Taking evidence seriously

Alan Sokal in the Guardian (UK)

Public policy decisions should be based on evidence. So why are taxpayers funding faith schools and alternative therapies?

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," a senior adviser to President Bush told the New York Times in the summer of 2002.

It might seem obvious that public policy ought to be based on reality and evidence, but the implications of taking seriously an evidence-based worldview are far more radical than most people realise.

Here's one example: the British government is now introducing standards of competence in homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology and other "alternative" therapies, in order to protect the public from inadequately trained practitioners. That sounds nice, at first glance. But what, precisely, does it mean to be "competent" in a system of pseudo-medicine that has never been demonstrated to be efficacious beyond the placebo effect? Perhaps for its next act, the NHS will introduce bloodletting and trepanation, duly guaranteed by rigorous standards of competence for practitioners.

Despite the utter scientific implausibility of homeopathy - in which the "remedies" are so highly diluted that they contain not a single molecule of the alleged "active ingredient" - the NHS actively promotes homeopathy on its website and provides homeopathic "treatment" at the taxpayers' expense. And there are five homeopathic hospitals in the UK, of which four are funded by NHS money.

More after the click ...

My comment:

The down-side of faith based decisions is that they're based on faith ... and faith does not require evidence. As a matter of fact, faith requires that any evidence running contrary to belief be ignored. It simply wouldn't be faith if it were based solely on evidence.