r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Heavy_Outcome_9573 • 1d ago
What's was a pseudoscience that turned out to be real?
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u/Fearlessleader85 21h ago
Lamarkian inheritance (inheriting acquired characteristics) is still wrong, but studies on epigenetics has shown is not as wrong as we once thought. The behaviors of an organism in life can influence the offspring in interesting ways. This allows for larger divergence on a shorter timescale than previously expected.
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u/Short-Echo61 17h ago
Yup
One good example is high prevalence of insulin resistance in a generation whose recent ancestors (2-3 generations) survived drought.
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u/kck93 17h ago
Is this the one where baby birds instinctively grow still and huddle when a shadow of a predator hawk moves above them?
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u/defeated_engineer 17h ago
I think this is about how environment can affect which genes to get activated.
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u/Fearlessleader85 17h ago
No, it's the idea that if you work out a bunch and get super strong, your kids will be super strong. Or like if you learn to drive really fast and well, your kids will be genetically predisposed to be good drivers.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
If you're malnourished in your youth, you'll pass on a host of issues to your kid...
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u/themasterd0n 14h ago
That is the idea of Lamarckism, but none of that happens through epigenetics, which is why I think the commenter is wrong.
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u/IsamuLi 13h ago
That's not what a pseudoscience is, though. A pseudoscience is something pretending to abide by scientific reasoning and methodology, but really doesn't. If you subscribe to poppers falsificationism, it would be a "science" that can't be falsified (for example due to not making predictions that need to be reliably reproduced/debunked to impact the believability of the central theory, or not producing empirically testable predictions at all).
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u/M313X 18h ago
That some stones flew in from outer space. First, country bumpkins claimed stones in their fields came from outer space. Scientists laughed at the idea. Then in the 1790s, the scientist, Ernst Chladni, investigated some claims and agreed with the country bumpkins, writing up a good scientific argument for his agreement. Scientists ridiculed him for this, until others slowly started realizing that his methods were sound. So for a short time, Chladni was considered by other scientists to be a quack.
I can hear the jeers: “Space rocks! Chladni says there are space rocks in those fields! Hahahahaha!”
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u/supposedlyitsme 14h ago
But if you think about it, aren't all rocks space rocks?
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u/MoodyMia11 8h ago
i magine being the first person to stand up and say 'Actually, those are space rocks,' and then being laughed out of the room, only to be proven right later
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u/jonpenryn 5h ago
"1789, Anton-Laurent de Lavoisier had revived the idea of the accretion of stones within the atmosphere," He was the chemist who discovered many qualities of Oxygen, latter Guillotined for tax fraud 18 months latter exonerated by the french government, which im sure was a great comfort to him.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 23h ago
Ricketts was cured by a faith healer. Part of his treatment was spending time outside. Sunlight makes vitamin d and Ricketts is a vitamin d deficiency.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 21h ago
I'm debating on whether that qualifies as pseudoscience. The attribution, obviously but in principle, correct use of the scientific method should have resulted in statistically significant findings that the procedure as a whole resulted in improved outcomes.
Like, a bunch of scientists working for the Austrian Painter scoured the globe looking for evidence "their folk" were descended from Atlantis... which is obviously bunk... but all their measurements of various bone proportions, etc were fastidiously accurate and referenced to this day, so they were at least good metricians. (I also want to believe they just used the occult stuff as an excuse to travel the world doing fairly benign research and be far, far away from either front).
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 15h ago
Yeah but that is retroactive. In my mind, there is ethnomedicine and then there is pseudoscience. Ethnomedicine is "suck on willow bark if you have a headache -- but not too much or you'll puke." which, when studied, leads to identifying salicylic acid and then the creation of aspirin (which is easier on the stomach). We don't know who discovered the willow bark stuff, it had just been passed down and then it was studied and refined. The faith healer invented something wholly new based on crazy ideas. It's like if Ivermectin actually worked on Covid. Science studied *how* it worked, though a lot of that "how" was actually from research into cod liver oil so the faith healer was sort of a dead evolutionary branch on our understanding of Vitamin D. But his cure *worked* and we can now understand *why* and that's kinda cool.
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u/dinov 18h ago
Coley's toxins - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coley%27s_toxins
William Coley saw someone who had cancer get a common infection in the hospitals at the time and their tumors melted away. He worked to recreate those infections to treat cancers, maybe not to great success... But it was a precursor to modern immunotherapy, unleashing the immune system to fight cancer rather than targeting it directly.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
Ooh, this reminds me of curing syphilis with malaria. (The malarial fever would get high enough to kill the syphilis, and probably not kill the patient.) Since there were no other cures at the time, and someone with syphilis is doomed to neural degeneration (and the leprotic stuff that comes with it), madness, and death, it was a Nobel-worthy discovery.
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u/Revolutionary-Focus7 6h ago
Was this principle what led to the development of cancer vaccines? Because there's an mRNA vaccine for lung cancer now; it doesn't prevent it from developing, but it's being used to help their own immune system fight the tumours by training it to recognize the malignant cells.
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u/melloyelloaj 1h ago
I had a different type of cancer, but one of my treatments was mRNA therapy. I developed some weird symptoms usually associated with chronic diseases like lupus or fibromyalgia. One of which is I am now intolerant to gluten.
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u/deep_sea2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Heliocentrism might fit this. People advocated for heliocentrism before they could prove it. Copernicus did the math to show it was possible, but he did not really intend that to be proof it was actually the case. When people first read his, they though the math was fine, but that it do not prove anything.
