I guess I'm just gullible.
27/7/08 10:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsCome to find out, the eyesight-training method I'm learning is dangerous.
The Bates method is dangerous because you might be stupid enough to mistake the "sunning" exercise as permission to stare into the sun. Or because you might not go to your eye doctor for new glasses every year.
Oh no.
The quackwatch-types hate this shit. There's "no scientific support for it." (You mean like there was for the safety of tobacco?) The originator of the method was a strange guy with a cloudy past (a well-known scientific measure of the efficacy of a method), and (Scully me, baby!) all reports of improved visual acuity using the method are anecdotal and can be explained by a) hysteria, b) rare phenomena that don't really count, and c) wishing thinking.
Thank God for the internet, or I wouldn't know how much danger I'm in from my own stupidness. Of course, I'd be having a lot harder time reading the internet if my vision weren't clearer now than it was a few weeks ago.
It works in fits and starts, this Bates method. I've got the whole over-50 thing going on, where it's hard to see close, small things. Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours reading from my handheld with the font set to small--about 7 points--and it was crystal clear. Amazing. Today, not so much. I don't really care if I was just imagining visual acuity yesterday. If the method trains me eventually to imagine visual acuity every day, then screw scientific support.
Meanwhile, I'm committing the dangerous folly of walking around without a pair of reading glasses in my pocket, and so far the most terrible outcome has been...
Huh. Can't think of one. Stupid me.
The Bates method is dangerous because you might be stupid enough to mistake the "sunning" exercise as permission to stare into the sun. Or because you might not go to your eye doctor for new glasses every year.
Oh no.
The quackwatch-types hate this shit. There's "no scientific support for it." (You mean like there was for the safety of tobacco?) The originator of the method was a strange guy with a cloudy past (a well-known scientific measure of the efficacy of a method), and (Scully me, baby!) all reports of improved visual acuity using the method are anecdotal and can be explained by a) hysteria, b) rare phenomena that don't really count, and c) wishing thinking.
Thank God for the internet, or I wouldn't know how much danger I'm in from my own stupidness. Of course, I'd be having a lot harder time reading the internet if my vision weren't clearer now than it was a few weeks ago.
It works in fits and starts, this Bates method. I've got the whole over-50 thing going on, where it's hard to see close, small things. Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours reading from my handheld with the font set to small--about 7 points--and it was crystal clear. Amazing. Today, not so much. I don't really care if I was just imagining visual acuity yesterday. If the method trains me eventually to imagine visual acuity every day, then screw scientific support.
Meanwhile, I'm committing the dangerous folly of walking around without a pair of reading glasses in my pocket, and so far the most terrible outcome has been...
Huh. Can't think of one. Stupid me.
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