Healing, Hype or Harm? by Edzard Ernst

Author:Edzard Ernst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Homeopathy, alternative medicine, complimentary medicine, medicine, CAM, ethics, politics, holism, placebo, healing, curing, scepticism, skepticism, quackery, healthcare, NHS, society, therapy, new age healing, spirituality, vitalism, pseudoscience, pseudo-science
ISBN: 9781845407117
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

2 http://www.icmje.org

An Amateur’s View of the CAM Scene, James Randi

At the outset, let me make one thing perfectly clear: my qualifications concerning this subject, alternative/complementary medicine, here referred to as ‘CAM’, consist mostly of common sense, a wide-ranging experience of flimflam, and extensive exposure to a great variety of scam artists. Those rascals have discovered that a large percentage of the population will react to almost anything presented from a position of authority - particularly if the name of the presenter bears the magical letters, ‘PhD’. I have long maintained that an education only makes you educated, and that it takes much more than that, to make you smart; experience of the outside world is required. Please have no doubts at all about my strong respect for formal education, but I’ve found that many highly educated persons simply don’t think clearly in the real world that I inhabit. I don’t have the privilege of appending letters to my name, though no less an authority than Isaac Asimov once generously commented that I had a very good grasp of the scientific method despite my lack of any advanced formal education. One of my thoroughly lettered detractors in the UK, speaking before the Royal Society some years ago, referred to me as a ‘mere conjuror’; in response to that designation I told him, ‘Conjuror, yes, but “mere” - never!’

I regret to say that much of the blame for unfounded belief in outlandish modes of medical care must be laid at the doorstep of academia. The plain fact is that the public is largely ignorant of what science is all about. They picture men - women less frequently - dressed in white coats scurrying about bearing mysterious smoking test tubes. And, they tend to fear and reject that which they don’t understand. They do, however, tend to pay attention to statements that bear the imprimatur of scientists. Thus, when those scientists fail to provide proper information, they fail their public.

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