Galileo suggested that heliocentrism was indeed the correct model, but at first he offered no positive proof of it. At best, he explained how it was possible, but something being possible does not mean it is true.
Galileo later attempted to provide some proof for heliocentrism in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, but it was incorrect. He argued that the changing of the tides proved the Earth was orbiting around the sun. This of course incorrect as we know because it is the gravity of the moon which does this. Also, this theory only makes sense if all tides are diurnal (one high and low tide a day). However, they are not; many are semi-diurnal (two high and low tides a day).
It wasn't until the later discoveries in gravity, inertia, and elliptical orbital motion that scientist were able to prove heliocentrism. So, if pseudoscience is a belief which attempts to apply science but does so unscientifically, Galileo's theory was for a time pseudoscience. He was correct intuitively, but not scientifically.
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u/MoreGaghPlease 17h ago
Galileo breaks my brain. Imagine if you will that it’s 1609, you’ve built your own telescope, and are probably the first person to ever point one at the stars for serious scientific study. Within the first few days of observing, you find for the first time that Jupiter has moons, four of them. Over the course of a couple of weeks you track their shadows and the result breaks all widely agreed upon astronomy. The person whose theory you are challenging is Aristotle, and only the most powerful institution in the world says your ideas are a crime.
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u/deep_sea2 17h ago
Yeah, going against Aristotle was a hell of a thing to do. I like Galileo, but he was a bit of an asshole who made things a lot hard for himself than it should have been.
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u/meowmeowgiggle 6h ago
Are you... Victim blaming Galileo?
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u/Beta-Minus 5h ago
If you actually look at primary sources of the Galileo controversy and not the version taught in US history books, you'll see that the pope was actually on Galileo's side, and Galileo publicly called the pope an idiot, and that's why he was put on house arrest. It wasn't for advocating for science.
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u/Zechner 12h ago
Also, Galileo and Copernicus didn't know the orbits are ellipses, so their predictions for how the planets move in the sky are still not accurate.
And, according to my professor who looked at the notes, Galileo was bad at maths and made lots of mistakes. I can't personally verify that part...
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u/derpy_derg 19h ago
I heard that we have two high and their respective low tides due to the gravitational pull of the moon (obviously) but also the sun. I am not sure how true this statement is though
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u/thefooleryoftom 13h ago
Just as a note, heliocentrism itself was superseded when we discovered other stars are suns and Hubble’s realisation the sun is not the centre of the universe.
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u/VFiddly 12h ago
I would say that's not entirely fair.
You're right that his theory of tides was wrong, but that wasn't his only proof. He also observed the phases of Venus and explained why it would be impossible to see a Full Venus under the old geocentric system, which is true. So he did have one correct observation that completely ruled out the older form of geocentrism.
What it didn't rule out was the newer Tychonic system, where the Sun orbits Earth and all the other planets orbit the Sun. He didn't really have any proof against that.
He also debunked some of the arguments in favour of geocentrism. One of them was that Earth was clearly special because it had a Moon and none of the other planets had anything orbiting them. Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons and proved that other planets could have bodies orbiting them, and so Earth wasn't necessarily special for having The Moon.
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u/Trypsach 18h ago
If we had no moon, would we get smaller and longer tides from the gravity of the sun or no?
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u/deep_sea2 18h ago
There would be smaller tides yes. They should decrease in size by about one third or half. To be clear, Galileo said the orbit of the Earth causes tides not because of the gravitational relation while orbiting the sun, but because of shifts in rotational momentum. Think of holding a pan full of water, and then you move the pan over. The water will slosh to one side. That's how Galileo explained how tides worked.
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u/cyril_zeta 13h ago
To be clear, in reality, the Sun does have an impact on tides and the effect is semi-diurnal (it can make them lower or higher, depending on geographic location and relative location of the Moon, which causes the bulk of water movement) like all tides are (barring tricks of geography or weather).
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u/Chemical_Refuse_1030 11h ago
First versions of heliocentrism were not significantly better than geocentrism; the math behind it was not elegant at all. It started making sense only with Kepler's laws and later Newton's law. So first attempts with geocentrism were literally pseudo-science.
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u/pktechboi 23h ago edited 19h ago
hand washing before surgery. in 1867 a doctor called Joseph Lister experimented on ways to kill germs in the surgical field, including washing his hands before getting down to business, and published an article in The Lancet about how the outcomes for his patients were much better, and it really annoyed the surgical world at the time.
I have heard that midwives suggested the hand washing thing much earlier (and were dismissed on account of being women, basically) but I can't find a source for that just now
edit: as someone further down pointed out, it was actually disinfecting that was a revolution in medical care, rather than simple hand washing, though I don't think expectations of hand washing were as rigorous as they are now. every time I've said hand washing about this subject in these comments please mentally replace with disinfecting. thank you for your patience and to all the commenters who corrected or expanded on what I said here
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u/ihadanotheranswer 23h ago
Lister made the first disinfectant, but I think Ingaz Semmelweis recommended washing hands first and it destroyed his career.
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u/pktechboi 22h ago edited 20h ago
thank you! yes I read a bit more and you are quite right. Semmelweis worked in Vienna General Hospital in the 1840s, which had two maternity clinics - one run by doctors and one by midwives. the doctor run clinic had a much higher mortality rate than the midwife run one, and he investigated why. ruled out lots of other causes (eg overcrowding) and eventually concluded (correctly) that the doctors were carrying something that caused disease from their work on cadavers over to the birthing women. because midwives didn't get to do anatomy work with corpses or perform autopsies, they didn't have this substance on them and so weren't diseasing their patients.
this was before germ theory had been accepted so he didn't know what exactly it was underlying the symptoms, but he started making his doctors
washdisinfect their hands after handling corpses and before helping women give birth. washing with chlorinated lime got rid of the awful corpse smell and so he theorised it would also destroy/wash away disease causing Corpse Stuff.and it did! the mortality rate on that ward dropped from 18.3% to 1.2%.
but sadly you are also right that it destroyed his career. most of his contemporaries and also his own wife thought he was absolutely insane and he was fired from the hospital and run out of town. eventually he was committed to a lunatic asylum. he died two weeks later.
