Murderers rationalize their crimes in exactly the same way.

Yaz

For those who aren't aware of what was said, in the case of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's comments, I don't think Godwin is being appropriately applied.

Mr. Trudeau didn't compare the government to that of the Nazis. He didn't compare it to Hitler. He didn't claim that a government policy was as bad as the Holocaust.

What he did say is that current anti-Muslim government policies are akin to the Canadian policy just after World War II of "none is too many" when it came to Jewish immigrants to Canada, which the Government of Canada has since admitted was wrong.

In essence, it compared a current policy to a previous policy that the Government had admitted was wrong. I don't see why everyone is so upset, other than that the government would like to try to make this into a Godwin-like comparison in order to score cheap political points. For the record, according to the interview (for anyone who doesn't RTFA), Mr. Godwin agrees with this analysis.

Minister Blaney, however, seems in my mind to have skirted the line much more closely, specifically bringing up the Holocaust as an example to try to prop up support for an unpopular bill. His specific statement, that the Holocaust didn't begin with the gas chambers, but with words is correct -- however I have to agree with MP Randall Garrison (FWIW, he represents my riding, although admittedly I didn't vote for him in the last election) who said that this was "over-inflated rhetoric".

So in essence we have one instance worthy of invoking Godwin against, and another that had nothing directly to do with the Holocaust, but instead a Canadian policy that happened around the same time, and affected the same people, which mirrors in some respects what the current Government is attempting to do with a different population, for which Godwin shouldn't apply (but which is being brought out in some corners in an attempt to score political hay).

Yaz

Well, then you'd simply be wrong.

You see, there isn't one "Placebo Effect". The effect is different for different ailments.

An example: you have a patient who is suffering from a migraine. You give them a placebo. In 10 minutes, they say they feel somewhat better. That may be the "placebo effect".

A second patient comes in who has had a heart attack. They aren't breathing, and there is no pulse. You give them a placebo. In 10 minutes, they're dead.

When constructing studies with placebos, you typically have to compare like with like. There isn't a universal Placebo Constant you just throw into your paper to compare against-- you have to compare outcomes between a population of patients with condition X taking the substance being tested, to the outcomes of a population of patients, also with condition X, who are taking placebos. The placebos may or may not have any effect -- that makes no difference. What is important is that the substance you're testing will ideally do better than placebos do, otherwise you might as well just use the cheaper placebos for the condition at hand, and head back to the drawing board.

(This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of how such studies are run and constructed -- it is provided for illustrative purposes only)

Yaz

And that's why they compare things like this to placebos, and not poisons.

The purpose of such testing to see if the medicine in question is actually having an active, biological effect against disease. Placebos don't have any sort of active biological effect on people; they have a more passive, mental effect. If your effect is statistically indistinguishable from a placebo, than all you really have is a different type of placebo. If you do statistically better than a placebo, then we infer that there is an active biological effect of the substance in question. If you somehow do statistically worse than a placebo, then you have some serious issues with the compound you're studying.

In effect, what this research has found is that homeopathic preparations have no active biological effect, and that they are, in fact, just overly-processed, overly-expensive placebos. For things that can be healed psychosomatically (or which will heal in the normal course of time, and just makes the patient feel less anxiety over something being done about their condition), they're just a very expensive version of a sugar pill. They still, however, have no effect on AIDS or brain tumours or TB.

Placebos are often used as the control because we expect medicine to be better than a placebo. And as this study has shown, homeopathy isn't better than a plain-jane placebo.

Now if homeopathic practitioners were honest about this, it probably wouldn't be an issue. But they claim they can cure everything from ingrown toenails to cancer -- and that's a serious issue.

Yaz

Actually, that may depend. I haven't looked at the WatchKit APIs yet to see what internal time representation they're using, but it may be susceptible to the Year 2038 Problem

Of course, what everyone seems to be ignoring is that the case is (as are some of the pins in the straps) 18k gold. According to Apple, the large Apple Edition watch has a case that weighs 69g. Now that's probably not all gold (the back is ceramic, the front is glass, the internals are electronic), however at the very least there is roughly $1000 USD of gold in there.

So while it's possible it won't retain its original price, it will probably never become worthless -- at the very least, there is some 30g or so of 18k gold there.

Yaz

Sure they are -- they're just really early on the euphemism treadmill

Can you recall a time when someone didn't use one of these terms as a put-down? I sure can't.

Yaz