In short, Novella is just another justifiably self-disappointed crap-career loser…

The reality of Novella, easily found, is that he testifies for insurance companies, and that seems to be the extent of his practice. I get a picture of Novella saying “that hatchet imbedded in Mr. Smith’s head by his employer is causing no neurological damage, and it is clear that Mr. Smith is faking his claims of pain… His employer was right to fire him when he didn’t show up for work the next day. Mr. Smith clearly self-inflicted his injury..”
Tim Bolens view .

Thank you kindly for those links, which I read thoroughly with great interest!
I was particularly impressed by a post from one Angora Rabbit, a professor of nutrition medicine, I think.
Do you know who he is, and would you regard him as a reliable source?

As for the other matter, the posts aimed at me by that other guy seem to be a perfect example of what I was talking about. The hijacking of our debate, the reframing into a perceived attack on the dear leader, the aggressive defence thereof, the black and white worldview…almost too easy. Wait – I have been trolled, right?

Otherwise, if that was a skeptic, that is your problem right there. Mockable but also a bit scary.

The world watches in fascination.

He acquitted himself well… but I’m afraid it probably didn’t do any good for Dr. Oz’s audience.

Dr. Oz relied heavily on the argument from popularity… using it several times and twice called Dr, Novella “dismissive” because he had the audacity to point out the actual studies didn’t support the claims made for specific alt-med treatments.

Dr. Oz also trotted out that hoary old excuse that we don’t know HOW to study alt-med woo… that maybe it works in a way that we don’t understand and so the usual scientific methods for determining if it works are invalid. Of course the plain truth is that it doesn’t work. When Dr. Novella replied in that way, out came the argument from popularity yet again.

Also, in order to inflate the popularity numbers and provide cover for woo treatments, Dr. Oz lumped nutrition, exercise and massage (all legitimate areas of medical knowledge)into the alt-med category… and thus was able to say with a straight face that over 40% of Americans use some form of alt-med.

I don’t believe any minds were changed. The average alt-med user truly believes that the argument from popularity is a legitimate argument and that science based studies that show alt-med woo doesn’t work aren’t really a valid method for investigating the efficacy of alt-med treatments.

Of course any study that shows even the slightest hint of a positive result is touted far and wide… it’s only the ones (most of them) that come back negative that aren’t valid.

And now for his next trick, Dr. Oz will juggle glass vials of smallpox…

Now THAT’s entertainment. sigh. I’d specualte that the disclaimer is also on the end credits of each program (whizzing by too fast to read, naturally), a legal requirement that really points out that his show is bs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDrUEazNdAo&feature=share

Sorry for the bad grammar and typos in my original post. I wrote it on my cell phone and couldn’t edit for some reason. I’m glad to see that you are backtracking on your claims about Dr. Novella and your classification of minerals and vitamins as alternative.

What skeptical sites are you seeing that are against evidence-based applications of minerals and vitamins? I’ve seen many posts that challenge claims of miracle cures for supplements or fight the marketing claims that everyone needs to buy expensive supplements regardless of lab levels, but I’ve never seen a skeptic site just reject supplements wholesale. Dr. Novella even wrote about how he recommended one of the B vitamins (I can’t remember which) for some neurological condition for patients because the early evidence was promising yet not conclusive, but after more research was done it was shown to not be an effective treatment so he stopped recommending it. I’ve also seen him encouraging supplementation with Vitamin D for clinically low levels (while also saying the media was over-hyping vitamin D as a cancer cure, life extender, etc) and write positively about folic acid, so yes, you are putting words in Dr. Novella’s mouth, and even worse actually claiming he said the exact opposite of what he really did.

Please, what respectable skeptic sites are you reading that reject evidence-based mineral and vitamin use wholesale?

“This website is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.”

Wouldn’t trust it for more than that, no, but it does certainly have at least one application. (Some other homeopathic remedies also do amazing things to the taste of coffee, I’m told. Not being a coffee drinker, I won’t speak to this one way or another.)

mike burkhart Says:
April 25th, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Phil I don’t know where you stand on Obomacare but I been thinking and I think it will leed to the goverment encourgeing altertive medicine why ? to save money .Oboma is seting up medical review boards to come up ways to cut costs

You realize every insurance company in the country already does this, right?