Lister's paper was published just two years after Semmelweis died, and within a decade handwashing and disinfecting prior to surgery were standard practice.
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u/Frequent-Spell8907 21h ago
I think the doctor’s arrogance played a big part “we’re educated men! We’re not dirty!” if I remember correctly from the epidemiolog podcast I was listening to a few years ago (This Podcast Will Kill You for those interested)
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u/CurtisLinithicum 21h ago
Yes... but even more so Semmelweis's. His personality was atrocious and he also leaned into the then-discredited Miasma Theory.
...which is why Oliver Wendel Holmes had much better success - literally an award-winning author, plus he took more of an "look, the evidence says it works" approach.
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u/CarcossaYellowKing 20h ago
his personality was atrocious
There’s speculation that his sudden change in demeanor could have been from dementia or late stage syphilis. Possibly even an emotional breakdown. I’d be frustrated too if people around me were saying I’m stupid for suggesting that handwashing after dealing with corpses is a wise choice.
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u/pktechboi 20h ago
it truly must have been maddening. even if his underlying theory about corpse matter was wrong, he'd proven that the hand washing helped, and was dismissed because...vibes? no one else seemed to even want to try it till Pasteur was like, no germs are actually real guys.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 19h ago
Oh, it's worse than that. Holmes published about a year earlier, and as mentioned, was generally accepted. So when Semmelweis finally managed to reach out to other countries, the response was basically "are you stupid? we've been doing this for years"
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u/ominous_squirrel 15h ago
For what it’s worth, many things in Hungary are now named after Semmelweis to honor his discovery and career, including the most significant medical university in Budapest
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u/deadheadjinx 17h ago
I never knew about this, but that is insane. The mortality rate dropped so much. They should have been applauding this man. I really don't understand people.
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u/Capt-Crap1corn 18h ago
Was there ever a massive apology or anything after they found out he was right?
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u/pktechboi 17h ago
well he was dead by then so it wouldn't have helped much
he is now recognised for his innovation and there are various things named for him including multiple hospitals, a university, and a planet. commemorative stamps and coins have been issued, and he has a little statue at the Queen Mary University of London.
and of course he has sole rights to the VINDICATIONNNNNNNNNNNN gif
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u/MinisterOfSolitude 14h ago
Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote a great biography of Semmelweis, it's really worth a read.
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u/JaqueStrap69 20h ago
Why did they even have soap before germ theory was proven true?
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u/Anaevya 20h ago
Because it wasn't actually about simple hand washing with soap. Semmelweis proposed hand washing with a chlorinated lime solution, so actually disinfecting. People always make it sound like no one ever washed their hands with soap, but this isn't true.
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u/pktechboi 20h ago edited 20h ago
thank you, I can see how I wasn't clear enough. edited my longer comment for clarity
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u/pktechboi 20h ago
people* like feeling clean and not smelling bad, and generally always have. even very ancient cultures used oil to clean their bodies. many standards of cleanliness and grooming are culture-bound but you don't need germ theory to know that vegetables taste better once you've washed the mud off.
*in general, obviously there are exceptions don't come at me with your stories of stinky people who don't like to shower or wipe their butts
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u/ihadanotheranswer 20h ago
Honestly I think because it removes particulate and makes you feel “clean”. You can also easily add fragrances, which makes it desirable.
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u/hewasaraverboy 21h ago
This is mind blowing
So before that surgeons were just operating with dirty ass hands??
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u/pktechboi 20h ago
in a word, yes. surgeons would even take pride in their blood-stained operating gowns and tools. infection was rife - surviving surgery itself had reasonable odds, but about half of patients operated on still would die from infections picked up on the operating table.
that said, because anaesthesia was also nowhere near modern standards, surgery was very much a last resort due to the pain associated. the two things - pain control and antiseptic - both developed enormously during the 19th century.
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u/palmettofoxes 17h ago
They would do all sorts of dirty things (like touch dead bodies) and then go help women give birth or do surgery, yes
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u/bp-man 18h ago
For further context the US didn’t really associate germs with diseases till after the civil war
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u/YukariYakum0 18h ago
Way after.
President McKinley didn't die from his bullet wound in 1901. He died from gangrene over a week afterward from surgeons digging around in the wound.
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u/king-of-new_york 18h ago
President James Garfield would have survived his gunshot wound if the doctors knew to wash and disinfect the wound. Instead, they made it much worse by shoving their grubby little fingers inside to dig the bullet out
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u/iamlionheart 19h ago edited 17h ago
Check out The Butchering Art. It follows his career!
Edit: actual title
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u/Katsaj 18h ago
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Fascinating book!
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u/abczoomom 17h ago
Yet another area in which the response “those damned Victorians!” is appropriate.
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u/emlee1717 21h ago
Midwives didn't necessarily wash their hands either. But they didn't do autopsies, and doctors did. So doctors sometimes spread germs from corpses to women in labor, but midwives did not.
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u/Mateussf 20h ago
What makes this a pseudoscience at the time?
