Title says it all really.
In: Other
To know if something is ineffective, you have to be able to compare it to something that is more effective or less effective.
When they were doing things like bloodletting or giving herbal remedies, they were comparing rates of survival to “people who we aren’t treating”. Well, guess what? That meant they were comparing people who were *receiving attention* thus probably being fed and given water vs. people who were *not* getting those things. So they saw higher survival rates and assumed their treatment was working. And they weren’t wrong, they just weren’t testing all the variables.
The only reason we KNOW those treatments are ineffective is we know more now. Not to mention for many conditions, we’ve found medicines that we can PROVE are dramatically better at improving recovery and survival than anything else. So even if some weird folk remedy has like a 5% increase in speed of recovery, that’s a goofy choice if there’s a medicine with a 95% increase over that.
Latest Answers