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posted by janrinok on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:50PM   Printer-friendly

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."


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  • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday January 02 2017, @05:18PM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday January 02 2017, @05:18PM (#448569)

    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.

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    I am a crackpot
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