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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alternative medicine | 11/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:16:46.424743+00:00 | kb-cron |
Alternative therapies typically lack any scientific validation, and their effectiveness either is unproven or has been disproved. It is usually based on religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural energies, pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, or fraud. Methods may incorporate or base themselves on traditional medicine, folk knowledge, spiritual beliefs, ignorance or misunderstanding of scientific principles, errors in reasoning, or newly conceived approaches claiming to heal. Research on alternative medicine is frequently of low quality and methodologically flawed. Treatments are not part of the conventional, science-based healthcare system. Where alternative therapies have replaced conventional science-based medicine, even with the safest alternative medicines, failure to use or delay in using conventional science-based medicine has caused deaths. Many alternative medical treatments are not patentable, which may lead to less research funding from the private sector. In addition, in most countries, alternative therapies (in contrast to pharmaceuticals) can be marketed without any proof of efficacy – also a disincentive for manufacturers to fund scientific research. English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain, defined alternative medicine as a "set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests." Dawkins argued that if a technique is demonstrated effective in properly performed trials then it ceases to be alternative and simply becomes medicine. CAM is also often less regulated than conventional medicine. There are ethical concerns about whether people who perform CAM have the proper knowledge to treat patients. CAM is often done by non-physicians who do not operate with the same medical licensing laws which govern conventional medicine, and it is often described as an issue of non-maleficence. According to two writers, Wallace Sampson and K. Butler, marketing is part of the training required in alternative medicine, and propaganda methods in alternative medicine have been traced back to those used by Hitler and Goebbels in their promotion of pseudoscience in medicine. In November 2011 Edzard Ernst stated that the "level of misinformation about alternative medicine has now reached the point where it has become dangerous and unethical. So far, alternative medicine has remained an ethics-free zone. It is time to change this." Harriet Hall criticized the low standard of evidence accepted by the alternative medicine community:
Science-based medicine has one rigorous standard of evidence, the kind [used for pharmaceuticals] .... CAM has a double standard. They gladly accept a lower standard of evidence for treatments they believe in. However, I suspect they would reject a pharmaceutical if it were approved for marketing on the kind of evidence they accept for CAM.
=== Conflicts of interest === Some commentators have said that special consideration must be given to the issue of conflicts of interest in alternative medicine. Edzard Ernst has said that most researchers into alternative medicine are at risk of "unidirectional bias" because of a generally uncritical belief in their chosen subject. Ernst cites as evidence the phenomenon whereby 100% of a sample of acupuncture trials originating in China had positive conclusions. David Gorski contrasts evidence-based medicine, in which researchers try to disprove hyphotheses, with what he says is the frequent practice in pseudoscience-based research, of striving to confirm pre-existing notions. Harriet Hall writes that there is a contrast between the circumstances of alternative medicine practitioners and disinterested scientists: in the case of acupuncture, for example, an acupuncturist would have "a great deal to lose" if acupuncture were rejected by research; but the disinterested skeptic would not lose anything if its effects were confirmed; rather their change of mind would enhance their skeptical credentials.
=== Use of health and research resources === Research into alternative therapies has been criticized for "diverting research time, money, and other resources from more fruitful lines of investigation in order to pursue a theory that has no basis in biology." Research methods expert and author of Snake Oil Science, R. Barker Bausell, has stated that "it's become politically correct to investigate nonsense." A commonly cited statistic is that the US National Institute of Health had spent $2.5 billion on investigating alternative therapies prior to 2009, with none being found to be effective.
== See also == Alternative therapies for developmental and learning disabilities Conservation medicine Ethnomedicine Psychic surgery Siddha medicine Thomsonianism, in United States early 19th century Chelation of heavy metals in autism Ancient Greek medicine
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