My comments angered colleagues – but are they really incorrect???

A recent article in the BMJ about my new book seems to have upset fellow researchers of alternative medicine. I am told that the offending passage is the following:

“Too much research on complementary therapies is done by people who have already made up their minds,” the first UK professor of complementary medicine has said. Edzard Ernst, who left his chair at Exeter University early after clashing with the Prince of Wales, told journalists at the Science Media Centre in London that, although more research into alternative medicines was now taking place, “none of the centres is anywhere near critical enough.”

Following this publication, I received indignant inquiries from colleagues asking whether I meant to say that their work lacks critical thinking. As this is a valid question, I will try to answer it the best I presently can.

Any critical evaluation of alternative medicine has to yield its fair share of negative conclusions about the value of alternative medicine. If it fails to do that, one would need to assume that most or all alternative therapies generate more good than harm – and very few experts (who are not proponents of alternative medicine) would assume that this can possibly be the case.

Put differently, this means that a researcher or a research group that does not generate its fair share of negative conclusions is suspect of lacking a critical attitude. In a previous post, I have addressed this issue in more detail by creating an ‘index’: THE TRUSTWORTHINESS INDEX. I have also provided a concrete example of a researcher who seems to be associated with a remarkably high index (the higher the index, the more suspicion of critical attitude).

Instead of unnecessarily upsetting my fellow researchers of alternative medicine any further, I will just issue this challenge: if any research group can demonstrate to have an index below 0.5 (which would mean the team has published twice as many negative conclusions as positive ones), I will gladly and publicly retract my suspicion that this group is “anywhere near critical enough”.