We do not evaluate, we demonstrate the diversity
The whufflings of the science museum are still sticking in my craw, making me irritable and restless and apt to shy at sudden noises. There’s just something about them…
The fifth floor gallery, you should understand, is divided into 3, like ancient Gaul.
2 large areas called Modern Medicine and Before Modern Medicine and a smaller area called Living Medical Traditions which was updated in 2006. Within this section there is a small area devoted to ‘Personal Stories’ which show how people choose to use medical treatments from different traditions.
That’s where the whuffling begins, you see. Another term for whuffling would be PR-speak. Spot the PR-speak. It is in “how people choose to use medical treatments” and it is in “medical treatments from different traditions.” The cry of the bullshitter echoes across the plain.
You see, “Susannah” (for it is she) is nudging us into having the right attitude to all this. People choose to use bogus medical treatments so how dare we elitist westerners with our fancy westerner cars and our fancy westerner yachts try to tell people what kind of medical treatments they should be forced at gunpoint to use. They choose it, themselves, in their authentic nonwesterner way, and that is rather beautiful, so who are you. The medical treatments they choose to use are from different traditions, just like totems and song lines and the most beautiful baskets you ever saw, so how dare we scientistic westerners with our scalpels and our carbon 14 dating and our slide rules try to say they don’t work. They are from different traditions, which are authentic and nonwestern and beautiful, so aren’t you ashamed. The medical treatments they choose to use from different traditions are medical treatments, because it says so right there between “choose” and “different traditions,” so go back to your penthouse on 5th Avenue and leave the poor Other alone.
See what I mean? It’s that kind of thing. It’s that sly way of smuggling in stupid pseudo-enlightened multicultural vocabulary as a way of signaling to people that they are stomping on about ten taboos. It’s that sly way of conveying that you’re saying something old hat and colonialist and suspect. It’s that sly way of patting themselves on the back for treating woo as if it were genuine medical treatments.
Then there’s the exhibit itself, with its generous display of the same kind of thing.
Around the world, medical traditions coexist, interact, compete and combine.
Here we describe local cases where individuals have chosen treatments from more than one medical tradition. Some visit practitioners who mix knowledge and techniques from different sources.
Individuals choose a practitioner for many reasons.
See it all? There’s a lot. I’ll mark it for you.
Around the world, medical traditions coexist, interact, compete and combine.
Here we describe local cases where individuals have chosen treatments from more than one medical tradition. Some visit practitioners who mix knowledge and techniques from different sources.
Individuals choose a practitioner for many reasons.
On the one hand it’s all totally legit, it’s practitioners with knowledge and techniques providing medical treatment; on the other hand it’s around the world, so the traditions both compete, on account of they’re different, and coexist and combine, on account of they’re compatible (just like science ‘n’ religion you know). Either way it’s all great stuff, and individuals choose it, so don’t you stand there glowering at us for displaying nonsense as if it were sciencey evidence-based medicine. We can if we want to.
The museum’s official statement is even worse.
[W]e take an anthropological and sociological perspective on medical practices. We reflect patient experience in a global setting. We do not evaluate different medical systems, but demonstrate the diversity of medical practices and theoretical frameworks currently thriving across the world.
Which, since the Science Museum is the Science Museum, is a frank and unabashed abdication of responsibility. The “different” “medical systems” aren’t all medical systems and don’t all belong in a science museum, so the museum’s proudly announcing that they don’t evaluate them but just demonstrate their “diversity” instead is…pathetic.
But oh well – I shouldn’t let it annoy me. After all, it’s not as if medicine makes any difference to anything.
I’m curious, is there a similar section for shaman rituals? I’m not trying to be sarcastic, if the response is to be taken at face value, then I would assume Shaman treatments would be treated in the exact same manner as all other medical treatments….?
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I have no problem whatsoever in the Museum taking an “anthropological” approach and having exhibits on non-scientific traditions, whether it be medicine or astrology or rain dances. But the problem comes when they deliberately avoid evaluating the scientific basis behind different traditions. As you say, they are a science museum, and visitors would be expecting the exhibits to be scientific. It would be like the British Museum explaining Egyptian artefacts with quotes from von Daniken on an equal footing with scientific archeological evidence.
