To speak or not to speak

As the great Lao Tzu once said.

"He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks does not know."

Well I can agree with that.

In Sweden there is an organization called "Vetenskap och folkbildning (VoF)" (loosely translated as "Science and people education) that seam to want some kind of cultural revolution throwing out everything they can label as alternative medicine. the good thing is that they only have about 2000 members, but maybe that is bad enough because these are like the ones Lao Tzu talks about when he says: "He who speaks does not know".

The thing is that even if there is some of the members that on paper is so called highly educated, most of them are not really. They hide behind the term "Science" but the way they argue has nothing to to with science at all. Their arguments are all about ridicule the opponent and make them feel stupid so they keep quiet. The problem is that the arguments they use have nothing to do with science, they just use the word science and the only references they may provide is from someone else within the organization that is they reference each other to make it look like it i science. As is written at Zen ... and the Art of Debunkery

What is "debunkery?" Essentially it is the attempt to debunk (invalidate) new fields of discovery by substituting scientistic rhetoric for scientific inquiry

you can see their strategy to debunk everyone that does not agree with them.

They also persecute doctors, nutritionists, researchers and others to try to destroy their careers because they published book on new ways to think and new research. they call these people unscientific, misled and delusional in a try to keep them quiet. In a resent column in the Swedish paper DN. They attacked politicians that support alternative medicine in a try to influence people not to vote for them.

I have seen some of these members during 5-6 years and noticed they use forums to attack not only those who come up with new research but also ordinary people, they can attack someone who asks about some alternative method or astrology or whatever they have on their black list just to try to quiet them. Not that they know anything on the subject they ridicule, they just do it out of their personal believes without even trying to find research done or information about the subject. the only reason seams to be to ridicule, win the discussion and get the opponent silence.

If they even bother to look for research done in a field, they always choose to exemplify one or a few reports that is good for their cause, but never any research that claims other results, even if the research that show favor for them is 10% of the ones that shows favor for what they do not want. The common argument is: "There is no scientific evidence for that", "The research show that that is just a result of placebo". however, they will never admit evidence for anything on their black list because on that eye they are blind.

Often these skeptics refer to Ernst and Singhs book,  "Trick or Treatment" as a bible of scientific truth. Well in Halloween Science you can read how scientific they [not] are.


Now, it is said, even if the point of the whole post is that the one who know does not speak, I feel the need to do so in this case to give a view of who these people are.

Today's DN publishes a dabate article in reply to their narrow-mindedness.

Some tther blogs to read, regarding what they do (however there i plenty more as can be foun through the first link).
http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannika/entry/vof_vetenskap_och_folkbildning
http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2010/02/27/vetenskap-och-folkbildning-vof-skadar-svensk-forskning
http://www.hahnbooks.com/Kurs.htm
http://blogg.passagen.se/sannaehdin/entry/vad_%C3%A4r_vof
http://roberthahn2010.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/jesper-jerkert-pa-den-vetenskapliga-arenan/

Only serious comments will be accepted.