Tuesday, June 29, 2010

That Individualisation Thing

The 30 Second Skinny Advocates of Homeopathy point to the way remedies are individualised to a client to explain why the blanket approach of clinical trials fail to show positive results. There have been some trials that take individualisation into account, and they don't show positive results either. Also, even with the blanket prescriptions in clinical trials you would expect remedies to outperform placeboes as some patients would get the correct remedy by chance alone.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Sea Org and Coerced Abortions

The 30 Second Skinny The Church of Scientology runs a quasi-military group called Sea Org that it describes as like a monastic order. Accusations have been made that Sea Org members are coerced into having abortions. This is denied by the Church, but there is undoubtedly a great deal of pressure for Sea Org women to comply to get an abortion, because leaving Sea Org, and possibly their family or even the Church itself, would be too great a price to pay. This pressuring needn't be verbal (although it is claimed that it is), it is systemic of the organisation.