Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (guthrie @ Mar. 30 2008,20:22) | | Well, I think we killed this thread... |
Guthrie,
Well I'm not a dermatologist so I know comparatively little about the science behind skin moisturisation, other than the little I've gleaned from colleagues whose speciality that is (which is basically that cheap cold cream or vaseline works almost as well as anything!). I know sufficient to know the claims of the cosmetics companies are poorly evidenced dreck filled with sciency sounding buzzwords used to gull the scientifically ignorant and naive.
Beyond that what is there to say about the claims of cosmetics companies? It's not sufficiently profound to have a decent scientific discussion about. Oh they'll whip out fancy looking graphs and what not, but it's hardly like they have to pass the rigour of anything like a clinical trial. Their products have to meet a few safety criteria, and (if you're in Europe at least) some "green/animal testing" criteria, but beyond that these things are endless reformulations of similar materials. Novelty isn't the point. I'm probably doing a disservice to the people who make cosmetics, and the original science and scientists behind these products, which was/were undoubtedly good, but that industry isn't in that phase at this point in time. It's not an industry founded on research but an industry founded on marketing.
To take up a point you mention in another thread, pseudoscience is at least a little more interesting because it could be correct. It takes a little examination to uncover as obviously false. That examination is what makes it interesting. However, much of the pseudoscientific nonsense we encounter is like the reformulated cosmetic products: i.e. the same old crap repackaged, rebranded, and rehashed. That obviously robs it of its interest value.
I'm am far from the first (or last) to observe that what, for example, is interesting about creationism is NOT its pseudoscientific content, which is long ago and well refuted and exposed as the nonsense it is, but the endless political strategies its proponents weave. Granted these strategies are not themselves particularly novel, but they are new to new people. Each generation encounters these old strategies and a proportion of people are fooled by them all over again. The same applies to homeopathy and the like, to shamanistic "medicine" and much of "cargo cult" science, it's all very old hat. Our job is not to disprove it all over again but to lead people to those antique disproofs as best we can. At the risk of paraphrasing the bible, there is little new under the sky or on earth.
However that little scintilla of novelty DOES exist. Ideas we haven't as a group dreamt of before. Discoveries yet unmade by anyone. The concrete portion of that novelty comes from our efforts in scientific research. But like you point out in your other post, that takes a certain degree of training to handle and discuss meaningfully. It also takes effort and time, two commodities in short supply. I've often promised myself that I'd get back to that "abiogenesis" thread (for example) and put up a few papers and discussions of them. These are promises I've regularly broken! It's easier to make daft jokes and have a bit of banter whilst we're waiting for the latest unpardonable piece of dreck or dishonesty from the (Lack of)Discovery Institute or some creationist shill like FruiTcaKe.
Denialists of all stripes are just simply not very interesting or bright people. Sorry, but it's the truth! A decent pun cascade excercises the mind infinitely more (and infinitely more pleasurably) than arguing with some loon about a topic he or she is incapable of understanding and too dishonest to concede.
Sorry, I just felt like defending frivolity. It seemed like a harder job than beating up yet another clueless piece of abject kookery from L'Oreal or Prince Charles!
;-)
Louis
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Bye.
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