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Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

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Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#131

Post by kstrauser »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #90

Clickbait. I have taken a lot of these in the past, and the label "pseudoscientific" is unwarranted. The "writer" cherrypicks and generalizes data to discount it, but if you want to understand the mechanism of, say, Ashwagandha, you probably should spend a few hours reading research and meta-analyses and not spending 10 minutes on Google to decide if it's "good" or "pseudoscience". Should these companies not be allow…

> Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others?

That is correct, yes. Pharmacologically active ingredients are medicine. Encouraging someone to take mental health meds without supervision, especially when made who-knows-where with who-knows-what quality control, because they're unregulated, is incredibly irresponsible.

There's a reason you can't buy Zoloft over the counter. Anything else in that space is either:

1. A placebo, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and thus keeping people from seeking qualified help, or

2. The real deal, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and selling it for unmonitored home use by people with zero education in the field.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#132

Post by threatofrain »

roughly wrote: post #101

The anti-authority/anti-expert theme in American politics isn't a left or right phenomenon. There's a fundamental breakdown in institutional trust within American society which is present on both sides, and the similar approaches to wellness are a vivid expression of this.

There's definitely an observed political dimension to alternative medicine camps; in other words there is a big "left vs right" phenomena that's worth observing. But what we might really be seeing is young vs old in the willingness to consider alternative medicine.

After all, why should young healthy people spend so much time thinking about rejecting mainstream medicine?

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#134

Post by paxys »

- I don't trust big pharma, and prefer alternative medicine.

- I will never let my child get vaccinated.

- I don't trust the education system, and homeschool my kids.

- I feel economically insecure and feel like the establishment has left me behind.

- I think the government is lying to us and the Jews are secretly running the world.

- I don't think we should be fighting wars all over the world.

Tell me, do my political views lean far right or far left?

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#135

Post by nick222226 »

jwells89 wrote: post #69
striking wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're underestimating how many people live in food deserts and basically don't have access to fresh food. That might seem like a nitpick against a larger argument, but I think it serves as a good example for why you need to take a close look at the environment that these people exist in as a whole, and that it likely goes beyond their innate habits or those of just their immediate family in childhood.

Additionally, for several decades Americans have lived in an environment that makes time feel like a precious resource which must be stolen back any way possible, which companies are all too happy to play into with food products that sell themselves chiefly on the idea of convenience. This then shapes the collective palate to prefer processed foods over fresh alternatives. Also, even when suburbans have decent access…

Even further, Americans are so heavily marketed on junk food we don't know what is what. We're told that fruit is a sugary treat, bananas are 'belly fat food', and I have no idea how to cook beans to make them interesting to eat. (Not that I have tried or thought about it recently - I'm sure I could with a minute of applied brain time)

Meanwhile sugary cereals like Heritage Flakes, and honey loaded granolas are what we think is healthy.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#136

Post by roughly »

pico303 wrote: post #116
roughly wrote: post #101

The anti-authority/anti-expert theme in American politics isn't a left or right phenomenon. There's a fundamental breakdown in institutional trust within American society which is present on both sides, and the similar approaches to wellness are a vivid expression of this.

I feel like this is an understandable trend. With inflation and job markets and various conflicts around the world, combined with the near constant flood of near-realtime data online, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. This “anti-expert,” Qanon, flat-earth conspiracy trend fundamentally is a way for folks who feel like life is out of their control to get some of that control back by believing they have some piece of know…

Yeah, I think a big part of the trendiness of these groups on both sides comes down to a sense of powerlessness in the world. The "secret knowledge" allure is certainly part of it, and I think for both the Goop-left and Infowars-right there's a strong sense of "manifest your destiny", either by being a gun toting self-sufficient alpha male or by harmonizing your vibes with the cosmic mind to manifest positivity in your life.

We've focused on the individual so much in American society that people have a real hard time viewing their individual situations as anything other than a personal failure and something they alone must correct, so we wind up with this kind of wacky bullshit instead of, like, labor laws and healthcare.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#137

Post by roughly »

threatofrain wrote: post #132
roughly wrote: post #101

The anti-authority/anti-expert theme in American politics isn't a left or right phenomenon. There's a fundamental breakdown in institutional trust within American society which is present on both sides, and the similar approaches to wellness are a vivid expression of this.

There's definitely an observed political dimension to alternative medicine camps; in other words there is a big "left vs right" phenomena that's worth observing. But what we might really be seeing is young vs old in the willingness to consider alternative medicine. After all, why should young healthy people spend so much time thinking about rejecting mainstream medicine?

Mortality's a helluva drug.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#138

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #90

Clickbait. I have taken a lot of these in the past, and the label "pseudoscientific" is unwarranted. The "writer" cherrypicks and generalizes data to discount it, but if you want to understand the mechanism of, say, Ashwagandha, you probably should spend a few hours reading research and meta-analyses and not spending 10 minutes on Google to decide if it's "good" or "pseudoscience". Should these companies not be allow…

>Should tech writers write health articles when they don't know what they're talking about?

Should hedgefund owned news outlets publish stock news? Should the US government secretary of defence be on the board of Raytheon?

People with power will always abuse their authority to further their cause.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#139

Post by slibhb »

klodolph wrote: post #127
slibhb wrote: post #109

And you can buy homeopathic remedies at CVS. At best this is a kind of placebo. At worst it's people being dumb, which is not illegal. Move on!

They are not labeled clearly, IMO. Oscillococcinum is labeled with “flu-like symptoms” “body aches, headache, fever, chills, fatigue” “medicine” and “works naturally with your body”. These fall on a spectrum between misleading and outright lies. While “fever” may be seen as an only misleading label (the label doesn’t say that it treats fever in any way, so you could make that argument), there are some outright falseh…

Do you really think the government should regulate use of the word "medicine"? Ditto for claims like "works naturally". I think it's pretty clear that this stuff is alternative medicine.

Your suggestion would be like forcing astrology books to include warnings. I think you have to treat people like adults here, which includes realizing that they are going to do/buy dumb things. Only when those things come at a significant risk is it worth interfering.

Re: Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific "wellness" products

#140

Post by darth_avocado »

roughly wrote: post #101

The anti-authority/anti-expert theme in American politics isn't a left or right phenomenon. There's a fundamental breakdown in institutional trust within American society which is present on both sides, and the similar approaches to wellness are a vivid expression of this.

The unfortunate reality of the breakdown in trust is because the institutions are behaving in a way that would reinforce this. It is easy to look at the extremes like Qanon, but even if you look beyond the surface on any institution in this country, it is really hard to be positive or hopeful about anything. For example it is hard to trust in the Supreme Court once you notice that judges (on both side of the political spectrum) have been accepting favors from Billionaires, legally, but unethically. Could you realistically think these judges could rule fairly in cases that involve their benefactors? This was once the highest trusted institution in the country, now think about the ones that weren't that trusted to begin with.
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