Page 15 - Spring 19

But on two conditions:
1 The demarcation between science and pseudoscience may not pass, as suggested by Prof. Burioni, for a para- consistent scientific proof, that is the evidence, but must pass through an irrefutable pragmatic proof, that for me, is the result, that is, it must pass through a criterion controlled both by the doctor and the patient,
2 It is not about being free of the method because in its turn it is para-consistent (dealing with contradictions and inconsistencies), but just because it is para- consistent it is about being free in the method in its use (Fayerabend). Free means autonomy for doctors to interpret it, to always ensure that it is appropriate for the patient in his singularity.
Evidence without truth
In essence to be even clearer:
• Evidence (whatever it is) is true only if it works,
• Evidence exists beyond “scientific proof”, that is, the
experiment; there is other evidence of different kinds,
• The method cannot be absolutely binding.
If evidence is adequate to its method, and its verification criteria, it is then scientifically correct. If on the concrete case it does not work, in theory, it remains correct, but on the practical level it is evidence without truth. The method in these cases must be interpreted in the primary interest of the patient.
The pragmatic criterion of the result
Let us now try to do something different from that proposed by Prof. Burioni that is to fix the demarcation between science and pseudoscience on the empirically verifiable result, in this case:
• Everything that gives a verifiable result is science,
• Everything that does not give a verifiable result is
pseudoscience.
At this point I challenge Prof. Burioni to deny with scientific evidence that millions of millions of citizens have had, thanks to homeopathy or acupuncture, satisfactory results.
That is to deny that we could define the truths of homeopathy, to distinguish them from the truths of the official medicine. Homeopathy has its own evidence, its own methodology, and Prof. Burioni attempts to delegitimize it using other evidence, other methodologies. This is cognitively incorrect because, as I have already had occasion to clarify, homeopathy and scientific medicine are not epistemically commensurable. (http://www.quotidianosanita.it/studi-e- analisi/articolo.php?tipo=articolo&&articolo_id=66837 ).
They must be taken as two paradigms that consider illness and patients from totally different postulates, so different as to be hardly comparable.
It is the way knowledge is used that makes science
The real problem of homeopathy is the delineation of its use in the sense that homeopathy would become a pseudo-science only in the case in which it was completely inappropriate to the disease to be treated. For me, homeopathy that treats cancer is proposed oncologically as a pseudo science. But it would be only because it would not give results, but not because it is not scientific.
This means that in all cases where it is used with positive results it in no way can be considered a pseudo-science
precisely because it gives results.
So to decide the scientific nature of something is not just the method, the evidence, as proposed by Prof. Burioni, but also the use made of knowledge. This raises the unprecedented problem of the modalities. Science is a certain way of using knowledge.
What’s right for the citizen
Now let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a citizen, what suits him? The citizen of today:
• Always is interested in the result,
• Has little interest in those who care to resort to different
kinds of evidence,
• Wants medicine to learn to make compatible the
general (nomothetic) truths with the unique
(idiographic) truths,
• Wants nature and culture find a new relationship
through which to dialogue,
• Wants to be understood in complexity and in this
complexity to be adequately cured,
• Wants the modality of adequacy, which is not the same
as that of appropriateness.
The leeches are not contemporary
For over 30 years I have been saying, what the other day, to my great satisfaction, Professor Maria Luisa Villa (Immunology, University of Milan) said “we are no longer in the era of positivism. We know we can be wrong. We must learn to respond to people’s doubts “. (The Truth, January 15, 2019).
I do not know Professor Villa personally, but I imagine, reading her interview, that she too, like me, would not have signed the pact proposed by Prof. Burioni.
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