vitalism

If there's one message that I've been trying to promote, regardless of whether it's on this blog or my not-so-super-secret other blog, it's the concept that there should be one standard of evidence—one scientific standard of evidence—for evaluating health claims and medical treatments. It doesn't matter if it's the latest drug from big pharma, the latest operation from a hot shot surgeon with a lot of creativity and not necessarily the most rigorous dedication to science- and evidence-based medicine, the woo-filled claims of alternative medicine practitioners, or the seemingly "evidence-based…

One of the common themes in biology and medicine is the feeling that somehow there must be more. Creationist cults simply know that life must be more than matter, and mind-body dualists (which includes most alternative medicine advocates) are certain that humans are more than an "ugly bag of mostly water" (sorry for the geek reference). If you can stick with me here, I'll explain to you a bit of the history surrounding this fallacy. Most of us intuitively feel that we are both a body and a person. In every day life, it makes a certain operational sense to think of our "mind" as being…