Also Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by Robert Bartholomew and Hilary Evans, another extensive treatment of the subject of mass hysteria.

        Matte said:

Though you may be right Calli, your argument falls on the fact that we are dealing with a blond, blue eyed model of female persuasion. I happen to know quite a few blond & good looking women and most of them have PhD’s (I usually don’t get to work with them, for good reason) or are some of the best engineers I am lucky enough to work with…non of them would ever consider standing in front of a camera for money however. That is something for the less endowed in the brain department with very few exceptions.

Having a PhD does not make one immune from bull****. There is much truth to what Calli says. There’s a difference between being an idiot in some circumstances and being an idiot in general. I’ve been stupid with a few decisions. There are very smart people who fall for complete myths and things they should know better than.

It’s actually an important and interesting area to consider the psycological and sociological factors. There are a lot of things that can cause this. We’re all human and we all have various emotional weaknesses, desires and coping mechanisms and our own internal bias can get the better of us. I’d say one of the first rules of being a good skeptic is never trust your own perception or beleifs 100% and realize that delusion is not confined to the mentally ill.

A few examples that come to mind:

Linus Pauling – Absolutely brilliant quantum chemist and nobel prize winner. Pauling really revolutionized how we understand proteins and how biochemistry works. He later came to believe vitamin C was some kind of magic elixer of life. Apparently this was based on the single observation that amoung primates, most get far more than humans. He took copious amounts of the stuff. All scientific evidence is that such huge amounts are just excreted. He never waivered in his faith on this.

Nicola Tesla – Invented the induction motor, which was truely a stroke of brilliance. He invented three phase power, designed transformers and actually build the first working radio transmission systems. He had an amazing tallent for creating all manner of lighting systems and other electrical devices in short periods of time and supperior to those of competitors. His genius when it comes to power conversion is undeniable. He was also very very nutty. This became even more a factor in late life. In addition to being badly OCD, he firmly believed he was in communication with marsians and that he could energize the atmosphere to create some kind of super weapon, despite all experiments in this regard failing.

Rustum Roy – I don’t know that I’d call him brilliant, but he was accomplished in terms of education. He had doctorates. He was a fully accreditted professor. He had a few good acomplishments as a material scientist. He was also a big proponent of homeopathy and thought religion should guide science.

Sir Issac Newton – He invented calculus, and amazingly seems to have basically just thought it up entirely on his own. He created our modern system of physics. He also seems to have had some very strange religuous beleifs, which occupied much of his time when he was not revolutionizing physics. He tried to decode the bible, which he was a literalist of. He dabbled in alchemistry and believed the chemical reactions he saw were devine magic.

Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff from the Stanford Research Institute – Brilliant physists, having been involved in the development of the laser and in early research into the relativistic effects of gravity, respectively. They later were fooled (badly) by Uri Geller. Geller used relatively amateure magic tricks to convince them he had magical abilities to alter metal and other materials. They became involved in research into ESP and psychic phenemona. All of this turned out to be easily replicated with simple trickery.

This is actually a common tale. Research scientists in the areas of physics often become far too confident in their belief that they are such great scientific professionals that they could never be fooled by simple slight of hand illusion and thus refuse to get help or consultation from those who actually understand this (illusionists, preceptional psycologists, those experienced with trickery) and therefore fall hook line and sinker for that kind of crap.

        Laur said:

Dear Matte

I believe you are correct on every point. There is no good reason for this fine young woman to throw her life away as she is doing and it is really heartbreaking to watch her do exactly that.

But, you must remember that some folks do not have the inner strength and resilience that Heather McCarthy has, and I can only hope that this young woman finds a spiritual counselor who can help her realize her own worth and that it is not diminished by the loss of her arm.

However, I won’t be judgmental if she somehow can’t find the strength.

It is just a horrible tragedy I hate witnessing.

Ok, I see your point all the way to the last row…where you go totally off script. This woman dying is not the tragedy here. The tragedy is the fact that she is persuading a lot of people in the same circumstances to forgo life saving treatment because she chooses death rather than disfigurement.

Well, good riddance I say. The sooner she goes, perhaps more people will see the error of her choices and get proper treatment in time.

On the other hand … some reasons that so many choose snake oil is that there are no evidence-based alternatives, the alternatives are unpalatable, or the alternatives are too expensive. One dose of chemotherapy can cost over $10,000 US. Many patients tolerate 10 cycles, some tolerate 20. Other cancer treatments cost $100,000 per dose; ten cycles of that and you’re talking big bucks.

