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Comment by moh_maya | Hacker News Reader

"rigorous" in science, especially biomedical sciences, has a specific definition. Where is the double-blind testing? Where is the statistical significance? Where are the clinical trials?

Ayurveda likely has a lot to offer as a FOUNDATION to start doing investigative research; but this claim of "any vedic sciences are arguably as rigorous as today's sciences" is bunkum. Show me any statistics / clinical trial data (or its equivalent) in the vedas?

I will accept & agree with the idea / contention that a lot of the treatments in ayurveda are possibly based on strong observations & correlations. Which is a good place to start modern scientific research from.

But to claim that ayurveda as written in, for instance, the Atharva Veda, is rigorous science demonstrates to me, a rather stark, depressing & baffling ignorance of modern science.

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It is clear that you have not even read the Vedas to understand its implications on the world, especially in science. Most of the statistics that you ask have been lost due to them being so old, or deliberately destroyed. But we have the results to prove that these existed. "Strong observations & correlations" are just another way of saying "trial & errors".

Not just ayurveda, but take any science or even Mathematics. The Vedic civilization has been too far ahead of its European counterparts. In fact the idea of heliocentrism, gravity, action=reaction, universe & its age, speed of light, distance of the sun & moon from earth, understanding of time travel, time zones, metallurgy, the so called pythagoras theorem, sudoku & its various forms, the numeral system etc etc all have Indian/Vedic origins, so why would you doubt vedic medical sciences so much? There is also substantial evidence for surgery to have developed in Vedic India far earlier than Hippocrates or any Western counterpart. I firmly believe that if not for the muslim hordes who destroyed everything under the pretext of war, mankind would have been able to make better use of mankind's ancestral knowledge.

Look, you obviously have an axe to grind. And you are conflating too many different things.

So I'll limit myself to the original point.

Science, particularly modern science, even with all its baggage and flaws and politics, is evidence based.

Evidence in this case is statistics and data. Those are not present, from many reasons (as an aside, I don't think there is any evidence of statistical trials being performed in the Vedas).

There is no work in medicine in the Vedas that satisfies this criteria. Ergo, it is not yet evidence based science. It's observational. Now, if the govt. through AYUSH [AYUSH added in edit] actually invests in performing clinical trials etc. and publishing them in peer reviewed journals, then your argument may hold water. You are conflating correlations with causation / evidence.

No axe to grind. What could I possibly have?

> Science, particularly modern science, even with all its baggage and flaws and politics, is evidence based.

Can be reworded as: "Science, particularly Vedic science, even with all its baggage and flaws and politics, is evidence based." The vedas are not any different than any sciences that mankind honestly developed. Only, it goes far beyond what we (aka modern science) are/is able to comprehend, about the consciousness of the universe etc. With time, that will also be rediscovered. Also not to take away anything from modern science, many things have been discovered & invented far more than Vedic sciences. My problem is treating the Vedas as purely a religious book like the Bible & Quran and neglecting the great expanse of knowledge in it.

Now you are shifting the goalposts. This is what I am alluding to when I say, conflating multiple things.

Who, in this comment chain, is making any point about Vedas being purely religious? That is not apposite to this discussion.

The Vedas are a work of knowledge. In philosophy, in natural sciences. There is a strong argument to be made that they capture large parts of the essence of scientific temperament, which is analysis, refection & observation. But, modern scientific research is not just scientific temperament.

Practicing science, modern science, also requires evidence & follows a hypothesis-driven model that makes testable & provable / disprovable predictions.

You seem to be eager to misinterpret OR re-interpret terms to suit your perspective / point of view. "Evidence" based has a specific meaning. This [1] is a reasonable definition of what evidence based medicine means TODAY.

The vedas provide observations. They record correlations (perhaps). That's not evidence!

Lots of work has been lost; that's not unique to the Indian subcontinent. The library of Alexandria was lost. Many of Plato's works are lost. What does that have to do with modern science apart from regret & grief at what was lost?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine

I think you've misunderstood evidence based medicine as end-all, be-all of scientific analysis & only restricted to modern science. It is quite natural & largely common sense. Agreed, it is the gold standard for today, but it may not be so in the future, something else will come & upend that too as it always happens with scientific development. Remember Radium painting, that was also part of evidence-based medicine. By that account the Ayurvedic science has had fewer mishaps than science as practiced in modern times. Science is always about trial & error, my point is that it was not different from the times of ayurveda. This is as opposed to the biblical or quranic words of god, not the same thing at all.

Also, it is fair to say that Indian ancient texts have suffered significantly more destruction than others due to religious persecution and genocides against a peaceful civilization. The genocides are especially important because most information was transferred through word of mouth.

You do realize AYUSH ministry funds Unani Tibb, too? Just saying.

I am not a historian.

They may have been ahead of the Europeans in the past. But that’s irrelevant now. They are not ahead of modern civilisation.

And perhaps there’s some lost knowledge, but these alternative treatments as practiced now have never been shown to be effective.

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