Facebook and other social media platforms have seen a recent uptick in Cannabis Cures Cancer videos and posts. The tricks, deceptions and false hope these snake-oil smooth-talkers use are sneaky and underhanded in no small measure. For the uninitiated, here is a concise exposé to help anyone decipher the devious ploys masterfully used.
Appeal To
Ignorance
Cancer quacks primarily market their “cures” by using the Appeal To
Ignorance fallacy. They push their remedy not by coming to a conclusion based
on lack of their knowledge (most know
they are lying), but by exploiting their victim’s lack of knowledge. This is
widely and effectively used, for obvious reasons:
--Most people don’t have a medical or scientific background, so any
fabrications or exaggerations are not noticed.
--Most don’t know there is no such thing as a single cure for cancer.
There are numerous different types of cancers that require their own unique
potential treatments and cures.
--Most don’t know that there are actually more than 200 compounds that
can kill cancer in a petri dish. The problem is the incredible complexity of
the human body, the potency of the cancer cells, and the effective targeting of
those cells. Cannabis is just one example:
“Virtually all the scientific research
investigating whether cannabinoids can treat cancer has been done using cancer
cells grown in the lab or animal models. It’s important to be cautious when
extrapolating these results up to real live patients, who tend to be a lot more
complex than a Petri dish or a mouse ……. The biggest issue is
that there isn’t enough evidence to show that they can treat cancer in people,
although research is still ongoing around the world.
“And it’s not clear which
type of cannabinoid – either natural or synthetic – might be most
effective, what kind of doses might be needed, or which types of cancer might
respond best to them ………. There are also
big questions around the best way to actually get the drugs into tumours.
Because of their chemical makeup, cannabinoids don’t dissolve easily in water
and don’t travel very far in our tissues. This makes it hard to get them deep
into a tumour, or even just deliver them into the bloodstream in consistently
high enough doses to have an effect.”
Appeal To Antiquity
Because some
herb or treatment has been used for hundreds or thousands of years doesn’t make
it valid or effective. The history of traditional treatments is littered with
the most horrific consequences imaginable. A good overview from Steven Novella,
MD:
“Let us take
the example of the humoral theory of illness. This method also was used for two
thousand years as the dominant philosophy of medicine in Western civilization.
Two thousand years of anecdotal experience was not enough for Western society
to realize that bloodletting, purging, and cathartics were not only worthless
treatments but were actually harmful. Yet the humoral philosophy was the
occidental equivalent of the traditional Chinese medicine philosophy of chi on
which acupuncture is based.
“What
bloodletting and acupuncture have in common is that they are philosophies of
illness, they are not scientific theories of disease. They were developed in a
prescientific era steeped in superstition. They existed in a time of
philosophy-based medicine, prior to the advent of science-based medicine. The
only reason why acupuncture still exists today and bloodletting does not is the
historical happenstance that scientific medicine developed first in the West
and not the East.”
Appeal To Anecdotes
Many people
are moved by emotional stories and circumvent their thinking in order to
believe in a desperately needed cure. From one of the top critical thinking
sites:
“Another
major problem with anecdotes is that they don’t give you a proper
representation of either the effects of X or the causes of Y. Let’s say, for
example, that you are interested in miracle cure X, and when you get online,
you find several people claiming that it worked for them. That doesn’t actually
tell you much because it doesn’t tell you how many people X didn’t work for, nor does it tell
you how many people recovered without X. To
give another example, anti-vaxxers love to cite anecdotes of a symptom that
followed a vaccine, but for every anecdote that they supply, I can supply
anecdotes of people (like me) who received the full recommended vaccine
schedule and are perfectly fine. Neither set of anecdotes is actually
meaningful, because neither set is representative. To actually know whether or
not X caused Y, we need the actual rates of Y relative to X, not just scattered
reports. In other words, we need to know how many times X followed Y, how many
times Y occurred without X occurring, and how many times X occurred but was not
followed by Y (in some situations you may only need one of the latter two, but
you have to have at least one).”
