What's this fallacy - using the wrong tool/methodology
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Original Question
A homeopath offered a study which proves homeopathy works because they gave it to people and they got better. So far, so Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. But the homeopath says they showed the improvement was caused by the treatment using the 'Modified Naranjo Criteria'.
The Modified Naranjo Criteria is used to determine how likely it is that an adverse drug effect is due to a particular drug, not to test the efficacy of a drug.
Is this just a non-sequitur, or is there a more specific fallacy in deliberately using an entirely inappropriate tool or methodology and claiming it proves something?
The Modified Naranjo Criteria is used to determine how likely it is that an adverse drug effect is due to a particular drug, not to test the efficacy of a drug.
Is this just a non-sequitur, or is there a more specific fallacy in deliberately using an entirely inappropriate tool or methodology and claiming it proves something?
Answers
4A homeopath offered a study which proves homeopathy works because they gave it to people and they got better.
Okay, fair enough. It's a reasonable hypothesis that would require further study, replication and falsification, but it is hardly a proper Post hoc fallacy. We'd have to look at the placebo effect, evidence, further study, statistics, and medical scrutiny.
Similar to the anti-vaxx movement, Homeopathy is proven pseudoscience.
Millions of children are vaccinated very year.
Every year many children are diagnosed with autism
Therefore, vaccines cause autism.
There's a full moon every month
A disproportionate number of people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals during the full moon
Therefore, the full moon makes people insane. (Lunacy)
What you've identified as logical fallacies are more accurately described as the teleological cognitive bias of false agency
The psychology of (pseudo)science: Cognitive, social, and cultural factors.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-05598-002<>
This appears to be more a deliberate lie than a fallacy.
Yes. Wrong methodology. One study can not "prove" homeopathy (or anything else). It may only (questionably) prove other things are not the cause of the improvement.
I suspect he did not expect you to know what the Modified Naranjo Criteria was.
Ask him to provide a copy of his questions, which may actually be a "modified" Modified Naranjo Criteria questionnaire.
The example that wikipedia shows looks like it could be edited to enable some sort of positive answers to buttress claims of treatment
Without that (copy of his questions), the homeopath is simply "baffling with bs" - non sequitur the nicest named fallacy for the fob-off and more likely Dr. Bo's assessment of lying is correct.
Ask him to provide a copy of his questions, which may actually be a "modified" Modified Naranjo Criteria questionnaire.
The example that wikipedia shows looks like it could be edited to enable some sort of positive answers to buttress claims of treatment
Without that (copy of his questions), the homeopath is simply "baffling with bs" - non sequitur the nicest named fallacy for the fob-off and more likely Dr. Bo's assessment of lying is correct.
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