- In science challenging your ideas is an important part .. "did it really work ?". (hence EBM Evidence based medicine)
- these days cos we live in a world of false information :
- 1. people lie cos they want to make money out of us,
- 2. we want to believe,
- 3. politics and religion;
- 4. Fear has such impact, but It's a lot easier to spread fear than information So the true picture of life gets distorted. But we need the true picture to make good decisions. - Without the true picture we cannot always trust the process/treatment we are sold. Bad process/treatments not only cost extra money but they may be much more likely to harm us - If it is scientific then we can trust it, fix it improve it.
- If it is non-scientific, but evidence based then it's difficult to fix or improve
- Some people come up with things which they explain in words which seem to be scientific, but aren't really i.e. pseudoscience like homeopathy and telepathy etc. Now if you take pseudoscience like a homeopathic treatment for malaria instead of a scientific medicine then you could end up dead.
- Skepticism Is in important for protecting the public against pseudoscience - Note the difference if some process/treatment comes from tested observation then it is evidence based
- but if it also fits in with the established scientific framework then it is Science Based
- Hence the idea of Science Based Medicine from Stephen Novella et al. - I am not sure when I first found the skeptic movement. I know I was fascininated by bizarre and strange things like the paranormal, but when I read more things I came across information which challenged these ideas. And the idea that we shouldn't take strange things at first glance as they can mostly be explained just in the same way magicians tricks can be explained. I did read skeptic books and go to skeptics meetings from 2004. - The Skeptics movement is Great because :
- 1. Truly fun and enlightening as it explains amazing things which seem to be like magic
- 2. promotes the public understanding of Science and Critical thinking
- 3. Performs a consumer protection role in exposing scams and pseudoscience. * It's a lot easier to spread fear than information : Note how it takes one misguided person to run off one sentence which scares people yet it takes the science/skeptic movement 5 pages to explain why this is wrong : this is the nature of how information impacts humans
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