How to deal with medicine questions and the like

Question

Case example would be this question:

Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?

I think that's a perfectly valid question. It has received 5 up votes, and yet one close vote as off topic, presumably because it's a medicine question, and not strictly an "applied skepticism" question, as such.

Do we really want to define the scope of skepticism so narrowly as to only be about whether or not certain things work?

To me, skepticism is a pair of glasses you should preferrably always wear when looking at the world. It permeats everything, or at least I'd rather it would. Of course I don't think the scope of this site should be everything. But I do think that the scope of this site should be any question that can be given a "let's see what the scientific literature seems to imply" kind of answer.

To me, the greatest function of a skeptic movement is to educate the public on issues where it really matters. When people are suffering, or just being fooled into spending a lot of money, that is our scene. I, for one, would love it if all health advice had a scientific taint to it. Therefore I'd love it if we wanted to be the first to answer some guy asking for such advice.

I think the fields of science in general and medicin in particular are extremely important legs of skepticism, where most of the skepticism action takes place.

Should we encapsulate that? Or am I just letting my own great interest in medicine flow over into realms where it doesn't necessarily belong?

Answer 1

I think this is a great example of tricky it will be to define what is and what isn't on-topic. I completely agree with you when you say that "skepticism is a pair of glasses you should preferably always wear when looking at the world." The scope of the site shouldn't be limited to known pseudosciences like homeopathy, intelligent design and astrology. If we do agree on that, though, we'll need some criteria other guidelines to determine what is or isn't on-topic. Otherwise, the scope of this site would be, well, everything.

As I said in What should be in our FAQ, I believe Skeptics.SE should be to science what factcheck.org is to politics.

That is, I think we should cover the basic questions on science that are propagated by non-scientists (Al Gore, Jenny McCarthy, mainstream media, etc.) and hearsay ("you get a cold from being cold" and the like), but we leave the real questions to the real pros (i.e. Physics.SE, Biology.SE, Chemistry.SE, etc.)

By those guidelines, "Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?" is on-topic, but not all medical questions will be.

On the other hand, question around the lines of "Is there a substantial difference in rehabilitation therapy and expected outcome for a hemorrhagic stroke patient versus an ischemic stroke patient?" would belong elsewhere. They're too technical and thus beyond the scope of this site.

Answer 2

I agree in general, but not with this point: "To me, the greatest function of a skeptic movement is to educate the public on issues where it really matters. When people are suffering, or just being fooled into spending a lot of money, that is our scene. I, for one, would love it if all health advice had a scientific taint to it. Therefore I'd love it if we wanted to be the first to answer some guy asking for such advice."

The greatest role of skeptics is to question things. One thing I am disappointed with in the site is the huge amount of "science says so, discussion over" responses and perspective.

So to the extent that such a question causes people to go out and find studies and link them so that people can be more educated it's great. And to that end, more specific questions tend to lead to more specific answers. Generic questions such as the one above tend to more lead towards appeal to authority fiats, which don't assist anyone.