irrationality
‘THE HINKLEY TIMES’ is not a paper that I read often, I have to admit – but maybe I should! It was there that I found the following remarkable article:
Bosworth MP David Tredinnick has asked questions in the House of Commons about the growing problem of antibiotic resistance within hospitals, suggesting herbal remedies could be answer.
The Tory MP, who has a keen interest in alternative medicine particularly herbal curatives, asked Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, whether the problem was being discussed at the very top level.
He said: “Does my right honourable friend agree that a critical problem that A and E units will face in the future is antibiotic resistance? Is he aware that the science and technology committee, of which I am a member, has been looking at this issue and it also interests the health committee, of which I am also a member? Can he assure me that he is talking to the Prime Minister about how to stimulate new antibiotic research, and will he also remember that nature has its own remedies, such as tea tree oil?”
In reply Mr Hunt said: “My honourable friend is right about the seriousness of the issue of antimicrobial resistance. Some 25,000 people die in Europe every year as a result of the failure of antibiotics – more than die in road traffic accidents. I raised the issue at the World Health Assembly and I have discussed it closely with the Prime Minister.”
David Tredinnick is no stranger to strange ideas. Wikipedia (yes I know, many people do not like it as a source) sums it up quite succinctly:
He is a supporter of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). He has made supportive comments in Parliament on homeopathy, despite continued lack of evidence of its effectiveness. He has supported chiropractic and mentioned the influence of the Moon on blood clotting. In this same debate he characterised scientists as “racially prejudiced”. He has tabled several early day motions in support of homeopathy’s continued funding on the National Health Service.Tredinnick’s views continue to cause amused disbelief in some quarters and a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons of England said they would “laugh their heads off” at the suggestion they could not operate at the full moon.
At the 2010 general election, in addition to candidates from the two main parties, Tredinnick was opposed by New Scientist journalist Dr. Michael Brooks who objected to “Tredinnick’s outspoken promotion of complementary and alternative medicine.”During a hustings debate called by Brooks to “highlight the scientific literacy of the UK’s elected representatives” Brooks claimed that Tredinnick regarded homeopathy as a suitable treatment for Malaria and HIV, which Tredinnick did not deny. Tredinnick in turn argued that “alternative treatments are incredibly good value for money” and stated his belief that randomised controlled trials are not effective at evaluating very dilute preparations.
In March 2013 Tredinnick was ridiculed as “nonsensical” by the government’s outgoing chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, who said the MP had fallen for the “Galileo fallacy” (Galileo was laughed at but was right, therefore since I am laughed at I must be right).
In July 2013 Tredinnick sponsored an EDM congratulating a farmer on his decision to use homeopathy with what were claimed to be positive results.The motion was supported by one other MP but the British veterinary association says there is no evidence of any benefit.
Tredinnick is a supporter of astrology especially the use of it in medical practice.In November 2009, he spoke at a meeting organised by the Astrological Association of Great Britain, where he related his personal experience of astrology and illness, advocating that astrology be integrated into the NHS.
Tredinnick’s appointment to the Health committee in June 2010 was criticised in two science reports in the Guardian. Martin Robbins said his appointment was “an extremely disturbing development” even though “Tredinnick is a figure unlikely to be taken seriously by policymakers” whilst Nature‘s Adam Rutherford described Tredinnick as “misinformed about a great many things” and said that “giving [him] influence on medical policy ..is a bad move.”The Telegraph writer Ian Douglas also described it as “a problem.”
His appointment to the Science and technology committee also drew criticism. Andy McSmith in the Independent, cited his views that homeopathy could cure HIV, TB, malaria, urinary infections, diarrhoea, skin eruptions, diabetes, epilepsy, eye infections, intestinal parasites, cancer, and gangrene amongst others and quoted Imran Khan, head of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, as saying that “someone with such incredibly odd views is not helpful”. Tom Whipple in the Times said his appointment caused despair,whilst Elizabeth Gibney in the Times Higher Education quoted the Skeptical Voter website as saying that Tredinnick is “perhaps the worst example of scientific illiteracy in government”…
In 2009 Tredinnick attempted to claim the £125 cost of attending a course on “intimate relationships” through his Parliamentary expenses. He was also found to have used expenses to purchase astrology software, claiming it was for a debate on alternative medicine.
