ah, that makes sense.

Does that still apply if the underlying mechanism isn't understood?

I know examples of this exist already , I'm wondering if "proof of effectiveness" really means just the effectiveness in this context.

I was also going to use aspirin as an example, there is also psychedelics as a treatment for various psychological ailments.

I'm also going to post a response i made to a comment further up.

I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here.

What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition

Thats my bad.

I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.

In generalities i was thinking more of how certain branches or offshoots of what was considered to be mainstream ( or mainstream adjacent ) science were later found to be scientifically provable.

An example of this is microbes.

They were posited over the years in varied forms by multiple independent people, but they weren't really fully accepted until the invention of a way of actually observing them.

This is largely what medicine was prior to the current , formal scientific method. Local "medicine people" would have salves, cures, potions and other such concoctions passed down to apprentices, they might have some knowledge of how it works, but most of that knowledge would be in the practical application and treatment using said concoctions.

That's not to dismiss this practice, the years of experience and experimentation (of a kind) was, in some cases, essentially a precursor to modern scientific method.

There are ways of analysing effects and positing theories without fully understanding how the underlying mechanism works.

Sometimes that leads to legitimate data around the effects of a medicine or treatment being dismissed as "alternative", at least until formal experimentation is done and verified

As i said in another reply, I'm not saying it's common, all i was saying was that it's a possibility.

Agreed,

I was positing the possibility of a move from "alternative" to "scientifically recognised", not that it was likely to happen.

Indeed, though I'd argue that's an issue with modern academia as an industry rather than the scientific method itself.

edit: not that the scientific method doesn't have it's flaws.

That's certainly a definition.

(As a genuine question) How dos that definition account for the placebo effect ?

edit: re-read this and realised it sounded significantly more confrontational than i intended, so i added bracket context.

Yeah, I saw it after I'd posted.

I need to be more specific in how I mean "alternative" here.

What I mean is "not of the current scientific consensus" , which I realise isn't exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition

Thats my bad.

I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it's methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.

Medical science is just that, medicine that follows the scientific method. (Or at least it's supposed to).

The scientific method is basically testing guesses (sometimes educated ones) and seeing what happens.

There's a whole lot of structure and guidelines, but testing guesses(hypotheses) is where it's at mostly.

The current state of any science is usually "the best theory we have right now, given the data and resources available to us"

Some people hear that and think "look, they're just guessing, why should I listen to them?" and thats absolutely valid.

Where that falls down is that they then go on to assume all guesses are equal and ignore the time and resources that went in to that current scientific best guess.

Is it always correct? no, is it more likely to be beneficial than a random social media post by an influencer with no medical expertise? Generally yes.

Im all on the "listen to the medical experts" train.

There are however some medicines and treatments that legitimately started as "alternative".

A lot of it is horseshit though.

Also modern medicine isn't infallible(nor the people that practice it).

Statistically though, it's fucking high magic compared to most internet sourced diagnoses.

Get them some nix

Ish, it was noticeably toned down.

Not that I can blame them, the manga scene was basically a few seconds of hardcore.

Is argue that some people absolutely understand they are doing "bad" things, even by their own criteria.

They choose to do them anyway, because the payoff is larger than the ethical and moral cost.

Thats just it though, a lot of the time there are reasons.

A lot of those reasons aren't immediately apparent, Some of those reasons might never be understood even by the person themselves.

I also want to make clear that a "reason" isn't always an excuse it's just the preceding experiences/events that lead up to an outcome.

Someone with a non--standard set of tools for reading context has a non-standard chance of seeing and/or understanding those reasons. Because the outward facing signs of that context are geared towards a typical form of communication that is commonly less accessible by the neurodivergent.

I say "non-standard chance of understanding" on purpose, because it's not always a case of better or worse and can vary over time, with skill acquisition and learning.

There are neurodivergent people who are very attuned to specific types of tells that wouldn't typically be seen. They might not understand the relevance or context, but they can notice a difference.

There are people who acquire a learned (as opposed to natural) form of this type of assessment of others.

That skill(or skills) can be it's own set of problems, but it's possible.