New

You may think the grumble of my colleague yesterday of trivial importance, but, if you twist the point of view slightly and consider how the general public judge a medical treatment (notably traditional ones), the implication is profound.

What I mean is, you may have heard, many people would fall to this argument, "This remedy is a secret formula from an expert of the Han dynasty two thousand years ago. It's fascinating !"

Alas, if a medical treatment has not been improved for that long a time, what did those generations of experts in the past 2000 years do ? After all, average life span of a Han citizen achieved by those secret remedies was below 50. Rather impressive a figure.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Unlike another group of lay people who try to judge medicine simply by novelty, I'm not saying new is good. A treatment should, and should only, be judged by its efficacy, and never by how old or new it is. However, if I could pick the side less seriously wrong, I would say erring on new is good is at least better than old is good.

If a country uses a latter attitude for a scientific subject, the result is inevitably millenniums of stagnancy