In the book, he outlines some very interesting studies of the placebo effect. My favorite went like this:

Candidates are asked to participate in a human trial of a new pain medication. An attractive, professional woman in a business suit (stereotypical pharma sales rep) explains the new drug and how it works to the participants. They are then taken to a testing room where they are given a series of electric shocks (some low, some medium, some high, randomly delivered) and asked to rate the pain intensity of each. Then they’re led back to a waiting room, given a dose of the new medicine, asked to wait 40 minutes, then given a series of shocks again and asked to rate them.

Almost all of the participants reported less pain in the second set of trials.

But what was interesting was this: while the participants waited, they had brochures to read about the new medication. Some of the groups had brochures saying that the new medicine was targeted as a mass market, affordable medication for pennies per pill. Other groups read brochures saying the product was very expensive, dollars per pill, targeted at cases of extreme pain.

The group with the “expensive” brochures reported significantly less pain than the group that read the “mass market” brochures.

Needless to say, ALL of the pills were sugar pills.

So whenever you say “alternative medicine helped me”, can you really differentiate between a real effect and a placebo effect?

And you may say “well, the placebo effect works too!” To this my response is: if alt med firms can knowingly market placebos, why can’t doctors and pharmaceutical companies? Why do we demand proof of efficacy from one group but not the other?

How often have you heard of a pharma company being criticized for inflating their test results and marketing a product that really didn’t do much more than placebo. If it’s wrong for them to do this, why isn’t it wrong for everybody?

Remember, witch doctors helped a lot of people feel much better too, so did Peter Popoff, so did Suzanne Somers. But just because a particular treatment helped you feel better doesn’t mean it actually did anything.

What is the dividing line between “manipulating the placebo effect for the patient’s benefit” and “fraud”?

Novella did point out one such fallacy (Oz’s argument from popularity), but it fell on deaf ears as expected. It wasn’t the only one. Virtually every argument Oz made was a logical fallacy, a pattern which, after the first half of the segment, left Novella sporting what looked like a smile of disbelief for the remainder of his time on stage. The overuse of fallacies coupled with his denial of the overwhelming evidence against his views, leads me to believe that Oz is either deliberately deceiving his audience because he knows this is what will maintain his fame and astronomical income, or, he is simply not a very bright man.

My favourite part was when he said something along the lines of “maybe we don’t have the evidence that acupuncture works because it isn’t studied the way it should be and we don’t know how to study it yet”. Sadly, amusingly, his audience agrees.

For interested readers, here is SkepDoc Harriet Hall (co-blogger of Dr. Novella), writing on SBM about the regulation of dietary supplements:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=10930#more-10930

Here she is again, discussing recommendations for Vitamin D intake:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=8725

I just hope Novella hasn’t been too edited. I wish I was there to see it live…

Oh my. You certainly found more in my little post than was intended.
Let me deconstruct.

“John, vitamin and mineral supplementation has been a big part of science based medicine for decades”

Exactly

“so I’m baffled you would describe it as “alternative.””

My thesis is that practitioners of alternative medicine sometimes also attempt to claim some of that territory as their own, thus potentially discrediting the mainstream medicine in the eyes of some non specialist skeptics.

I suggest that many posts concerning vitamins on skeptic blogs are anti-supplementation, statements that are sometimes qualified, but often not.

“Next thing you’ll be pulling that old canard by labeling relaxation and exercise as alternative medicine!”

Nope.

“Folate and Vitamin D supplementation have not been badmouthed by Dr Novella, so you are uniformed there”

Good

“He has said that the media hype over Vitamin D was overblown, which has been backed up by several independent government panels.”

Also good, but potentially misleading unless accompanied by qualification re the previous point.

“When a particular supplement has been shown to be effective it will be incorporated into regular medicine, but that doesn’t mean we should
just accept things without evidence.”

I understood that WHO recommendations for vitamin D intake had already been increased – not “will be”.

“Please read up on what Dr Novella has actually wrote on supplementation before pitting words in his mouth.”

Can’t find the link right now but something “Dr Novella has actually wrote” (and which I read myself on his site) was used by others in support of an anti supplementation argument.

If I have “pitted words in his mouth” I unreservedly apologise. It was not my intention to bag either him or you here.

Any suggestions welcome!

Thanks