I didn't know there was such a thing as 'salt healing', specifically but just goes to show that if a thing exists then there is snake oil of it.

Your prior post asserted crystals might pass (b) and (c) but fail (a); my response was simply that I am not entirely convinced that it would unless a was fairly rigorous.

And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).

Sorry about the communications failure-- communication is hard. I appreciated your response, even if I apparently missed the point.

I was using "salt healing" and "crystal healing" interchangeably because you mentioned specifically sodium chloride crystals.

And I don't see a communications failure; you're communicating your idea fine, it's just based on not having read, and misunderstanding, the heuristics the author advocated for "when to require an RCT".

>And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).

And once again, it's a poor handling of evidence, for exactly the same reason it would be to "not advocate parachutes for jumping out of a plane" until the RCTs come in. That can only "be seen as rigorous" if you ignored the very considerations the author mentions.

I'll just excerpt a characteristic portion so you don't have to go to the site:

>>Goofus started with the position that masks, being a new idea, needed incontrovertible proof. When the few studies that appeared weren’t incontrovertible enough, he concluded that people shouldn’t wear masks.

>>Gallant would have recognized the uncertainty – based on the studies we can’t be 100% sure masks definitely work for this particular condition – and done a cost-benefit analysis. Common sensically, it seems like masks probably should work. The existing evidence for masks is highly suggestive, even if it’s not utter proof. Maybe 80% chance they work, something like that? If you can buy an 80% chance of stopping a deadly pandemic for the cost of having to wear some silly cloth over your face, probably that’s a good deal. Even though regular medicine has good reasons for being as conservative as it is, during a crisis you have to be able to think on your feet.