The person I am talking about is Dr. Palaniappan Manickam aka Dr. Pal, a board-certified gastroenterologist from Sacramento, California, who is also a YouTuber. He’s created various videos targeting Indian netizens, most of which are decent, but not without adding his own twist of misinformation, that are considered unscientific - some of them have been debunked here and here (auto-captions available).
I can’t help but think why YouTube would immediately remove videos that spread misinformation, but only when it affects the western world, but not the other part? Clearly, this guy’s video is in English, he participates in collaborations with other misinformation-peddling YouTubers - the consequences of which a few percent of the billion people in India have to face - which is still, a lot of people? Sure, you can complain that it is the responsibility of the Indian government - but they are themselves in this business of pseudo-science. When there’s no one taking responsibility, I can’t help but feel helpless about the lies people will hear.
Edit: And to why this matters, there’s an on-going case in the Supreme Court of India. Said “guru” sold Coronil kit, and mocked dying doctors. What did the kit do? It had high concentration of lead. Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips fought against it - and the system tried to punish him.
I’d be happy to be corrected, but there is no clear definition of what constitutes science, short of blindly following authority of some institution prone to funding politics.
In medicine, funding is known to be ultimately controlled by big corporates, making “established science” murkier than, say, the science of standardization of units.
EDIT : last line, grammar
My understanding is anyone who follows the scientific method is taking part in science. Some fields can’t completely follow the scientific method for practical reasons and they’re called “soft sciences” (ex. economics, due to experiments being difficult to carry out). If the scientific method isn’t followed, it isn’t science.
Economics has been there as an academic subject since centuries, but it wasn’t classified as a science till around one generation ago. The same goes for other social sciences. In fact, social sciences used to be known as social studies.
Scientific method isn’t the criteria of determining what is science even in core sciences as of today. Take the field of medicine, for example. It filters out all knowledge and research which is not done by qualified doctors. Who becomes a medical doctor is very tightly controlled by institutions, and doctors are heavily disincentivized to speak against the given lines.
So much so, the research in medical field has been reduced to statistics of administration of pharma drugs to humans. In medicine, one no longer tests whether consumption of say, an apple, will have any impact on a patient. Testing apples, and finding them beneficial will not only not be publishedas research, it is considered “pseudo-science” by many.
That last example is extremely bad and reeks of bad faith argument. Eating apples, as with fruits and fresh produce in general, has been tested multiples times and some of it’s benefits measured.
There’s already a general consensus that they are “beneficial”. A study that says “apples are good for you” wouldn’t add anything unless they are good in a way that wasn’t known before. For example, do they have a different and unknown impact in people with a specific condition?
Of course if the study doesn’t have any real study behind and just says things like “apples are good because they are fruits” then it can be labeled as pseudoscience.
And there you go, someone found it out real quick - it was actually a bad faith argument, all the way from the beginning. This is why I did not respond to that guy. It touched his nerve, when I declared traditional Indian medicine as unscientific. He then decided to create a loaded comment, and if it wasn’t already evident, their comment is fallacious - it deviates from the topic I had originally intended to discuss - by directing the blame on modern science being controlled by scary “illuminati” and “weeping angels” in corporate suit and boot.
Too bad his BigPharma scare tactics don’t work in the Indian context, and also makes him look like a QAnon weirdo to the western folks over here. Mechanisms of ayurveda, unani, siddha and homeopathy fail in front of modern science with simple theories like the atomic model theory, or Avogadro constant. But hey, his favorite party bought the Ministry of Ayush in India, why would he let a ‘brown sepoy’ like me insult the supreme leader?
According to his logic, an uneducated charlatan in saffron robe, who looks like a “pious” guru has the utmost right to insult dying doctors and sell cow urine (I am not making this up, his company “Patanjali” sells it for real). And his Coronil kit - which I’ve previously mentioned in the post, has destroyed the livers of many of the unfortunate ones due to heavy metal poisoning, who could not afford to buy the vaccine - and now, their financial burden has increased tenfolds. Yet, there’s no accountability. This scammer earns crores of rupees, fooling the citizens of not just India, but also Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and also hippies from the west - USA, UK, Germany, you probably know how much the reach is. Vulnerable people consume pseudo-science garbage prepared by shady gurus and godmen.
And why does it matter that I’ve made this post? Because a board-certified doctor established in California is promoting pseudoscience - and mind you, none of the universities in the US or Europe recognize any traditional snake-oil medicine degree, maybe except for homeopathy. How is he not held liable for fooling people on the other side of the world?
Yeah, I spoke with the guy a bit more, he’s a total nut job. I guess for an external party night be fun to read, was painful to try to explain. At least there’s testament to his madness, so if somebody feels the first comment seems reasonable, can read the rest to rethink that.
