Talk:Bach flower therapy

Term other than pseudoscience?

While I personally consider this concept nonsense, I also would hesitate to call it "pseudoscience", since its practitioners do not seem to use scientific concepts in describing it. Vitalism and Paracelsus' signatures are not remotely scientific.

To quote our current pseudoscience article,

A pseudoscience is any theory, or system of theories, that is claimed to be scientific by its proponents but that the scientific community deems flawed, usually because independent attempts at reproducing evidence for specific claims made on the basis of these theories have failed repeatedly and rarely if ever succeeded. The term is pejorative, and its use is inevitably controversial;[1] the term is also problematical because of the difficulty in defining rigorously what science is.

So, I'd prefer labeling this something more along the lines as something pithier, but along the lines of "healing technique without substantial evidence of efficacy or scientific basis for its action." Howard C. Berkowitz 02:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think your phrasing is pithier -- it's longer. And it's pseudo-science, whether its practitioners call it that or not. Why should we pay attention to what *they* say? They are using "scientific" jargon "sun infusion" to describe their nonsense -- hence it is pseudo-science. Hayford Peirce 02:15, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You misunderstand; I was looking for someone to pith it. Let's get Gareth's opinion, but I don't think he'd call "sun infusion" particularly scientific. It might be pseudoscience if they claimed that undetectable Z-rays extracted the essence from the flowers. "Sun infusion", however, is a perfectly reasonable term for brewing a very nice slowly extracted tea.

We are not in disagreement that the idea is nonsensical, but let's be precise in our terminology. "Unproven health treatment" any better? Pseudoscience does mean something reasonably specific. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "Unproven health treatment" is fine with me -- it would be useful to stick into ALL of these damn articles. Even better would be "Unproven PURPORTED health treatment" -- so go ahead and rewrite as per this....

OK, unproven health treatment for now, and the EC can address standard terminology.

Sun infusion and related techniques for cooking is quite another matter. Sun definitely seems to help pickle Moroccan preserved lemons. Yum. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:00, 24 January 2011 (UTC)