I’ll leave “spiraling health-care costs” out and, I suppose, be glad that Lance Armstrong chose to treat his (curable) cancer. Eventually.

        drbuzz0 said:

I guess. Although, you can still be very beautiful with one arm.

She could have tried to make some kind of positive impact with it.

Being a one-armed model is probably not going to have mass appeal, but she could try to do something with it – being some kind of a spokesperson for amputees or starting some kind of campaign to make it more acceptable for handicapped persons to be considered beautiful.

You sometimes have to play the hand you’re dealt (no pun intended).

The one I can think of is Heather Mills, (former wife of Paul Mccartney) who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. She started in with campaigns for recycling prosthetic limbs for the poor and to ban landmines (many legs have been lost to these).

I’d say that for one, nobody should ever define their self worth entirely by physical beauty, because you’re always only one disfiguring accident away from losing it.

If she lost the arm to cancer, she would have to really re-assess her career, I’m sure.

It’d be a hard adjustment. But the alternative is worse.

Death is hardly a good alternative. Especially considering what is probably going to happen.

From what I’ve read, the normal progression of this form of cancer is that it does not become fatal until it invades the lungs.

At that point tumors will slowly begin to block the lungs from properly functioning. The lungs can’t inflate properly, circulation is compromised and fluid starts to build up.

Breathing slowly becomes more and more difficult, The final stages are not pretty.

Dear Matte

I believe you are correct on every point. There is no good reason for this fine young woman to throw her life away as she is doing and it is really heartbreaking to watch her do exactly that.

But, you must remember that some folks do not have the inner strength and resilience that Heather McCarthy has, and I can only hope that this young woman finds a spiritual counselor who can help her realize her own worth and that it is not diminished by the loss of her arm.

However, I won’t be judgmental if she somehow can’t find the strength.

It is just a horrible tragedy I hate witnessing.

        Calli Arcale said:

No, it’s not a capital offense to be stupid, but I don’t think she’s stupid.

This is a crucially important thing that bears repeating:

People who turn to alt-med when told they have an extremely dangerous disease which will claim their lives unless some drastic measure isn’t taken are generally not stupid. In fact, studies have shown that intelligent, well-educated people are the most likely to use alt med.

Why is this important? *Snipp!*

Though you may be right Calli, your argument falls on the fact that we are dealing with a blond, blue eyed model of female persuasion. I happen to know quite a few blond & good looking women and most of them have PhD’s (I usually don’t get to work with them, for good reason) or are some of the best engineers I am lucky enough to work with…non of them would ever consider standing in front of a camera for money however. That is something for the less endowed in the brain department with very few exceptions.

My previous comment stands firm…

According to the usual alt med suspects.

That’s my prediction and if I’m correct I’m off to claim Randi’s Million.

Anything that is based on the taste of the masses will be completely terrible bull**** full of cliches and lies. Because most people are idiots with no taste or talent whatsoever, much less an inclination to reason critically.

The folks in India that go to homeopaths, do so out of ignorance. The crime is that the government there doesn’t take steps to tell them its quackery. A well-educated Westerners that go to homeopaths are stupid, because they are not ignorant, and we can assume, being educated, they are not idiots.

And if at any time, on any matter, you cannot face the fact you were wrong and change course it can be a capital offense; the sentence is carried out by nature – there is no appeal.

        Deepak Tibrewal said:

Well, it looks like the honesty of purpose is lost here.

I am a medical Homeopath. from Bangalore.

Whether or not Homeopathic remedies contain material for it’s effectiveness, it has been proven more effective then Placebo in en number of met analysis. I have seen those analysis at London hospital.

Citation, please. The only ones I can remember seeing showed a very slight (just above the level of statistical noise) bias for certain specific conditions. Or that might have been for acupuncture. As far as I’ve seen, there is as much strong support for praying, or for laying on hands. Hardly worth replacing any actual working and tested therapy for! Barely worth spending the time and money even if there is no alternative therapy.

That would come as a great surprise to the Snake-Oil salesmen of the Old West, or the Radiation Therapy pushers of the turn of the century, or the magnetic bracelets of today.

It would also come as a great surprise to Solvay Pharmaceuticals, or any other company that has made a nice little bundle on off-label sales. If you aren’t familiar with this US term, it means marketing a prescription drug for a product for which it has never been tested!

The disbelief in homeopathy is not constrained to the chemical implausibility. If it worked, we’d be all about trying to figure out how…not throwing it away.