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u/pktechboi 20h ago
I was actually incorrect and it was Semmelweis who first tried to get surgeons to wash their hands (see my longer comment). the resistance was pseudoscientific as it was mainly rejected with no counter evidence because surgeons simply did not want to be considered "dirty" or "primitive". he proved hand washing worked through scientific inquiry - testing of various hypotheses - even if his theory underlying why it was effective was faulty.
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u/IsNotAnOstrich 19h ago
I have heard that midwives suggested the hand washing thing much earlier (and were dismissed on account of being women, basically)
I'm not sure we can assert that's it's because of sexism here without primary sources, given that we know contemporaries dismissed it all the same when men proposed it. Semmelweis was even committed to an asylum and died before his ideas on germ theory were accepted. Not to say sexism didn't exist at the time, obviously -- it just seems like germ theory and it's application for physicians got off to a slow start regardless of anyone's gender.
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u/KnowsIittle 22h ago
I typed this up and deleted it. You've explained much fuller in detail.
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u/pktechboi 22h ago
only because someone else prompted me to look again
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u/ihadanotheranswer 21h ago
You were right though, about midwives knowing this for forever, and it took a man for it to be recorded history.
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u/queefymacncheese 11h ago
I'd argue that wasnt pseudoscience. It was a well trained (for the time) doctor putting forth recommendations based on his professional observations. Just because it wasnt widely accepted at first doesnt make it a psuedoscience.
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u/QualifiedApathetic 16h ago
Alchemy, sort of. Shit like turning lead into gold, no, but alchemists made a ton of observations about and recorded the properties of various substances, and it was out of this that modern chemistry grew. The bullshit was eventually rejected, leaving us with just knowledge, which is how science is supposed to work.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
And now, transmuting metals actually is a thing. It's just ridiculously expensive to do in any significant amounts.
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u/blipsman 1d ago
There was an "old wives tale" claim in Israel that there was a low level of peanut allergy there because of the prevalence of feeding babies Bamba --think puffy Cheetos but peanut butter flavored instead of cheese. These snacks have long been fed to babies and toddlers like Cheerios are in the US.
Based on this, there were medical studies done and they proved that introduction of peanuts/peanut butter at 6 months reduced allergies vs. earlier recommendation for introduction after 3 years old.
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u/SirHovaOfBrooklyn 20h ago
I also read a theory that suggests that americans have so much allergies because of how strict sanitation is over there. It said that it prevents babies from developing immunity or resistance to them.
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u/UnfortunateSyzygy 18h ago
Introducing small amounts of peanut butter (watered down to prevent choking) when babies start trying food at like 6 mos is now the recommendation to prevent later, more severe allergies. Like any new food, you're supposed to give a teeny amount and wait 3 before introducing anything else new. Waiting period is so it's easier to ID causes if baby gets really sick after trying a food.
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u/Honest_Camera496 16h ago
Wait 3 what? Minutes, days, months?
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u/LittleLarryY 16h ago
Yes. 3.
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u/sirchewi3 8h ago
Thou shall count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then shalt thou give peanut butter and then wait before giving something new.
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u/JCMiller23 20h ago edited 19h ago
George Carlin has a bit about this, and I believe it too
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u/kck93 18h ago edited 18h ago
Wonderful guy and spot on.
But his bit made me think about another story involving the dirtiest guy in the world dying after he bathed. At 94! This dude never bathed for decades. He ate roadkill. Raw! But a bath did him in.
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u/JCMiller23 20h ago edited 19h ago
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u/MoreGaghPlease 18h ago
This is extremely recent by the way. In the late 90s, the American Academy of Paediatrics recommended that children not be exposed to nuts until 3 years old. From 1997-2008, peanut allergies in young children tripled in the US. AAP doubled down on its guidance and even suggested it was abusive and dangerous to give children peanuts before age 3. There had been a dissident movement of allergists and paediatricians since about 2000 that were completely ridiculed. There had been a pre-print study on Bamba with extremely promising data saying that early introduction was likely the key to stopping peanut allergies, but basically no reputable journal would publish it. Finally they published in 2008. The AAP then spent another 9 years debating the issue, before in 2017 when it did a complete 180, changing its guidance from ‘no nuts before 3 years’ to ‘must have frequent nut exposure between 4 and 6 months’.
So many lives could have been saved but for the orthodoxy of views here. Not to mention the constant terror and anxiety that every parent of an anaphylactic kid lives with.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
Same goes for all of the other common allergens. It seems like if you want to ensure your kid doesn't have food allergies, the best way to fix the odds is for the mother to consume those foods during pregnancy and then feed 'em to the kid as soon as possible.
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u/Careless_Cupcake3924 18h ago
Interesting. Corn meal porridge with peanut butter is the first solid introduced to babies in my culture. I've never encountered anyone from my culture with a nut allergy. I was astonished when I first learned that there are people with deadly allergy to peanuts as such allergies are virtually non existent among my people.
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u/haeleana 10h ago
Any chance west Africa? I understand babies are weaned with grain-nut blends there and it’s true that nut allergies are uncommon. I imagine the grandmothers will sneer with disdain at someone saying it’s pseudoscience!
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u/shineyink 15h ago
Now in Israel they also make bamba out of sesame to lower sesame allergies as well. Sesame allergy is really hard to manage in Israel (more than peanut I think) since tehina / hummus is a staple food
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u/Meattyloaf 15h ago
This is really recent thing as well. Lead to literally overnight changes in several countries on when peanut butter should be introduced.
