Week 11 response to Dr R

Sham surgeries, oh yes that is a very interesting subject. Some of the techniques regarding those “professionals” have been used in other investigations and the fraud is not that difficult to spot.

Andy Kauffman suffered from that type of situation. He went down to Mexico and was treated, however the procedure he went through had one purpose, fill the doctors pocket with money.

You are correct in it is a fascinating subject to study. It is an amazing symbiotic relationship between the people who fall victim to those types of con artists, and the con artists themselves. Both sides need a huge amount of trust in what the other will do.

Both sides come to the events with varying degrees of cognitive dissonance; but full of hope. The con artists hopes are to scam as much money from the patient as possible, while still being able to maintain some level of illusion “I am a good person, I am doing good for my patient”. While they know full well it is a hard-core scam. They are killing their patient, but hoping to con them out of enough money first.

While the patient is hoping that the procedures performed will produce a 1 in a million miracle to save their life.

These same behavior patterns are the basis of Milgram and his proof that western culture individuals can easily be peer pressured into performing equal behaviors to the worst of the death camps. Which is the same exact behavior presented in the south after reconstruction ended. The demoralized white people were so upset and enraged they needed to “scam” those around them to feel better about themselves. Jim Crow can be seen in the same statistical analysis as sham surgeries. Which is also similar to how American reacted from 1915-1945. Again from 1951-1970, the red scare.

It has repeated a few times since, but that crosses political lines of the last say 50 years. The same statistical maps apply but are not allowed in class to mention.

The same statistical models to discover if medical procedures are real science or not can also be applied to other fields of science through the application of a proper use of the scientific method. When basic scientific criticism is used correctly, and not as a bully and humiliation tool, it can be applied to actually find facts and evidence. I like facts and evidence.