Calling an argument bad faith or good faith is unscientific. In fact, it is what church used to do to science before science became popular.
I didn’t actually go to your links and didn’t know till now that you are targeting Indian medicine. The form of your argument itself is a fallacy called appeal to authority and it hardly matters what you are targetting or what you feel about it.
Lol. Your words, your emotions. Not mine.
Now that you are the one spouting conspiracy theories close to your heart, you are legitimately the one using scare tactics.
Patanjali is not my company, nor do I follow Baba Ramdev or consumed his coronil kit. But I can assure you, damages done by them are dwarfs compared to … well, have you read about what Johnson & Johnson did to infants?
See, appeal to authority again.
And somehow you believe that I am making bad (faith) arguments.
I created this post to discuss about the ill-effects of traditional medicine, which is clearly known to not follow systemic scientific methodology. Traditional medicines are based on the concepts of balance of dosha (vata-pita-kapha), primal elements (fire, water, earth, air, space) and humor (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile). Now that’s ayurveda, siddha and unani for your respectively. Likewise, homeopathy is based on the concept of “likes get cured by likes” - therefore, the harm-causing agent is diluted to many parts. There’s also other traditional medicines, witch doctors and faith-based healing, from Asia, Africa and even Europe. None of these align with the modern scientific theory - knowledge of which is accessible to the general public. Now, if you don’t understand basic science, I am not going to bother, you have all the free time in the world to cross-examine it yourself, starting with fifth grade concepts of chemistry - that’s all you’ll need, not even physics or biology.
You chose to be a bad actor starting from the initial comment, deliberately choosing to misdirect a flaw that is not a part of science, but corporate greed and capitalism. It is because profit over safety overshadows the concern for the well-being of another human, and has nothing to do with modern science itself. In the example you’ve mentioned about Johnson&Johnson, instead of safer substitutes, they chose to use talcum power, which is always contaminated with asbestos. Be it Ponds, Nivea or Cinthol, all of these are contaminated with asbestos, and they’re still being sold.
Now, what you’ve done is:
You’ve engaged in red herring fallacies multiple times. And therefore, there is no need for me to engage in any further conversation with you.
Except that they don’t. Pharmas are held accountable for medical mishaps, so are doctors and nurses. Not these quacks pretending to be guru or godmen.
As far as it comes to my “appeal to authority”, the FDA, FSSAI, CDSCO or NHS have a team of highly skilled scientists, who have spent years on their specialization. They are questioned by other governing bodies of health, they are answerable to the public, make decisions based on rigorous scientific evidence from lab data and clinical trials. They also have to go through peer reviews, most of which is done in well-respected journals. There are smart people out there who question them regularly. My trust is not blindly on that institute, but rather their entire eco-system, that allows me to see for myself how they have reached to a solution that benefits human society.
You wanted to trash talk about traditional medicine without acknowledging that modern medicine isn’t following science either.
Modern medicine has the parallel concept of homeostasis, which is even more generalized.
Homeopathy is not traditional medicine. In fact, it is younger than allopathy - the mainstream modern medicine.
Most of modern medicine is inaccessible without paying a doctor, and the research behind it is behind paywalls and not accessible to general public either.
Question. Are you an Indian, or have recieved education in India?
So you understand that modern medicine is not a scientific enterprise, but one of crony capitalism that has overtaken academic institutions. Good to know.
And, this is worse than coronil.
How is it my problem that what you are shilling for doesn’t stand my scrutiny?
s/ Your scientific majesty, I have sinned against the church of modern medicine. Please condone my blaspheme against the divine doctrine of science. I’ll atone by trash-talking against the evil pseudo-science of traditional medicine. /s
Feeling better?
Lol. Remind me. Who has been held responsible for covid-19?
Not too long ago, it took these specialists 27 years to decide that a widely diatributed vaccine had a fatal side-effect and should be discontinued immediately. Also, have you read the time frame of justice in Johnson & Johnson case?
And the flip-flops by qualified doctors and their institutions on whether alcohol is bad for health or good… before that smoking, X-rays.
There was this video (now removed and heavily censored even in FOSS circles) which showed one-by-one some newspaper clippings about percentage efficacy of covid vaccines declared in published research. It started with a headline declaring 100% efficacy of vaccines, followed by another with 99%, than 98,… 97… and so on, ending literally at 1%.
What do you think? Were these figures were sent to newspapers before peer-review, or after?
Personally, I don’t care.
You are missing the point. There are hundreds of pieces of published research on stuff that didn’t work or not work during corona virus like remdesivir, ivermectin, azithromycin, paracetamol, etc… but, where is the published research on effect of apples?
Maybe doctors were too busy (or too pre-occupied with furthering interests of the pharma lobby) and didn’t pay attention.