But of course it’s even worse than that because the museum has evaluated non-scientific traditions. When the museum has a sign stating baldly that homeopathy cured a girl of allergies, they are effectively evaluating the evidence by making an unqualified statement of fact.
It would be better if they did a meta analysis of literature showing where “alternative” treatments have, and have not panned out. Perhaps it’s too politically charged to describe the areas WHERE western medicine can learn from eastern methods (like increased emphasis on diet and exercise).
“The cry of the bullshitter echoes across the plain.”
That’s one of the best lines I’ve heard in a long time. Thanks for the chuckle.
I’m afraid that you miss the point by focusing on multiculturalism. The point is, What is Truth to Money? SCAM is tremendously lucrative. It has a center at NIH, for Christ’s sake. I cannot point to the exact location of the Science Museum’s teat, but I cannot be more certain that it is present.
Is there a section where they explain why putting old people on icefloes and letting them float out to sea demonstrates how much in touch with nature and the Great Circle of Life these funky shamanistic practitioners were? Hell, we’re still struggling to get euthanasia legalised!
Ken – you could be right, but what I was able to look at was the language of the justification; that resorted to multicultural boilerplate. I leave the sniffing out of money in the background to journalists. I’m a mere commentator.
I agree with your point about choice entirely.
Question: is it the role of the Science Museum to advocate healthcare reform in countries that don’t benefit from an NHS?
PS I visited the exhibition yesterday to look at this issue http://davidwaldock.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/living-traditions-dead-facts/
I’d welcome comments!
David W
Well, I enjoyed reading your description of the museum. And I’m appalled by the apparently uncritical Psychoanalysis exhibit in addition to the Living Traditions exhibit. However, I strongly disagree with your conclusion:
If you just want a discussion then you can go a gallery opening, or a bar, or a party. Science museums can and should be about more than uncritical discussions. Science is a tool, a methodology that helps is separate what is true from what merely appears to be true. When a museum credulously highlights anti-scientific medical practices as being efficacious then it is omitting the “science” from “science museum.” Science isn’t just about having discussions, it is about conclusions based on the scientific process. And the scientific consensus is that there is no strong data that any of the practices on display are any more efficacious than placebo. You can’t omit that from the exhibit without making the exhibit utterly misleading in terms of the **science**. The only reason the museum has not done so, IMO, is that it doesn’t want to risk controversy by plainly stating that science contradicts many, probably most, medical “Living Traditions.” Tough. Science has to follow where the sound and tested evidence lead, no matter who’s delicate sensibilities may be offended by facts.
In the end, I really can’t countenance the Science Museum’s weak kneed, over sensitive attempt at cultural accommodationism.
Science is evidence-based. It is all about reproducible observations and measurements. So one can have scientific testing of the claims of homeopathy, tai chi or whatever. Religion on the other hand is based on claims that by their very nature are not testable that way.
A comment on the Science Museum site from Dr Diven Topiwala is very relevant:
There are two questions relevant to the study of any practice like homeopathy or tai chi: 1. Does it work? 2. If it works, is the theoretical explanation offered by its practitioners consistent with the rest of science?
Homeopathy, if it works at all, might do so because of the fascinating placebo effect. From what I know of its theory, and the claim that the efficacy of its succussed potions increases with increasing dilution, I would say that if that was valid, a large part of the theory presented in the textbooks of mainstream chemistry and biochemistry would be in need of serious revision.
Tai chi works in terms of the feelings of personal relaxation and harmonious movement its millions of practitioners world-wide set out to achieve, as in its own way, does yoga. But the theories of both are set forth in language ultimately subject to rational analysis, and more explanations than just one are available.
Thus the questions (1) Does it work? and (2) Does it work according to its own terms? need to be kept strictly separate. Exhibits posing them thus in my view do have a place in a science museum, as indeed do all the so far unanswered questions of science.
http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/collections/living-medical-traditions/
David, I did leave a comment. I’m afraid it was not very supportive of your views.