Loosely Assembled

Eating a vulture won’t clear a bad case of syphilis nor will a drink made of rotting snakes treat leprosy, but these and other bogus medical treatments spread precisely because they don’t work. That’s the counterintuitive finding of a mathematical model of medical quackery.

It’s so clear from a math p.o.v., it’s all about the longevity of the attempted cure in the public sphere. It carries over beyond medicine to social programs, financial advice, child discipline, religion, and more.

(Via New Scientist.)

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1. Putting evolutionary theory into practice
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3. Claude Shannon
4. 500 mg Laceratol
5. nuke that meadow

This entry was posted by fekaylius on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:28 AM. It is filed under inputs and has these tags: evolution, inversion, math, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.