Snake oil can be beneficial for arthritis and other conditions (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Snake oil can be beneficial for arthritis and other conditions (2007)

scientificamerican.com

46 pointsloop2216 comments

Python fat has been used to treat painful joints in Nigeria for ages and its effectiveness has also been proven in a scientific study.[1]

[1] https://www.biomedscidirect.com/1195/python_fat_effect_on_co...

Same in Myanmar. There, people with stroke are given small doses of Python liver/pancreas or some sort as part of traditional medicine. I'm quite surprised to see that there's some sort of medicinal application to snakes.

Scientific studies do not not prove anything. They provide evidence for a hypothesis. And one study is not sufficient to draw conclusions from,especially with a sample size of 9.

Well I guess the salesmen will be relieved

What I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the salesmen figured it was complete bs and no one would notice if they just sold counterfeit oil.

Oh wow! I didn't know that, sort of reminds me of the olive oil market right now.

I thought the above was about object-oriented programming. Language is hard.

Another example of why explicit is better than implicit.

What do you mean by that?

Object Orientation was used for almost everything in Smalltalk, but when someone tried to introduce it in C-based languages, some programmers figured it was bs. Some "consultants" figured it was more programming industry bs/fashion and some marketers figured people would buy stuff if they just claimed everything was Object Oriented.

In the right context, OO can be pretty darn good, but it's not a panacea for everything. (And there is some good OO in C-heritage languages.)

There's an analogy here for OO.

I don't get it. Can you explain a bit more?

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489472

That last part at least is correct. Clark Stanley (the original snake oil salesman) traveled around with a bag full of snakes, and made a big show out of rendering them into oil. But the actual product was just beef fat and some other ingredients.

So the actual product was pretty much the opposite of therapeutic... I mean, at least go with beef gelatin, at least that could fix someone's joints.

Laughable.

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