Medicine's Scientific Validity

What do you mean, "it's not quite science or medicine"? Medicine isn't infallible; it gets big things wrong all the time, often for decades.

Couldn't this be said about medicine in general?

I believe you were downvoted because you were factually inaccurate about the presence of scientific studies in medicine especially. Controlled, double-blind, repeatable (from a population standpoint) studies are something medicine is good at. Note that there are counter-examples of medical studies which were poorly conducted, but realize that they are the exception not the rule.

Wow never thought the top comment on hn would be advocating for non evidence based medicine.

Medicine doesn't quite work that way in the modern world.

Medicine is wholly corrupt. If a hypothetical drug existed that was radically cheap and improved general health outcomes by 25%-50%, the institution of medicine and insurance by logic of self-preservation would not allow to exist or be known.Such a drug would undermine things as they stand and so institutional self-preservation is now the primary purpose trumping any sort of too good actual solution.You will learn more operating orthogonal to such a corrupt anti-inquiry, scie

Compared to other fields of science, medicine feels still in its Stone Age. I’m not even sure it’s science at all. We see all kinds of medical papers and news articles everyday that claim health benefits of doing/eating something. But then the other day we see other kinds of papers or news articles that claim exactly the opposite thing. I stopped long ago putting too much trust in them. They are usually just their “opinions”.

Most of medical 'science' is shoddy unless proven otherwise.

Yes, but a lot of people forget the other side of that.You know what they call it when a doctor gives a treatment based on an unjustifiable hunch (or prodding from a pharma rep) that never gets reviewed because of privacy and unwillingness to criticize other doctors? Medicine.Just because typical altmed lacks a sound epistemology, doesn't mean the typical doctor has it.

Doctors are a bit of a giant placebo at times, but they rely on enough material success to back it up.Medicine is also very very large and very fuzzy when you step out of the time tested knowledge. Reading pudmed is surprising. Everything is statistical and there's always a paper contradicting a previous one.