Over the weekend, I committed a faux pas at work. I disagreed, though argued would be more appropriate, with a resident. Here at work, we're told that we are not to argue with the residents and to mindlessly agree with them regardless of what they are saying. Sadly, there are times when I cannot in let things slide. When I hear blatant idiocy, I have to speak up.
Now this particular resident isn't of the elderly sort. He's an individual with a host of medical problems, and he is an intelligent individual who I have butted heads with before on occasion about some things that he has said that are complete and utter bullshit, but he believed with all his heart was true. Like how carbon dating is complete and utter shit. He cannot tell me why this is, but because at one point in time, someone told him that it was, he believed it. He believes in woo. He's also a christian. I don't hold any of that against him and most of the time we have long and interesting conversations about science and books, particularly science fiction.
I happened to be reading an article about some quackery on a page and he asked what I was reading about. I told him about the author of the page, who is a cancer researcher. That's when he snorted derisively and said "Well, all cancer is a lack of B vitamins." I started laughing. Pretty much that was just the most wootastic thing I had heard all day. I told him in no uncertain terms that no, cancer was not caused by a lack of vitamins, otherwise people who took daily supplements would never get cancer. He refused to believe as I told him that his reasoning was incorrect and unsupported by any facts. He snorted again and said, "I have a book. I'll show it to you." I told him that you can't believe everything that you read. He then said "You wouldn't believe a doctor?" I told him that doctors can lie just like everyone else. He went to eat dinner.
In the 15 minutes that it took him to eat, I had pulled up one doctor that had claimed cancer was caused by a lack of B vitamins. Unfortunately this was not the "doctor" he was referring to. The gentleman that I brought up had a medical education. The one he was talking about had gotten his "degree" from a religious diploma mill in Oklahoma. A trip to Quackwatch and a run down of the so-called doctor's treatment and "vitamin B" which is not a vitamin at all but a derivative of cyanide made him blink in surprise. Each of his illusions about this man and his "cure" were demolished and dealt with quickly and with little reaction but complete astonishment on his part. He actually thanked me for taking the time to enlighten him on what being skeptical about things does for one's self. He wasn't angry at all that I had called him on something that he had blindly believed for years. He was quite pleased and asked for the location of the information that we had found. I wrote down the URL for him and then he asked for the locations of a few astronomy articles we had talked about earlier in the day.
You can combat ignorance with intelligence sometimes and in the end it's rewarding. I was glad that I was able to open his eyes to skeptical thinking somewhat. Now if only he would do as such when telling me that it was fact that there has been one person that lived for over a thousand years, Methulsalah. My ever so eloquent retort was, "Pics or it didn't happen." He's never tried that tack with me again.
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