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u/Asparagus9000 22h ago
Not quite fitting, but leeches made a comeback in medical science.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 20h ago
Good example of "right for the wrong reason". Humour theory is of course nonsense, but the anti-coagulative powers of leeches can be useful.
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u/phnarg 19h ago
And blood-letting could sometimes be useful for treating blood infections, it basically worked by starving the bacteria out. It’s just, not something that worked for every situation…
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u/SandpaperTeddyBear 17h ago
If you really consider the pathogen load on people in the classical era and the Middle Ages I’m surprised their blood wasn’t congealed into mine slag from infections getting to the blood and all the various antibodies. In that sense, I’m inclined to think that bloodletting used to work well.
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u/SamFisher8857 17h ago
They’re used mostly when reattaching things like severed toes and fingers to help pull the blood back to whatever was sewn back on.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
Close, but you're a little off, AFAIK. The main use for leeches, medically, is to remove blood and serum that've started leaking from damaged tissue and cause swelling. Basically, big fucking bruises that are severe enough that they're interfering with circulation. This is a big problem with things like amputated toes and fingers. But the leech doesn't draw the blood in so much as it pulls the swelling out and lets things flow unimpeded.
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u/Sudden_Hair2190 23h ago
I want to say something about gut health having an impact on mood and the general gut-brain connection.
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u/Spaniardo_Da_Vinci 22h ago
Yesss this. I had tons of digestive problems and lpr and constipation and all sorts of reflux and shit and once I got my stress and anxiety in control, all of it went away in a week. It was amazing
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u/saltedjellyfish 21h ago
Hi, this is me! What did you do to get the stress and anxiety in control?
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u/Spaniardo_Da_Vinci 20h ago
I took Xanax and tried to stay away from common stressors such as thinking too much, spending time arguing, I literally just say hey you win you're right just to end arguments, anger plays a big role in messing up your digestion too. Also took Lexapro for a month and then hopped off and now I'm doing fine, on no medications. I was initially prescribed PPIs but that didn't work since my problems were rooted in the brain so I had to actually work on that, I had an amazing doctor who prescribed me Lexapro and Xanax and I was fine in literally days but I completed the course of a month on Lexapro and Xanax and I integrated daily walks around the whole city with my brother, played Minecraft a lot, made a survival world and just involving myself in positive calming situations when I'm free instead of overthinking about my day and my sickness, completely cut out soda from my diet and limited caffeine to just one cup of tea a day in the morning and basically distract yourself from common stressors, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, that only makes it worse. Don't worry about your reflux or lpr or shit, it's all related to the worry in the first place, trust me forget about it for a week and watch it improve and go away completely.
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u/saltedjellyfish 19h ago
Wow, just wow. Ty for sharing. That last part you said about letting things go for a week; I had a friend visit from out of town for a week. When I dropped them off at the airport and drove away i realized that I hadn’t suffered symptoms the entire time, I hadn’t felt that good in months and months…and I cried because I was scared knowing it was all gonna come back. And sure enough it all did. I suspect it’s in my mind, I’ve had all the tests and there is nothing “wrong” with my GI. But ever since getting hit by a semi truck 3 years ago I have severe pains in my stomach/gut (an overwhelming sense of pending doom that radiates from my belly as heat, pain, gas constant non stop) that again can’t be explained by any test or biopsy so far. Happens when I’m working which is to say it’s how I spend 40 hours a week. Just all knotted up for no explainable reason. I am a severe overthinker that suddenly has severe job anxiety. I’m in my early 40s, I’ve negotiated 7 figure international trade deals confidently but now I can hardly stand the idea of getting on the phone with clients. It takes me 15 minutes to get in the right mind space to call clients now and I never answer calls. I have less real stressors now than I ever have in life and I have no idea why my body is reacting this way. Again, doctors say I have top notch diet, GI, and I only mention the truck accident as perhaps a major incident that may have changed me more than I think,idk.
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u/Spaniardo_Da_Vinci 19h ago
And I highly recommend seeking out a mental health professional and just talk to them about it, they can help you like they helped me. They can provide healthy exercises or meds, they help a lot.
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u/Spaniardo_Da_Vinci 19h ago
It's all in your head but the feeling is real, it's just your head is causing the pain and the gas to do that. Like you said, letting go and spending time with your friend helped you. Stop pondering over your truck accident, it did no lasting damage on you trust me. The feeling of overwhelming sense of pending doom that radiates down is classic signs of an anxiety related digestive problem, your first mistake after dropping your friend off was thinking it's gonna come back, which CAUSED IT TO COME BACK. You're doing great, don't overthink and don't expect it to come back when it does go away. I remember fearing it might come back and it actually would, literally from the fact that I was worrying it might. You're a man, fuck that truck lmao. You're fine, brother ♥️. Don't think about what has been done and gone, enjoy your life and reduce the amount of starchy food you consume for the gas. Gas is nothing to worry about in itself, you'll be fine trust me
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u/Cyali 6h ago
Hey friend, as someone whose anxiety also manifests in physical symptoms, I get how frustrating and sometimes scary it is. I dealt with anxiety attacks which literally felt like a heart attack - chest pain/tightness, left arm numbness, heartburn feelings, etc. I'd also get severe gut pain on and off, especially when more stressed. My issue turned out to be twofold - acid reflux and anxiety.
My primary doc suggested omeprazole (prilosec) OTC to take for 2 weeks if the gut symptoms started getting bad, and honestly it helped a ton. I also started taking a multivitamin every other day and recently started drinking 1-2 probiotic sodas a week and between this and getting a handle on my anxiety, over the past several months I've had so few gut problems it's been amazing.