No, not missing the point. Your comment shows I’m right on point.
This kind of studies is not something a random person, or even a trained nurse, can do on their spare time. You couldn’t just give apples to some people and look a week later for results. You need control group, you need to account for extra factors.
And before the experiment you need to have a reason for it. Can a drug that works for other coronavirus work here? Some compound that has the opposite effects mitigate the symptoms?
Why would even check “apples”? They might consider a component that exists on apples, but why apple itself? Unless there’s an external event that correlates apples with a result, it’s a bit weird.
Natural sciences without scientific method are not science. If you don’t test and validate the hypothesis, you’re just making things up. Without it, I can say apples cure baldness and blame big pharma for not letting this being published.
This reinforces my point that medicine is not a science being conducted by scientific method. It is being conducted through authority, and using terminology of the church (like good faith / bad faith) to steer clear of logical criticism.
Why single out known drugs, but exclude known foods?
What you are suggesting here is reverse of what following scientific method would lead to: First check apples, and if a positive result is there, then go check for components.
You really need to check your assumptions that were involved here.
Hypothesis in checking apples is trivial, and actually similar to one involved in testing any drug.
Sure you can, and you’d be as right as big pharma is in curing baldness. You’d be with less money though, and without that money, doctors who line up supporting big pharma are unlikely to line up for you.
That making a proper medical study is something too hard for a single person to do on their spare time is not appealing to authority, it just shows how complex and rigorous a proper study has to be to be usable. A study with 100 subjects is considered small, now think how long it would take to interview them, take samples, analyze them, follow up… and all that to check a random fruit?
I know that for indian traditional medicine you can just say “it’s on an ancient book!” and “somebody who followed it lived to 100 years” but they don’t have to prove it.
I haven’t said you can’t, just that if you are going to go to the massive work that’s a proper study, you want a proper justification for it. Is there anything in apples that makes it seem useful? else, why apples? why not pears? peaches? oranges? For example, some drugs that were used in treatment of covid symptoms were identified by combining the results of thousands of patients and seeing that some that were using that drug to treat a different condition were doing better. Based on that the hypothesis that that drug was the reason was done and the experiment started, tested and validated. On the same manner a lot of drugs were shown to be useless, and even that is important information for those looking for a good one. Just like on real life, if you lose your keys at home, you make the hypothesis that they are in your coat and check that hypothesis. You don’t just say “I’m going to check on the fridge”. It’s not impossible, it’s just not the most likely scenario so it’s far from your first guess.
No, not at all. First step is to make a hypothesis based on some observation. If you have made an observation that people that eat apples seem to fare better with an illness, then you can make he hypothesis that’s because of the apples and then define some measurable variable for validation the hypothesis. You don’t say at random ‘why not apples?’ and then mobilize a team. You don’t have a reason for it. If for instance, apples are rich in a component that is shown to be good, they might check giving apples for the experiment. Again, without reason, why apples and not kiwis?
I haven’t said the opposite. Just that there doesn’t seem any reason to test for apples.
I’m sure some quack Guru would be happy to use that to sell their services to fools like you. It’s really funny to see how much money fake medicines make and their defenders saying “big pharma bad because profit”.
Can’t say I enjoyed the conversation, but I’m done. You either lack the skills to understand or have too much bad faith to have an honest argument.
On what basis did you come up with sample size of 100? I have read studies with samples less than that size, including control groups.
I am not aware of testing techniques involved in Indian traditional medicine and have no comments on their scientific-ness. Also, for the record, I don’t think Ramdev/Patanjali have developed their cures for modern ailments in accordance with whatever traditional testing techniques used to be.
Justification is easy : An apple offers numerous benefits over allopathic medicines and if it is found to be a replacement of any medicine, it should be replaced.
Nutritive value alone settles that question as far allopathic drugs are concerned.
I haven’t ruled any of them out.
They did all of that, and other things, because they didn’t have any drug that worked, but they specifically wanted only a combination of drugs to work, so they just did whatever jugglery they could.
For the record, there is still no drug to cure covid.
As far as curing covid is concerned, ALL drugs are still useless. IN REAL LIFE.
They checked the drugs at random. Four years of hit and trial and there is still no method to the madness that happened.
The only clear reason that remdesivir got tested before apples is that big pharma, or anyone else systematically funding doctors, does not see any jump in bottomline when apples are black-marketed.
In a complex set of assumptions, reasons do not exist. They are invented to butter the side of bread that suits one.
I am all for profit, if made legitimately. But I have seen single dose of remdesivir (which wasn’t curing anything) sell for over $1000… in India.
Unfortunately, most people mistake familiarity of ideas with their truth, and you are no different. This is why big lobbies get their way through propaganda, and people’s will is generally meaningless.
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