Indeed, he often does have facts to back up his arguments.

Just as often, though, he has other people's opinions to back up his arguments. That's very nice, but the only thing I consider George Will to be an expert on is baseball.

One of the troubling things about the arguments we are having now is that it's more difficult to pry an unfavorable statistic out of this administration -- indeed, sometimes I think any information at all -- than it is to get a cookie out of the hand of a two-year-old. With the cookie, you at least have drool on your side: the cookie will fall to pieces eventually.

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I will admit to having some respect for "alternative" or "folk" medicines, though I don't use even conventional medicines very often. My long-lived relatives are great believers in the efficacy of tea, which medical science now admits seems to have beneficial effects. I think that many doctors are too quick to dismiss folk remedies as superstitions (not "scientific" enough, in spite of a ton of anecdotal evidence), and therefore don't "waste their time" looking into the alleged benefits.

This seems to be changing under public pressure, partly because so many people, as demonstrated by Bowser's article, believe in alternative medicines and are presumably using them. Medical researchers find this kind of pressure compelling: if people are poisoning themselves with wildflower extracts in hopes of combatting depression, they ought to be told. If there were more serious consideration of folk remedies, with analysis and testing, and publication of the results, there would still be people who believe a dead cat will cure warts, but some other remedies would be uncovered that actually have merit. This would contribute to medical science, show that the people in the white coats are looking at the world as well as the laboratory, and begin to educate people about the process by which such things are evaluated.

Scientific snobbery only convinces the public that they are not being heard. Many of us already get enough of that from our doctors.