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CSPO Soapbox
(June 22, 2009)Medicine, Homeopathy Christine Luk, doctoral student and participant in CSPO’s Alternative Imaginations Research ClusterHomeopathy: pseudo or alternative?The
infamous physicist Alan Sokal, who gained a "reputation" in SSK and STS
by his critical parody "Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
published in Social Text in 1996, launched another assault
on what he called "pseudo-medicine" in his public lecture "What is science
and why should we care?," given on February 27, 2008 in London (more
on lecture). His
talk commenced with his discontent and fury with the school of "social construction
of science/scientific knowledge/scientific facts" by quoting excepts from
notable scholars in SSK and STS – such as H.M. Collins, B. Latour, B. Barnes,
D. Bloor, and K. Hayles – and demonstrating how their writings on "social
construction of science" constitute a hazardous move toward intellectual
relativism and vanity. Then he traversed to what he conceptualized as a
"second set of adversaries of the scientific worldview,” namely the advocates
of pseudo-medicine. By "pseudo,” he meant the sloppy and unscientific mechanism
by which alternative therapies, such as homeopathy, can function within
the existing knowledge system in science. According
to Sokal, the utter scientific implausibility of homeopathy lies at its
"unproven (or disproven) mechanism by which homeopathy could possibly work,
unless one rejects everything that we have learned over the last 200 years
about physics and chemistry...." and that "existence of such a phenomenon
would contradict well-tested science, in this case the statistical mechanics
of fluids." In
short, Sokal was angry about the sum of money spent on promoting homeopathy
because he saw homeopathy as antagonistic to "credible" methodology in Western
science. Since Western science is the canonical archetype among the existing
knowledge systems, everything against it is relegated as "bad science." What
is the other side of the story? According to some defenders of homeopathy,
the preference for homeopathy stems partly from the recognition of the impossibility
of separating such an ever-changing body from its environment – health is
affected by diet, water, air, mood, stress, relationships, the past, colors,
work, and so on. Often, people turn to alternative medicine to address these
concerns. NYU’s Emily
Martin elaborated on the interconnection between the (internal)
immune system and the (external) environment: “Inside
the citadel of science, there is a group of scientists who are focusing
on the links between the immune system and the world outside the body, much
as alternative medicine treats the body in its life environment.
They are claiming that the immune system is a self-organizing network,
a complex system of the sort Vera Michaels evoked.
But today these scientists are considered ‘unconventional’ and their
views controversial.”
(“Anthropology
and the Cultural Study of Science: From Citadels to String Figures”
in Anthropological Locations:
Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science by
Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson,
1997: 139) Alright,
enough of the acrimonious dispute. Now, is there any way to reconcile the
dichotomous views? If we believed in Sokal's criticism on the deconstructive
(and thus destructive) signpost the school of "social construction of science"
is taking us to, how can we be more constructive? Apparently some people
believe in homeopathy and some people don't. But is it simply a matter of
faith? What is at stake here? Power asymmetry? Credibility & authority?
Misconception? Disciplinary and institutional barriers? Are sarcasm and parody and mutual hatred the best ways to handle the dispute? About the author: Christine Luk is a doctoral student and participant in CSPO’s Alternative Imaginations Research Cluster. |
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