moonwise: (lab rat)
moonwise ([personal profile] moonwise) wrote2009-03-04 09:21 am
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NCAAM

In the words of Stan Johnson, Ph.D. (husband's PI): "Phat city! Science wins again!"

It's fine to practice alternative medicine. It's fine to use alternative medicines in conjunction with modern medicine. But, Sen. Harkin, when the institute you founded fails to prove that alternative medicine works the way you think it does, that's not the institute's fault. That's what "validation" means: that the process in question was statistically shown to be trustworthy and efficacious.

(Not that pharma companies don't do some shady things, too. This business of outsourcing clinical trials to China and India is bad, bad, bad news. The lack of regulatory oversight in those countries is appalling.)

[identity profile] archaeologist-d.livejournal.com 2009-03-04 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Obviously Harkin doesn't understand how science works at all but that's not surprising. Most people don't. They don't understand that we use words that are never 100% because there's always room for error - all they see is that if it can't be 100%, then it's 0%.

And I agree with you 100% about farming out pharma to China and India. I'm not happy about the drugs coming back from there at all. There are just too many instances of things going bad.