Every blogger encounters a post that he wishe he or she had written. Here's one such time, as Prometheus schools us on how alternative practitioners manage to be so persuasive and convincing:
More like this
Ever since David Hume - our first great psychologist - it has been a well known fact that causation is a figment of our imagination. Although we perceive event A as causing event B, this perception is an illusion: necessary causation is not inherent in nature. As Hume wrote:
I don't know much about the West African state of Benin, but the newswires have made sure to alert me to the fact it is the home of ritual Voodoo sacrifice. Which, it turns out, is relevant to bird flu because Benin is having a poultry outbreak with H5N1.
OpenLab08 material?
Prometheus doesn't update super often, but it's almost always worth reading when he does.
I recommend people check out the layperson's 3 part guide to scientific literature while they're over there.
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=146
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=147
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=148
Well-written couple of articles. Thanks for the heads-up.