Quackery, etc.
r. Bakel’s “Quackery, gullibility, and open-mindedness” raised troubling issues. Mr. Bakel seems to rely on a personal anecdote and Ross Douthat, a noted conservative and devout Roman Catholic, for the proposition that personal anecdotes constitute data worthy of reliance. Maybe for the reporting population of one, but the plural of anecdote is not data. Bakel writes, “Maybe it’s okay to approach these things as a whole human being and not as a scientist.” I have no idea what that statement means, even after rereading Bakel’s essay. More importantly, in these tortured times of broken epistemologies where the subjective supplants truth (QAnon, politics, etc.), there such a thing as truth (albeit that’s a discussion we can pursue).