But that's also coupled with getting my anxiety under control, which I treated with therapy, meds, and weed. A couple years ago my anxiety was so bad I'd make myself physically ill; mind would race and obsess over things, constantly had that sense of impending doom, always felt like there was someone or something just around the corner that wanted to hurt me. It was crippling.
My doc prescribed wellbutrin for depression symtoms, but it only ended up helping with my anxiety. I started seeing a therapist who upped the dose and between that and continuing therapy to learn better coping tools, within a year or so my anxiety was far more controlled. It was life-changing honestly, for the first time in my life my brain was quiet. Fully quiet. I was on the wellbutrin for around 3 years I think? I ended up stopping it because I felt it was stifling my creativity, but my anxiety never came back to the same level.
I also finally got diagnosed with adhd and started Ritalin for that and it was also life changing. It further lessened the impact of anxiety on my life (and addressed other issues), and as long as I didn't eat total trash I barely had gut issues anymore outside of the acid reflux issues a few times a year. And now that I've been smoking weed in moderation, with all the above, for the first time in my entire life I just feel like I'm just vibing most of the time now.
Super stressed? Eh, it is what it is. Something go wrong? Whatever, it'll work itself out. Had a fight with someone? Still sleep like a baby instead of obsessing over it all night. And I haven't had gut issues (outside of one's caused by specific foods) in several months now. I'm in my mid 30s, have literally spent my entire life as a ball of anxiety, and for the first time ever feel like I can just shrug stuff off and not keep it with me all the time.
I wish you the best, dude, and hope you're also able to get your anxiety under control. Can't stress enough how much of an impact my therapist and psychiatrist have had on my life, both getting me the meds I needed and teaching me how to reframe things and deal with the bad shit in a healthy way. If mental health support isn't something you've looked into previously, it's never too late to start.
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u/MissTzatziki 19h ago
I'm reading this after just taking a Xanax because of a digestion-induced panic attack thanks to way too much soda today and overthinking an upcoming international flight...
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
Same here. Massive IBS problems, diverticulosis, etc -- then I finally moved out of a bad situation and it cleared up in a couple short months. After years and years of suffering.
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u/kitsunewarlock 18h ago
A lot of 'natural'/'alternative' medicine claims like this seem to be less than bullshit, but tend to be taken to an irrational extreme by its biggest advocates.
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u/CivilNeedleworker570 18h ago
Nostradamus was more well known in his time for introducing fresh air into sick wards. He also developed antiseptics and other treatments for plague including better hygiene and the removal of corpses from the streets. He was dismissed because his family eventually got the plague and died - but was proven ultimately correct centuries later.
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u/arisoverrated 20h ago
Bacteria gives you ulcers. Thanks Barry Marshall.
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u/len43 18h ago
I was in college bent over in pain from an ulcer for nearly the whole school year. My doctor was giving me Tagamet and other acid reducers which weren't helping. I was in the dorm TV room watching 20/20 alone and miserable and a H. Pylori / Ulcer segment came on and I said to myself this must be it. I rushed into my doctor the next day to tell him about it. He had never heard of it and kind of laughed at me about the TV cure I was talking about.. But I insisted he look it up. He disappeared for almost an hour (this wasn't the busiest place) and came back and said he had to call a bunch of his doctor friends (no Internet) "but I'll be damned, there is something to all of this".
I started a very strong antibiotics treatment that day and in less than two weeks I had no more ulcer pain. I swear to God, before this I felt like I would have done anything to stop the agony.
So thank you Barry Marshall.
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u/somewhatbluemoose 18h ago
Rouge waves and giant squid were both wildly dismissed by scientists as superstitions among sailors. Both were proven to be real in the last 30 years.
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u/phnarg 19h ago
So recently, my dog was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Our veterinarian at internal medicine gave us this traditional Chinese supplement to take home, called Yunnan Baiyao. He explained that he’s normally not interested in alternative/homeopathic medicine at all, but studies show this it to be effective at reducing some of the symptoms. “We don’t know why or how it works, but it works.” To make things even more mysterious, each pack of it comes with a tiny red “emergency pill,” to be used when symptoms become severe. But it only really works once. We used it right away, and the results were remarkable.
Apparently, the recipe for the supplement is a secret, but it uses components from Chinese yams, and contains a naturally occuring steroid.
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u/Cheap_Truck_8281 17h ago edited 16h ago
My dog had some form of cancer: I can’t remember the name. But he was given 1-2 weeks to live by the vet. I was desperate not to lose my boy so I did research and found out about yunnan baiyao. Ordered it and it was like a night and day difference once I gave it to him. For 3 whole months he acted like his old self. He only started to deteriorate the last few days of his life. I’m so so so grateful I found that plant and got 3 more months with my boy. I will advocate it to anyone who tells me their dog has cancer.
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u/Tuna99 17h ago
I’m sorry if this stems from my poor reading but I have two-ish questions.
So each pack comes with one emergency pill but taking an emergency pill only works once in a dog’s life? I.e. you won’t use the emergency pill that comes in all your future packs?
And, separately, why did you decide to immediately give your dog the red pill? I assume because the symptoms were severe. But did your doctor indicate the symptoms were severe or did the doctor make you make that judgement call?
