Friday, January 2, 2009

Understanding Chopra woo



Another reason to support separation of "church" and medicine...
Being that there are a lot of folks who think Dr. Chopra has unique qualifications and solidly researched support for his quest to "integrate" scientific medicine with whispy shades of a strange belief based system -religion- here are two well put together posts regarding Deepak Chopras modus operandi.

"Chopra is a doctor, supposedly, but every time I read something by him that touches on biology, he sounds as ignorant as your average creationist. He also writes incredibly poorly, bumbling his way forward with a succession of unlikely and indefensible claims. "

Skeptico 2005
"Skepticism has become a legitimate form of inquiry that Deepak parenthetically acknowledges (in a left-handed sort of way) as occasionally laudable, another refrain we often hear in the form of “I’m a skeptic too, but…,” where skepticism is fine as long as it is someone else’s codswallop under the microscope."

It is important to note that Chopra, over the years, has developed whole made up world views from stunningly naive, flimsy and often outright wrong assumptions about the actual nature of phenomena around him.

Mind you he has said some pretty interesting things regarding human wisdom and how we can all get along but this guy is just as fallible and screwed up as any of us. He really needs to get off that high horse and admit it though.

If Chopra wants to promulgate a belief system, that's fine. What he can't -or at least shouldn't be aloud to do- is force this system on everybody else. This is exactly what he would like to do imposing "magic" based medicine onto science based medicine.

He should just get real, put on a priest robe, stick to teaching ancient Hindu wisdom and call it good.

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