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The Verge just keeps putting out articles on Peter Thiel. Seems now like Thiel might be teaching a seminar at the Berkeley Institute:
Earlier this year, the Berkeley Institute, a private academic institution, listed a seminar on "Heterodox Science." The seminar was first scheduled to begin in November, then moved to January. On the Institute's website, the instructor of the Heterodox Science course has been described only as "Guest Instructor: Author & Founder of IMITATIO." The accompanying photo is of the back of a white man's head. IMITATIO has three founders; two are dead. The third is billionaire PayPal founder, Gawker litigator, ubiquitous venture capitalist, and contrarian Trump advisor, Peter Thiel.
IMITATIO is a website dedicated to the ideas of René Girard, and his theory of memetic desire.
The Verge continues:
What is Heterodox Science? "Heterodox" — coming from the Greek root words heteros, meaning "the other," and doxa, meaning "opinion" — refers to atypical beliefs or those beliefs which go against prevailing norms. In the modern political context, heterodoxy has been adopted by conservative groups concerned about what they view as a suffocating echo chamber in the liberal academy. The most prominent heterodox organization is the "Heterodox Academy," which describes itself as an "association of professors who have come together to express their support for increasing viewpoint diversity—particularly political diversity—in universities."
Interesting, heterodox is also the root for "heretic"! And it appears that some have gotten the ear of the president elect? But it may ultimately be that "heterodox science" is just like "alternative medicine" according to the old joke: "Do you know what they call alternative medicine that actually works? Medicine."
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Monday January 02 2017, @12:59AM
"Do you know what they call alternative medicine that actually works? Medicine."
That's not a joke, it's a simple statement of fact. Standard medicine is evidence-based medicine, with large-scale clinical trials and whatnot to evaluate effectiveness. Alternative medicine is non-evidence-based medicine. If it was evidence-based, it would just be called "medicine".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 02 2017, @01:11AM
Standard medicine is evidence-based medicine
While I don't disagree, it's notable that evidence-based medicine [wikipedia.org] is a relatively new term, and the standard approaches only started to become widespread in the 1980s. Before that, despite the fact that there were plenty of studies done by doctors and medical researchers, the standards for such studies were all over the map. And a lot of clinical procedure was based more on anecdote, traditional practice, what your teacher told you in med school, etc., rather than stuff backed up by randomized controlled trials or double-blind studies.
Frankly, there was quite a bit of push-back from the older generation in the mainstream medical field in the 1980s and 1990s to this new "evidence-based medicine" standard, since it insisted on rigorous statistical evaluation of data in studies -- and it ended up contradicting a lot of "well-known" standard ideas in the field.
Unless you've really looked into it, most people don't realize how screwed up mainstream medicine was even into the mid-20th century, putting faith in traditional procedures and beliefs about "what worked" that had little scientific evidence supporting them. We're still living with the legacy of that stuff to some extent, which is one reason why there have been so many reversals in recommended clinical practice in the past couple decades. (Which, ironically, has led many people to question whether doctors actually know what they're talking about and then end up seeking out "alternative medicine" -- even though there's been this gradual revolution going on in medicine to actually ground it more firmly in science than before.)
(Score: 2, Troll) by driverless on Monday January 02 2017, @01:20AM
Absolutely. And I don't even want to go into the way clinical trials have been progressively hacked by both the companies providing testing services (e.g. sign up junkies who fake symptoms in order to be paid drug money) and big pharma ("There are no facts, there is no truth / Just data to be manipulated / I can get you any result you like / What's it worth to you?"). So when I mentioned evidence-based medicine I meant the theory, not necessarily the practice as it's evolved in recent years.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday January 02 2017, @01:38AM
Actually, alternative medicine is often nothing more than traditional treatments that do not generate profits for pharmaceutical companies. Spending $1.5 - $5 million dollars on a double-blind study of the latest patented chemical out of the labs often does little more than generate a nice list of nasty side-effects for doctors to look out for when they prescribe those pills for patients that come in asking for the latest treatment they saw in that commercial during the nightly news.
You won't get those kinds of studies of castor oil, CBD, oregano oil, or rose hips because there is no way to generate a profit, since they're relatively cheap to produce and nobody gets a monopoly on sales. And since almost the entire budget of the FDA comes from those very pharmaceutical companies, they have every incentive to see those often toxic chemicals approved and the public consuming them, and banning treatments that don't work by claiming they are "non-evidence-based" medicine, like they did with red yeast rice (in support of drug companies' most profitable drug ever) and now compliant with the DEA in putting CBD into the Schedule I category.
It's a misnomer in the first place. It's not that there is no evidence that treatments used for generations are ineffective (same things for recent treatments like CBD that can't be patented). Instead "evidence-based" is code for "heavily funded by drug companies and rubber-stamped by a compliant federal bureaucracy."
