abstract. Making could decisions is more useful than having correct explanations.
Not nitpicking (at least that's not my intent), just adding: Only if you know what the variables are.
This occurred to me because I'm myself an interesting medical case beating even a professor of medicine's prediction, as well as independent ones from various doctors about other things that turned out to be symptoms of the same underlying chronic poisoning issue that I had to diagnose myself, and only then find the right specialist for it. There has been sooo much interesting stuff going on in my body during years of slow recovery (and a few "miracles" that left doctors literally speechless), but I would not be able to say how you could repeat the "experiment". Too little is known about any of what goes on inside me right now, my doctor (researcher at university clinic) has long ago admitted that we left the area of known study-supported medicine behind.
I suspect a few mechanisms based on observing myself that I have no way and no idea how to prove. So I'm of course not certain what I can claim, or what exactly happened, but neither would I know how to repeat my personal experiment even if human experiments were possible. It's just too much unknown territory. And in the end my experiences will all be lost, unfortunately.
An example for something I suspect: Some diseases like the common cold may not always be orthogonal and superfluous. In my case, over the years, I got more and more the impression that it actively helped my body to get rid of what was stored over decades. I suspect that everything is much more intertwined and connected and not separate. One prediction I could make based on this suspicion is that if we were to be able to eliminate mild diseases like the cold completely we would get more serious diseases or other issues down the road. That's not a practical experiment though, maybe some large-scale observational studies can get some hints one way or the other, but it will be too messy and too uncertain for anything even close to a definite proof or disproof.
Another thing I suspect is that even very low level exposure (far below officially allowed levels) to heavy metals has very real consequences - it's just that on an individual basis we are almost utterly unable to show it. We can do it only on a population basis, and we all know how messy that is with all the known and unknown confounders.
Then disproving causation. A fascinating use of Mammoth Cave in its history was a "good air" study on tuberculosis patients, because caves have great, naturally tempered air. That airflow is also tightly enclosed and many tourists and the doctors themselves caught the disease. It was a terrible way to help prove germ theory, but at the same time its hard not to blame them for trying because it was such a serious disease and anything to help was more than they had.
Indeed. I'm a historian of medicine and sometimes think that premodern healers get a bad rap. Yes, some of the cures you find in medieval or early modern medicine are absurd (like "bleeding until syncope"). But once in awhile you run into something like this, from a 17th century Portuguese physician named Duarte Madeira Arraiz:
"They spread the sickness throughout the world, each army bringing it to its respective country... and it was related by Christopher Columbus of his discoveries in the Occidental Indies to the King of Spain, that in the lands he discovered he encountered many Indian men and women who suffered from the disease of the morbo gallico [syphilis], and so those among the soldiers and men of arms who had communication with the Indian women and with the 'mulheres publicas' of the land easily spread this contagion to the greater part of the Spanish army, and from thence, to the French."
He comes pretty close to anticipating germ theory here, arguing that syphilis was sexually transmitted and correctly theorizing that it had New World origins and was spread by European colonization. These people weren't dumb.
It is interesting. It was terrible that early explorers carried diseases that killed millions in the regions they went to. Its reassuringly symmetric that diseases went the other way as well. I didn't know that 100k+ still die from it every year.
Yes, syphilis was first noticed when it started to spread around Europe in the 1490s not long after sustained contact with the Americas. So it's likely that it did come from the Americas, but it hasn't been proven.
It's also possible that it coincidentally originated in Europe around the same time and spread to the Americas. By the time people started looking into where it had come from, it was widespread in both places and the exact origins were obscure. Nobody appears to have recorded the prevalence of syphilis in the Americas during the early years of European contact.
Whether it was or wasn't, there's no real reason not to think that each population transmitted diseases to the other, who lacked natural or acquired immunity.
You're getting downvoted for some reason. You're 100% correct.
In Indian cuisine it's used as an umami enhancer. Usually with turmeric in vegetable dishes - especially lentil curries like dal and sambar but also those based on potato and cauliflower.