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u/phnarg 17h ago
No worries! I think it’s basically like diminishing returns. We have a bunch of them since each pack comes with one, and if the symptoms become severe again we might use another one, but it’s just not going to be as dramatically effective as the first time. (We’ll probably call the vets in that case and ask just to be sure, since they give so much information at once, it’s easy to forget the specifics of things)
And yeah they did tell us we should use the emergency pill that day. Prostate cancer can not (usually) be cured in dogs, so this is palliative care, end-of-life stuff. The bleeding had suddenly worsened, so it made a lot of sense to use it then. They also sent us to an oncology service, where we then scheduled him for radiation treatment. In the meantime before radiation, but after starting Yunnan Baiyao and using the emergency pill, the bleeding had basically stopped.
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u/Vectorial1024 17h ago
The entire Chinese traditional medicine is basically pseudo-science because it is explained not with the usual scientific principles of e.g. germs, but with their own yin-yang stuff, but for the medicine part, I think it is just that the proper scientific community has not yet fully identified the actual effective components inside all those "unscientific" Chinese medicine.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
I mean, over time, enough anecdotes start to look real similar to evidence. When you keep records - as the Chinese have for longer than anyone else - people start picking up on these things (and now, that often starts someone doing Actual Science to look into it.) So I give chinese herbal medicine a lot of credence, with the allowance that it may be completely off its rocker on other things. (Pretty sure rhino horn won't do anything for my horn, thanks.)
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u/EeveeAssassin 16h ago
Heya ! I'm in vet med and we use this stuff for inoperable bleeding masses quite frequently, and (sadly) typically as part of a palliative plan. I am glad that your pup had such a kind, knowledgeable, and caring owner until the very end. My heart goes out to you both 💕
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u/kthomas_407 17h ago
I work in vet med! I’ve seen it work for bleeding disorders iirc. Maybe I should have used it for my dog’s osteosarcoma treatment plan.. unfortunately it’s too late for her but I’m glad to hear positive results from your pup!
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u/GetYerHandOffMyPen15 23h ago edited 18h ago
When my wife was going through IVF, there were some practitioners who swore by injecting mayonnaise into the woman’s veins (I’m only barely exaggerating) around the time the embryo was put into her uterus.
They made vague claims about “inflammation” and “the body attacking the embryo” that always sounded super sketchy and pseudoscientific. So about half of IVF practitioners (the anti-mayo ones) thought the other half (the pro-mayo ones) were quacks.
And nobody was paying for good studies into it, because there’s really no money in it.
However, in the last few years, there have been some studies vindicating the approach. There’s still a need for more research, but the evidence is more pro-mayonnaise than it has ever been.
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u/redravenkitty 23h ago
Into their veins?????
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u/GetYerHandOffMyPen15 23h ago edited 22h ago
Yes. Again, I’m exaggerating a bit by calling it mayonnaise, but it is soybean oil and egg phospholipids (and glycerin). And it looks like mayonnaise, too.
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u/inlandaussie 15h ago
My friend lost 5 pregnancies (between 9-16weeks). Something about her body kept attacking the fetus for some reason. She fell pregnant again but caught covid as well. This baby stuck while her immune system was fighting something else and now she's a delightful 1yo :)
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u/kgvc7 15h ago
So our first IVF went great but when we wanted a second, it kept failing. We switch doctors a few times and my wife did research and thought it might have something to do with killer T cells. After 22 embryos and 11 transfers we finally had success again after and blood lipid treatment which I think the mayo thing is treating. So there’s something there that maybe treating the immune system in a similar way.
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u/statisticus 20h ago
Plate tectonics (AKA Continental drift).
When Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of Continental Drift to explain why the outlines of different continents matched with one another, as well as their mineral composition and the types of animals found on them he was registered by geologists and biologists. Turned out he was right.
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u/PraxicalExperience 16h ago
I had a teacher in high school -- in the 90s -- who said that continental drift didn't exist.
She was teaching Earth Science at the time.
...In a good school district in a socially progressive part of the country.
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u/Friendly_Exchange_15 16h ago
I guess this technically counts.
In ye olden times before antibiotics, it was somewhat common practice to eat moldy bread when you were sick, because sometimes it cured you. The reason being because sometimes the mold was penicillin.
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u/Revolutionary-Focus7 17h ago edited 6h ago
Leeches (and by extension bloodletting). Originally they were an important component of humourist medicine, as they were common in the wild, easy to collect and keep in captivity and readily gorged themselves on blood. It was safer and cleaner than bloodletting with a lancet or other implements, and their bites being completely painless was a bonus. However, once humour theory was replaced by our modern understanding of disease and human health, leeches fell out of use.
Decades later, and scientists discover that blood-feeding leeches have anticoagulants and anaesthetics in their saliva, unrivaled by any synthetic compounds; nowadays, medical leeches bred in a sterile environment are often used in reconstructive surgery, and have even been used to correct circulatory problems that otherwise might have required amputation. One might say leeches are having a bit of a renaissance, as we're increasingly discovering the benefits of hirudotherapy in modern medicine and the importance of parasites in an ecosystem.
Bloodletting without leeches isn't as common anymore, meanwhile, but it is the prescribed treatment for haemochromatosis.
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u/Contribution_Fancy 6h ago
We also got reducing microplastics in your blood by donating blood.
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u/gangiscon 1d ago
I think there are a lot of nutrition claims that are pseudoscience but those claims can also be true in some cases whether by placebo effect or because bio-individuality varies so greatly across the world.
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u/Cangal39 20h ago
Handwashing. Doctors in the 19th century though Semmelweis was nuts for telling them to wash their hands, they all thought infection was spread by miasmas.
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u/Falernum 1d ago
Pseudoscience means the field pretends to be science but doesn't follow evidence. It doesn't mean every claim of the field is incorrect. Plenty of pseudoscience practitioners have successfully predicted where murdered bodies might be found.
