Awkward conversation

• Apr 30, 2018 • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

STRANGER—What do you do?

ME—I publish an educational website about chronic pain.

STRANGER—Wow, great! I'm a naturopath! What’s your website?

ME—Hmm, you might not like it. It’s very science-y.

THE “DOCTOR”—Oh, but naturopathy is all about the science.

Awkward … 🎶

Obviously my mistake was saying “you might not like it.” I should have just said, “PainScience.com, hope you like it!” (Hey, you never know, there’s about 3% chance she would.) But I was distracted and in a rush and just blew it, just flung the door wide open for a “debate”… which she then attempted, while I was buying groceries. All I could do was extricate myself as fast as humanly possible.

I absolutely refuse to try to change people’s minds about anything directly (personal debunking is futile). But, for the record, my position is that naturopathy is quackery, of course.