On Saturday 14th July, Dr. Stephen Makin and Ben Makin of the Edinburgh Skeptics will deliver what promises to be a fascinating talk on the anecdotes and evidence surrounding alternative medicine. This talk will begin at 8.00pm at CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory.
Ben Makin has tried a complete alphabet of traditional, complimentary and New Age treatments and practices. She will take us on a rapid tour of alternative and complimentary medicine, from Applied Kinesiology to Zen Buddhism, and ask “Where’s the harm?”
Dr Stephen Makin will reply, looking at the evidence and discussing cases where real harm has been done by alternative practices, and explaining why skeptics should continue to fight against quackery and cons.
Ben Makin was raised on goats’ milk and home-made wholemeal bread and started her working life at Culpepper’s the Herbalist; she now maintains the Edinburgh Skeptics website.
Stephen Makin was raised on soya milk and meditation, and ran away to Medical School to become a doctor. He is a Clinical Research Fellow in Stroke Medicine at Edinburgh University who spends too much time arguing with proponents of woo on the internet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This talk is open to the public, and is free to attend. Directions to Blackrock Castle Observatory can be found on our information page. We hope to see you there!
Muireann’s talk, entitled So You Think You Own Your Body? will look at the changing role of the body and human biomaterials in a rapidly developing biotechnological world. She will show how the uses and misuses of persons and their tissues and cells by medicine, scientists, pharmaceutical companies and industry have risen and expanded exponentially.
His talk then turned to claims that don’t make much sense but where the experimental results were nevertheless unambiguous. A classic example is Wave Particle Duality, where light sometimes acts as a wave, and other times acts as a particle. It’s a mechanism that’s still not fully understood, yet it is verified to an exceedingly high degree of precision by modern science. He also spoke about the age of the universe – how current models cannot yet explain how the universe appears to be larger than expected and how light speed is the same no matter which direction or speed you are moving. All these are challenging results, but experimentally there is no debate – they can be shown to work every single time. They demonstrate that although we know a lot, there is a lot still yet to be understood about the nature of reality. As Niall said “just because you can’t explain it, doesn’t automatically mean you must reject it”.
Cork Skeptics 