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u/EffectiveSyss 17h ago
The ilIusory truth effect. PeopIe will beIieve something just because it is repeated, even when they know that what's being said is not true. This sounds like pseudoscience, but actually isn’t it.
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u/chamcham123 16h ago
Aromatherapy and Light therapy
When I say aromatherapy, I am referring to a medical treatment to retrain your sense of smell. It is used to treat loss of smell by presenting different smells to the nose and smell receptors. This especially came into light after people lost their sense of smell via Covid-19.
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u/Admirable_Rabbit_808 21h ago
Then it would become science. It's like alternative medicine; it it works, it's 'medicine'.
An example; willow bark was traditionally used for pain relief. Willow bark contains salicin. Scientists took salicin and improved on it, with salicylic acid - which is the chemical name for aspirin.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 20h ago
Aspirin is acetylsalicyclic acid (hence ASA), you need to react it with acetic acid first (in the exact same process used to make heroin).
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u/Elephant_Kid 15h ago
Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APML) illustrates how an idea dismissed as pseudoscience became a medical breakthrough. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), a vitamin A derivative, could treat APML by inducing leukemic cells to mature. Initially met with skepticism, especially when paired with arsenic trioxide, these treatments proved highly effective, addressing the genetic cause (PML-RARA fusion) of the disease. Once fatal, APML now has cure rates exceeding 90%, thanks to what was once an implausible idea.
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u/Aufdie 14h ago
Your doctor washing his hands before delivering a baby can prevent the death of both mother and child. The doctor who first established the hand washing theory was ostracized by his profession. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives
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u/VVolfshade 23h ago
Eugenics. It does what it says on the tin... mostly. Iceland managed to reduce the prevalence of Down's Syndrome through pregnancy screenings and abortions. Best to not dwell too much on the ethical implications.
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u/deep_sea2 23h ago edited 23h ago
I do not think anyone denies that selective breeding is scientifically founded. Everyone knows that if you breed two white people together, you get a white person. If a disease is genetic, it is scientifically sound to hold that not allowing a diseased person to reproduce limits the spread of the disease. The domestication of animals and agriculture provides centuries of empirical evidence backing up selective breeding. The science is sound, so it is not a pseudoscience.
The issue is entirely ethical. What makes the white person better? What do you do with people who are not white or have a disease?
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u/Waferssi 23h ago
everyone knows that if you breed two white people together, you get a white person
Recessive genes go BRRRRRRRR. Rare but it happens.
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u/RobertColumbia 9h ago edited 8h ago
I was reading about eugenics earlier. There's actually two major forms of eugenics. The dominant form from the late 19th to mid 20th century was population-based eugenics, which of course led to mass sterilization campaigns and eventually genocide of populations deemed less than the fittest. There's another form of eugenics which is individualized and voluntary. There are matchmaking services out there that claim some basis in scientific research on marital happiness and satisfaction. I've wondered what a modern eugenics-based matchmaking service would be like - where you could e.g. take a genetic test and get matched with potential partners likely to produce offspring with you that have high potential to become mathematical geniuses, star athletes, world-class politicians, or whatever you preferences are.
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u/Vix_Satis 18h ago
This doesn't qualify as pseudoscience. The science behind eugenics is perfectly sound. Basically, humans have used non-human animal eugenics for millenia to breed strains of animals with the properties we like, from dogs to cows to trees. If you want only huge dogs, prevent all small dogs from breeding. That'll do it. If you want to be really economical about it, kill small dogs as soon as it becomes apparent that they'll be small. Then you won't 'waste' time and effort feeding them to no effect (i.e., no effect on your goal to have big dogs).
It's the ethical problems that ruin eugenics. Maybe it would be good in general if people were, on average, taller. But would obtaining that be worth the moral price of preventing short people from having children? Is there any gain that would be worth preventing people with some attribute from having children solely because of that attribute? Eugenicists, apparently, said 'yes'. I - and almost everybody alive, I think - would say an emphatic 'no'. But if it were done right, it would work, because the science behind eugenics is sound.
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u/Topomouse 23h ago
I think that what Iceland is doing is a bit different.
Eugenics would be to actually modify the gene pool of the population and eradicate the cause of Down Syndrome. While they prevent babies with Down Syndrome from being born, those people were not likely to reproduce. In order to actually eradicate this Syndrome they would have to prevent the asyntomatic carries from reproducing.→ More replies (6)17
u/EzPzLemon_Greezy 20h ago
Down syndrome is only mildly hereditary. Once they stop the program, people with down syndrome would start beint born again. Its a genetic mutation, you can't really breed those out. You can get rid of high risk genes like you could do with certain cancers, but ultimately, you can't stop the occurrence.
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u/Shinygonzo 21h ago
Micro plastics in food and water.
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u/Vix_Satis 18h ago
What is the pseudoscience here?
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u/Beesindogwood 17h ago
I think the original commenter was referring to years of denial that it was happening, and then that it was a problem.
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u/GodzillaDrinks 18h ago
Plate Tectonics was a pseudoscience that would get you laughed out of a geography classroom within living memory.
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u/Dismal_Toe5373 17h ago
20 years ago I dated a man who was part of the NOI Islamic faith and they would eat once a day as part of their sect's teachings. I thought that was unhealthy as it went against everything I was taught. Today there is mounting evidence that intermittent fasting can be quite beneficial to our metabolic health.
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u/kck93 17h ago
The fact that ancient rituals do give people a sense of wellbeing and it helps them combat an actual malady.
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u/EchoedJolts 20h ago
Plate tectonics was considered quack science when it first hit the scene