Drowning in a sea of misinformation. Part 8: Books on alternative medicine

Where can someone turn to who wants reliable information on alternative medicine? Many consumers and patients who ask themselves this question might already be somewhat weary of the Internet; everybody should by now know that websites can be dangerously misleading and usually commercially driven. What about books then? People still tend to trust books; they are written by experts, published by responsible enterprises, and sold through respectable outlets. Surely we can trust books, or can’t we?

The first thing that strikes you when you look into the subject is the fact that there are thousands of books on alternative medicine. You only need to visit a major book shop in your high street and admire the rows and rows of these volumes. Since many years, I have been evaluating such volumes, for instance, for our journal FACT where we regularly publish reviews of new material. Through this and other work, I have gained the impression, that most of these books are not worth the paper they are printed on and constitute a major contributor to the misinformation bombarding the consumer in this area. But that was just an impression, hard data would be better.

In 1998, we assessed for the first time the quality of books on alternative medicine ( Int J Risk Safety Med 1998, 11: 209-215. [For some reason, this article is not Medline-listed]). We chose a random sample of 6 such books all published in 1997, and we assessed their contents according to pre-defined criteria. The findings were sobering: the advice given in these volumes was frequently misleading, not based on good evidence and often inaccurate. If followed, it would have caused significant harm to patients.

In 2006, we conducted a similar investigation which we then reported in the first and second editions of our book THE DESKTOP GUIDE TO COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE. This time, we selected 7 best-sellers in alternative medicine and scrutinised them in much the same way. What we found was revealing. Almost every treatment seemed to be recommended for almost every condition. There was no agreement between the different books which therapy might be effective for which condition. Some treatments were even named as indications for a certain condition, while, in other books, they were listed as contra-indications for the same problem. A bewildering plethora of treatments was recommended for most conditions, for instance:

• addictions: 120 different treatments
• arthritis: 131 different treatments
• asthma: 119 different treatments
• cancer: 133 different treatments
• etc. etc.

This experience, which we published as a chapter in our book entitled AN EPITAPH TO OPINION-BASED MEDICINE, confirmed our suspicion that books on alternative medicine are a major contributor to the ‘sea of misinformation’ in this area – and, as they are read by many people, a significant risk factor to public health.

Why do publishers allow such rubbish to be printed? Why do so many authors spend their time misleading the public with their dangerous half-knowledge? Why do consumers buy such overtly uncritical nonsense? I do not know the answers, I must admit. But I know that books of this nature do a disservice to everyone involved, including the few respectable aspect of alternative medicine which might actually exist.

Has the situation changed since 2006? We cannot be sure; there is, to the best of my knowledge, no hard data; and nobody has repeated our investigations. But my impression from regularly reviewing new books for FACT and other journals is far from encouraging. I fear that our ‘epitaph to opinion-based medicine’ might have been a little premature.