Where are the crowd-funded and open source clinical trials? Oh, that's right: It has to include fees to the FDA, controls by protectionist industry groups, and approvals by administrators with a financial interest in the profits of certain corporations.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 02 2017, @02:17AM
banning treatments that don't work by claiming they are "non-evidence-based" medicine, like they did with red yeast rice (in support of drug companies' most profitable drug ever)
Actually, red yeast rice has been regulated precisely BECAUSE there is strong evidence that it regulates blood pressure, because one of its components (monacolin K) is chemically identical to the statin drug lovastatin. We can argue about the FDA's regulation here and whether such regulation is good or bad, but it definitely is NOT an example of the FDA banning something because it wasn't based on evidence... to the contrary, there IS strong evidence of its effects. (The problem with red yeast rice manufacture, to some extent, is that the amount of statin drug can vary by over 500-fold in dosage. So "red yeast rice" by itself is NOT guaranteed to work as a drug, but IF it contains sufficient amounts of the known drug, then yes, it works.) Moreover, it's hard to see this as an example of your claim about "toxic chemicals" either, because the active chemical component is the same (chemically identical) in the prescription medicine as it is in the "natural" red yeast rice.
Instead "evidence-based" is code for "heavily funded by drug companies and rubber-stamped by a compliant federal bureaucracy."
Actually, as I pointed with a link in another post, "evidence-based medicine" is a specific movement driven by statistical analysis and rigorous procedural evaluation of medical trials that became more widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. It was designed to put mainstream medicine on a more statistically rigorous footing -- it had little to do with excluding alternative drugs. To the contrary, "evidence-based medicine" actually tends to heavily criticize older drug studies and new ones performed by pharmaceutical companies that don't have adequate controls or statistical power or whatever to serve as adequate scientific evidence for their conclusions.
It's not that there is no evidence that treatments used for generations are ineffective
There's a difference between anecdote (which is a form of evidence) or tradition (which can be backed up by anecdotal evidence, as much mainstream medical procedure was until recently) vs. rigorous statistical evaluation. And there are plenty of studies on "traditional" remedies -- some, like red yeast rice, turn out to be highly effective in rigorous scientific studies. Others do not. You're right that some aren't sufficiently tested, but many of the substances you mention have dozens of scientific studies which have been done on them. The problems tend to occur when some of these substances turn out to be ineffective when subjected to rigorous controlled double-blind studies -- which then leads the herbalist and "alternative medicine" folks to start crying conspiracy... when actually most of the studies on such stuff is done by independent researchers at universities or whatever who have little reason to lie (unlike drug companies with their studies).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:05AM
While it sounds good, evidence based medicine == NHST. It is pseudoscience. They gather evidence, sure. Too bad it is about a default null hypothesis, not their hypothesis.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday January 02 2017, @05:18PM
banning treatments that don't work by claiming they are "non-evidence-based" medicine, like they did with red yeast rice (in support of drug companies' most profitable drug ever)
Actually, red yeast rice has been regulated precisely BECAUSE there is strong evidence that it regulates blood pressure, because one of its components (monacolin K) is chemically identical to the statin drug lovastatin. We can argue about the FDA's regulation here and whether such regulation is good or bad, but it definitely is NOT an example of the FDA banning something because it wasn't based on evidence... to the contrary, there IS strong evidence of its effects. (The problem with red yeast rice manufacture, to some extent, is that the amount of statin drug can vary by over 500-fold in dosage. So "red yeast rice" by itself is NOT guaranteed to work as a drug, but IF it contains sufficient amounts of the known drug, then yes, it works.) Moreover, it's hard to see this as an example of your claim about "toxic chemicals" either, because the active chemical component is the same (chemically identical) in the prescription medicine as it is in the "natural" red yeast rice.
I typo'd my comment, there. I meant they are banning treatments that DO work (red yeast rice) so that pharmaceutical companies can make profits off of their chemical derivatives. The whole "Oh, it's a problem because dosage" is just an excuse. It was all about profits. You cannot import the natural remedy because drug companies don't want the competition to their products.
Actually, as I pointed with a link in another post, "evidence-based medicine" is a specific movement driven by statistical analysis and rigorous procedural evaluation of medical trials that became more widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. It was designed to put mainstream medicine on a more statistically rigorous footing -- it had little to do with excluding alternative drugs. To the contrary, "evidence-based medicine" actually tends to heavily criticize older drug studies and new ones performed by pharmaceutical companies that don't have adequate controls or statistical power or whatever to serve as adequate scientific evidence for their conclusions.
Right, that's my point. It criticizes older drug studies to get those older drugs off the market because the patent has expired and anyone can make them much cheaper than the newer, patented drugs that can be used to extract much larger profits from patients, insurance companies, medicaid and medicare.
I am a crackpot