I'm at home for the past few days with a barely breathing nose, a sore throat and a headache. Humanity is about to get people travel around the Moon, we have self-driving cars and AI, but FFS(!), can someone create a pill that would kill a common cold/allergies? It drives me nuts that we don't have a solution for such a popular problem. I think I tried everything, but the recovery time is always around 7 days no matter what you do.
Randall Munroe actually did a small section on eradicating the common cold in his What-if book, the basic idea is if that all of humanity stayed away from each other for a week or two then the common cold would die out as it can't survive outside of the human body for more than a week and normally survives by continuously hopping from host to host.
You'd need to provide water for humanity for this period somehow. Water supplies have to be sterile and available.
(That is assuming everyone goes on a week long secluded water fast. It's harder if not everyone can fast. There's a problem with keeping people in care but not insoluble.)
That is just for rhinoviruses too, there are other viral reasons of common cold, more hardy than this, and bacterial diseases that mimic it very precisely.
Incidentally, I just wrote another (pretty long) reply mentioning just that. Based on my own very unusual medical history I suspect that maybe you should not want that. Of course I know nothing for sure at all, it's just that observing my own healing process I was pretty much force to conclude that at least sometimes there may be more to a cold than just "a cold", that it may (can sometimes) have an effect that is not just "I happened to be sick for a week", that it actually does something. Even if my own very personal reasons and thoughts turn out to be wrong, what about training of the immune system ("training" is not a good word because what does it even mean, but there must be some feedback effect, surely)? I snot having any little issues at all for decades really good? I think there are endless feedback loops and it's all a lot more mixed and complex. I would be skeptical that such a magic pill would be net positive.
Yea, while I wish I a had magic pill, I have thought the exact same thoughts just earlier today. But anyways, shoot me a message if you find that pill by any chance ;)
I currently live in the south of Morocco and this is exactly the kind of advice I am given here constantly. My SO went through months of dietary restrictions based on such advice; got her to hospital 2 weeks ago and today the lab results are in: bacterial infection. We are looking forward to the first proper dinner in a very long time.
My personal highlight on local advice I was given: "Keeping a tortoise in your house helps with asthma. My cousin has asthma and when it is really bad, he comes back to his parents' house and after a few days it is much better!" (That house is in a very small mountain village with very clean air, he lives in a very big city full of cars and he does not dare to smoke anywhere in his home village or his parents' house lest his parents see that.. go figure.)
45 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadMore carrots, not onions.
What else would you have done in their position? If you were the health authorities? Do nothing? At its heart, I think this issue is the same one as social science experiments being replicated with lower strength results: We naturally want to handle information as if the truth value is binary, as in mathematical logic and and IF ... THEN statements, true or false. Wouldn't that be wonderful and easy? When the information is imperfect, it seems like we feel justified in targeting our emotions at the offender, but they are doing the only thing they can - acting under uncertainty. Was telling people to eat onions a bad choice, given their choices, and in foresight?
As everyone knows from personal experience, if you are giving medical advice, doing scientific research, or making a decision for your startup, the information and possible conclusions are not like in the textbook - they are unclear and messy. You can't wait for the perfect stuff.
[0] Attributed to Voltaire
I would never want to be a politician.
- we live in a world of tradeoffs
- we live in a world of uncertainty
- order and trust are far more fragile than chaos and discord
This is not so when working with a constituency.
For similar reasons I look at 'politician' as a real, honorable professional with its own set of professional skills. First, you need to understand any issue that might cross your desk. Then, amidst the insanity of the political environment, you need to maintain your own clear vision, maintain a nuanced, up-to-date feel for your constituency's opinions and for the forces in the halls of power, triangulate and anticipate all of it in order to judge what is possible, and then have the skills to lead/nudge/guide/push/negotiate all those forces simultaneously in order to execute what you think is possible.
The trend of hiring outsiders for the job is absurd, IMO. Few things impress me more than a skilled politician at work (i.e., one who uses their skills to accomplish things).
For most of human history, we thought that germs were spread by certain odors. So to counteract them, we would often use aromas: this is why plague doctor masks had the horn which was filled with herbs.