Appeal To Conspiracy and/or Appeal To
Anger
Righteous
indignation is a powerful emotion. These fraudsters manipulate people by
stirring up outrage about global conspiracies that are responsible for your
looming death or that of your loved one. Modern medicine has the cure – but
they are withholding it! Rational judgement is cleverly evaded – the victim is
too outraged to think critically and grasp how the manipulation is taking
place. Also, the appeal can work because an ego-gratifying aha! moment is
garnered when the victim feels he has connected the dots and discovered a
clever conspiracy. More from a Psychology
Today writer:
“According
to Anthony Lantian of France's Universite Paris Nanterre and his co-authors,
people are drawn to conspiracy theories because of an underlying need for
uniqueness. In other words, a need to be
different from other people by embracing beliefs that are out of the ordinary.
Just as this need for uniqueness can cause people to develop unusual hobbies or
seek out experiences that set them apart from the crowd, conspiracy believers
adopt unusual beliefs about the world that make them feel special or above
average. Whether this involves embracing
the ‘truth’ behind political assassinations, alien visitors, the misdeeds of
government officials, or ‘secret’ scientific discoveries that ordinary people
don't know about, embracing conspiracy theories can provide believers with a
false sense of confidence over how the world ‘really’ works.”
Straw Man
Fallacy
Instead of providing hard scientific evidence for their cancer “cure”,
snake oil peddlers will misdirect their audience by focusing on and attacking a
“Straw Man”. They focus on Big Pharma suppressing cancer cures – which is quite
the compliment since they believe medical researchers have actually found the
elusive cure! This misdirection allows them get away with not providing
evidence. This is also done with most of alternative medicine:
“A straw man argument attempts to counter a position by attacking a
different position – usually one that is easier to counter. The arguer invents
a caricature of his opponent’s position – a ‘straw man’ – that is easily
refuted, but not the position that his opponent actually holds.
“For example, defenders of alternative medicine often argue that skeptics refuse to accept their claims because they conflict with their world-view. If ‘Western’ science cannot explain how a treatment works, then it is dismissed out-of-hand. If you read skeptical treatment of so-called ‘alternative’ modalities, however, you will find the skeptical position much more nuanced than that.
“Claims are not a-prior dismissed because they are not currently
explained by science. Rather, in some cases (like homeopathy) there is a vast
body of scientific knowledge that says that homeopathy is not possible. Having
an unknown mechanism is not the same thing as demonstrably impossible (at least
as best as modern science can tell). Further, skeptical treatments of
homeopathy often thoroughly review the clinical evidence.”
Common Manipulative Phrase: “I Used
To Be A Skeptic But”
“A new paper
was just published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology that is
further confirmation of something skeptics of the paranormal and alt med
treatments have noticed for a long time. It’s
called the ‘avowal of prior skepticism’. This is a narrative device used by a
person telling a story in which they will announce their previous skepticism (‘I
used to be skeptical’) before relating a conversion story about a product or
event. I see this all the time regarding paranormal investigators and in
infomercials for products.
“The ploy of
stating prior skepticism makes the narrator look more credible and is intended
to make the story more believable. That is, what I’m about to tell you even
convinced ME so it must be true, believe me!”
Resources
Use of Alternative Medicine for Cancer and Its Impact on Survival https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/110/1/djx145/4064136
Most marijuana medicinal benefits are inconclusive, wide-ranging study finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/12/marijuana-study-benefits-chemotherapy-pain-multiple-sclerosis
Cannabis, cannabinoids and cancer – the evidence so far (Update March 16, 2017) http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/07/25/cannabis-cannabinoids-and-cancer-the-evidence-so-far/comment-page-1/#comment-36791%C2%A0
Medical marijuana as the new herbalism, part 2: Cannabis does not cure cancer http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/medical-marijuana-as-the-new-herbalism-part-2-cannabis-does-not-cure-cancer/
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Photo: https://etimg.etb2bimg.com/photo/55968816.cms
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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