My point is very simple.
To quote the inestimable Dr Ben Goldacre, "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."
Proving that something works does not mean only through clinical trials.
In medicine it pretty much does, that's sort of the definition of a clinical trial is something set up to determine if a treatment is effective, and if so how effective.
Experience of people over generations is also proof.
Homeopathy has been around for over two hundred years, and does not work. People's experience is subjective and unreliable.
In fact, clinical trials cannot always be relied upon.
Absolutely. The design of trials can be skewed, the data can be cherry-picked after the fact, the tests to be conducted can be decided after the experiment has been run, there are any number of ways in which clinical trials can be - and sometimes are - mishandled. They are still more reliable than 'but we've been doing it for years'.
Many long term effects are not known through trials.
Yep, because side effects are a small part of what trials are set up to determine; but confirming that a particular side-effect is the result of a particular treatment is, itself, a clinical trial.
Besides that, western people are so deeply entrenched in their own ways that it takes a long time for them to open up to other possibilities.
Yes, it's Western people that are stuck in their ways. You wouldn't find good, sensible, open-minded Hindu Indians sticking to outmoded mixed bags because of tradition at all...
A simple thing such as vegetarianism is an example. Indians did not need clinical trials as proof that vegetarianism is good for health or that animals and the environment need to be protected and respected.
Quick, shift a goal-post... Vegetarianism is neither intrinsically good nor bad for health, so long as it's managed properly - just like an omnivorous diet. If Indians are so aware of the need for environmental protection why are they collectively so bad it?
It has taken many decades for vegetarianism to even get accepted as a normal diet form in the west.
Yep, because it's a cultural shift. Any cultural shift takes time. You can tie the environmental and health concerns together and show how demonstrably better all round it is to reduce beef consumption, and you're going to get laughed out of every state in the US (and twice out of Texas), because they're not ready for it, yet.
But at the same time you can explain to India about the perils for the world of continuing to burn coal for power at the rates they are, and they'll make (not baseless) arguments about how it's 'their turn' to reap the benefits of the raw materials available to them.
Microscopic thinking can obliterate common sense and wisdom.
Lots of things can. Treating the entirety of they Ayurvedic tradition as though it were one equally valid, equally effective homogenous claim, for instance.
Similarly, it will take time for the 'scientific minded' western world to wake up to such possibilities as Life being a form of energy (or whatever you want to call it).
It will take time, yes. But that time will only start after you've actually demonstrated there is something more to the claim than 'it's possible'.
Not that there aren't many in the west who accept such matters currently!
And if they're doing so without evidence they're going to be spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to effect a cultural shift on that.
O.