EDIT: I meant diseases were thought to be spread by odors, as we didn't yet have a germ theory of disease.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/...
Another problem is that these herbal cures may work initially (through placebo effect or a real mechanism), and then stop working. However, at that point the word has already been spread. This is especially troubling in the internet age, where people post reviews after one day of trying something.
Not nitpicking (at least that's not my intent), just adding: Only if you know what the variables are.
This occurred to me because I'm myself an interesting medical case beating even a professor of medicine's prediction, as well as independent ones from various doctors about other things that turned out to be symptoms of the same underlying chronic poisoning issue that I had to diagnose myself, and only then find the right specialist for it. There has been sooo much interesting stuff going on in my body during years of slow recovery (and a few "miracles" that left doctors literally speechless), but I would not be able to say how you could repeat the "experiment". Too little is known about any of what goes on inside me right now, my doctor (researcher at university clinic) has long ago admitted that we left the area of known study-supported medicine behind.
I suspect a few mechanisms based on observing myself that I have no way and no idea how to prove. So I'm of course not certain what I can claim, or what exactly happened, but neither would I know how to repeat my personal experiment even if human experiments were possible. It's just too much unknown territory. And in the end my experiences will all be lost, unfortunately.
An example for something I suspect: Some diseases like the common cold may not always be orthogonal and superfluous. In my case, over the years, I got more and more the impression that it actively helped my body to get rid of what was stored over decades. I suspect that everything is much more intertwined and connected and not separate. One prediction I could make based on this suspicion is that if we were to be able to eliminate mild diseases like the cold completely we would get more serious diseases or other issues down the road. That's not a practical experiment though, maybe some large-scale observational studies can get some hints one way or the other, but it will be too messy and too uncertain for anything even close to a definite proof or disproof.
Another thing I suspect is that even very low level exposure (far below officially allowed levels) to heavy metals has very real consequences - it's just that on an individual basis we are almost utterly unable to show it. We can do it only on a population basis, and we all know how messy that is with all the known and unknown confounders.
"They spread the sickness throughout the world, each army bringing it to its respective country... and it was related by Christopher Columbus of his discoveries in the Occidental Indies to the King of Spain, that in the lands he discovered he encountered many Indian men and women who suffered from the disease of the morbo gallico [syphilis], and so those among the soldiers and men of arms who had communication with the Indian women and with the 'mulheres publicas' of the land easily spread this contagion to the greater part of the Spanish army, and from thence, to the French."
He comes pretty close to anticipating germ theory here, arguing that syphilis was sexually transmitted and correctly theorizing that it had New World origins and was spread by European colonization. These people weren't dumb.
It is interesting. It was terrible that early explorers carried diseases that killed millions in the regions they went to. Its reassuringly symmetric that diseases went the other way as well. I didn't know that 100k+ still die from it every year.
It's also possible that it coincidentally originated in Europe around the same time and spread to the Americas. By the time people started looking into where it had come from, it was widespread in both places and the exact origins were obscure. Nobody appears to have recorded the prevalence of syphilis in the Americas during the early years of European contact.
Yep, hence malaria (bad-air)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030881461...
Other than increasing flatulence that is.
In Indian cuisine it's used as an umami enhancer. Usually with turmeric in vegetable dishes - especially lentil curries like dal and sambar but also those based on potato and cauliflower.
Kashmiri cuisine famously uses it in Rogan Josh.
That is just for rhinoviruses too, there are other viral reasons of common cold, more hardy than this, and bacterial diseases that mimic it very precisely.
I currently live in the south of Morocco and this is exactly the kind of advice I am given here constantly. My SO went through months of dietary restrictions based on such advice; got her to hospital 2 weeks ago and today the lab results are in: bacterial infection. We are looking forward to the first proper dinner in a very long time.
My personal highlight on local advice I was given: "Keeping a tortoise in your house helps with asthma. My cousin has asthma and when it is really bad, he comes back to his parents' house and after a few days it is much better!" (That house is in a very small mountain village with very clean air, he lives in a very big city full of cars and he does not dare to smoke anywhere in his home village or his parents' house lest his parents see that.. go figure.)