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In 2015, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was won by Tu Youyou. During the Vietnamese resistance war, Vietnamese moving down the Ho Chi Minh rail were contracting m

In 2015, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was won by Tu Youyou. During the Vietnamese resistance war, Vietnamese moving down the Ho Chi Minh rail were contracting malaria in the jungle. The Chinese were asked for aid, and Tu Youyou was tasked with assembling a team to help. One thing Tu Youyou did was consult "traditional Chinese medicine" with how to aid victims of malaria. Most of what she found did not work, but wormwood did produce results. Tu Youyou again consulted traditional Chinese medicinal texts and they said wormwood should be used with cold water. The team extracted artemisinin from the wormwood in cold water, and a new (and old) way of fighting malaria was born.

nsoonhui 1y ago
A lot of scientists dabbled into pseudoscience but that doesn't invalidate their scientific accomplishment, and their scientific achievement doesn't validate their pseudoscientific pursuit
- dkarl 1y ago
  > doesn't validate their pseudoscientific pursuit If you take an idea with a pseudoscientific origin, and you test it in a sound scientific way, you're doing science, not pseudoscience.
  - mgh2 1y ago
    I am sure there are some truths in some thousand years of research, ala "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater", but that doesn't validate the system or study as a whole.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Most of what she found did not work, but wormwood did produce results. TCM is interesting: There are countless different TCM preparations that do nearly nothing are can be actively harmful to the kidneys or liver, but every once in a while there is a a novel compound discovered in some plant somewhere that does something. I can’t tell how much of this is because TCM has some treatments that actually work, or if it’s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. I suspect it’s more of the latter.
- djtango 1y ago
  Just because we have made innovations in the method of research and discovery doesn't mean that we should throw away everything that we had before. Around me I see practices like "gratitude", "meditation" and "breathing exercises" get bandied around like they're some new profound thing as if we hadn't known about for thousands of years that have appeared in various guises universally throughout different civilisations. Just because the metaphors and models of explanations could be flawed doesn't mean the effects should be thrown out Edit: I have a good friend, a scientist no less, who suffered from severe eczema and was completely let down by western medicine who was put through decades of progressively stronger and stronger steroids. Nothing worked. Eventually the doctors gave up and shrugged their shoulders and was advised to give "alternative medicine" a go. Desperate my friend visited a traditional Chinese doctor who was prepared to guide them through a rigorous exclusion diet while also preparing mystery herb soup and suddenly a lifetime of eczema subsided and became very manageable. The older I get the more determined I find myself trying to glean the accrued wisdom of people who came before us...
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Around me I see practices like "gratitude", "meditation" and "breathing exercises" get bandied around like they're some new profound thing as if we hadn't known about for thousands of years that have appeared in various guises universally throughout different civilisations. Most people don’t care where, when, or why a concept was invented as long as it works. Quibbling over who discovered it first or trying to drag the conversation back to who discovered it first is like the person who tries to claim credit for being into a band before they were popular: Nobody cares, they just want to enjoy it. > The older I get the more determined I find myself trying to glean the accrued wisdom of people who came before us... Going back to the actual article: There is a big illusion of accrued wisdom of the ancients in TCM that isn’t backed up by the research. There are occasional hits where a TCM preparation intersects with a truly active compound, but it should be raising red flags when TCM practitioners claim to have cures for everything and different TCM practitioners will come up with different answers for the same patient. When the first one doesn’t work they’ll have another answer the next visit, and the next visit, and so on.
lintkw 1y ago
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nsoonhui 1y ago

A lot of scientists dabbled into pseudoscience but that doesn't invalidate their scientific accomplishment, and their scientific achievement doesn't validate their pseudoscientific pursuit

dkarl 1y ago
> doesn't validate their pseudoscientific pursuit If you take an idea with a pseudoscientific origin, and you test it in a sound scientific way, you're doing science, not pseudoscience.
- mgh2 1y ago
  I am sure there are some truths in some thousand years of research, ala "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater", but that doesn't validate the system or study as a whole.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Most of what she found did not work, but wormwood did produce results. TCM is interesting: There are countless different TCM preparations that do nearly nothing are can be actively harmful to the kidneys or liver, but every once in a while there is a a novel compound discovered in some plant somewhere that does something. I can’t tell how much of this is because TCM has some treatments that actually work, or if it’s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. I suspect it’s more of the latter.

djtango 1y ago
Just because we have made innovations in the method of research and discovery doesn't mean that we should throw away everything that we had before. Around me I see practices like "gratitude", "meditation" and "breathing exercises" get bandied around like they're some new profound thing as if we hadn't known about for thousands of years that have appeared in various guises universally throughout different civilisations. Just because the metaphors and models of explanations could be flawed doesn't mean the effects should be thrown out Edit: I have a good friend, a scientist no less, who suffered from severe eczema and was completely let down by western medicine who was put through decades of progressively stronger and stronger steroids. Nothing worked. Eventually the doctors gave up and shrugged their shoulders and was advised to give "alternative medicine" a go. Desperate my friend visited a traditional Chinese doctor who was prepared to guide them through a rigorous exclusion diet while also preparing mystery herb soup and suddenly a lifetime of eczema subsided and became very manageable. The older I get the more determined I find myself trying to glean the accrued wisdom of people who came before us...
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Around me I see practices like "gratitude", "meditation" and "breathing exercises" get bandied around like they're some new profound thing as if we hadn't known about for thousands of years that have appeared in various guises universally throughout different civilisations. Most people don’t care where, when, or why a concept was invented as long as it works. Quibbling over who discovered it first or trying to drag the conversation back to who discovered it first is like the person who tries to claim credit for being into a band before they were popular: Nobody cares, they just want to enjoy it. > The older I get the more determined I find myself trying to glean the accrued wisdom of people who came before us... Going back to the actual article: There is a big illusion of accrued wisdom of the ancients in TCM that isn’t backed up by the research. There are occasional hits where a TCM preparation intersects with a truly active compound, but it should be raising red flags when TCM practitioners claim to have cures for everything and different TCM practitioners will come up with different answers for the same patient. When the first one doesn’t work they’ll have another answer the next visit, and the next visit, and so on.

lintkw 1y ago

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