re good grief was re candida albicans what is it reply to aldridge netcom com jacquelin aldridge medicine is not a totally scientific endevour the acquisition of scientific knowledge is completely scientific the application of that knowledge in individual cases may be more art than science there are diseases that haven t been described yet and the root cause of many diseases now described aren t known read a book on gastroenterology sometime if you want to see a lot of them after scientific methods have run out then it s the patient s freedom of choice to try any experimental method they choose and it s well recognized by many doctors that medicine doesn t have all the answers certainly we don t have all the answers the question is what is the most reliable means of acquiring further medical knowledge the scientific method has proven itself to be reliable the only reason alternative therapies are shunned by physicians is that their practitioners refuse to submit their theories to rigorous scientific scrutiny insisting that tradition or anecdotal evidence are sufficient these have been shown many times in the past to be very unreliable ways of acquiring reliable knowledge crook s ideas have never been backed up by scientific evidence his unwillingness to do good science makes the rest of us doubt the veracity of his contentions david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