Compared to some of theses bizarre activities, the notion that herbal remedies might provide the solution for antibiotic resistance seems almost reasonable and clever.
ALMOST!!!
Tredinnick does not seem to know that:
- many antibiotics originate from plants or other natural substances,
- several large pharmaceutical companies are feverishly looking for more such substances from plants,
- most plants do actually contain substances which have antibiotic activity,
- however, most cannot be used as medicines, for instance, because they are far too toxic (tea tree oil is a good example for this),
- once a pure compound has been isolated from a plant and is used therapeutically, it ceases to be herbal medicine (which is defined as the use of full plant extracts),
- it is thus unlikely that full plant extracts, i. e. herbal medicine, will ever provide a solution to antibiotic resistance.
I have little doubt that Tredinnick will continue to mislead parliament and the public with his nonsensical views about alternative medicine. And even if it might have no effect whatsoever, I will continue to point out just how nonsensical they are.
Some time ago, I published a post entitled HOW TO BECOME A CHARLATAN. This prompted ‘THE NORWEGIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND LETTERS’ to invite me to give a lecture on the subject, a great honour, I am sure. Consequently, I have thought about this somewhat unusual subject quite a lot.
Obviously, my thoughts come from the perspective of someone who has researched alternative medicine for many years. Pseudoscientists seem to love alternative medicine and proponents of alternative medicine love pseudoscience. As a result, alternative medicine is densely populated by pseudoscientists.
But what is the characteristic of pseudoscience? Reflecting on this question, I found not one but several hallmarks (and for each of them, there are many posts on this blog which provide further explanations):
- A bizarre theory elevated to the status of a dogma
- Denial
- Conspiracy theories
- The abuse of science (not for testing but) for confirming assumptions.
- Jumping to conclusions
- The torture of data (until they ‘confess’)
- The use of fallacies
- The absence of rigorous investigations into the risks of their treatments
- Cherry-picking
- The disregard of the methodological quality of data supporting their treatments.
- Telling and promoting untruths
- Ad hominem attacks
Based on these 12 hallmarks, one could create a simple score which indicates the likelihood of the presence of pseudoscience. In other words, it might be useful to consider pseudoscience in terms of a sliding scale. Some things in alternative medicine can be just a bit pseudoscientific, others quite a lot, while others again are hopelessly so.
The issue of pseudoscience is by no means just academic; it is very real problem and has many important, practical implications. The most important one probably is that, in health care (and other areas as well), pseudoscience can be harmful, even to the point that it costs lives of vulnerable patients who believe that everything masquerading as science can be relied upon.
Dr. Oz, famous through his TV show promoting all types of quackery, recently testified before a US Senate subcommittee hearing on protecting consumers from false and deceptive advertising of weight loss products. This event turned out to be less than flattering for Dr Oz. One journalist commented that he “might as well be a cowardly lion — sent home with his tail between his legs after being accused at a congressional hearing of lying on his show about weight-loss claims.”
“I don’t get why you need to say this stuff, because you know it’s not true,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, who led the commerce subcommittee hearing. “The scientific community is almost monolithically against you in terms of the efficacy of the products you called ‘miracles,’ ” the Democratic senator from Missouri told Oz. “It’s a major problem when people are spending more and more money and they’re gaining more and more weight,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar.“Either you don’t talk about these things at all, or you’re going to have to be more specific because right now . . . this is not working.”
A source close to Dr Oz said he was perplexed: “We were invited down to Washington to testify at a hearing about scams and instead it became all about how much we hate your show.” Oz himself testified that he “heard the message…I do personally believe in the items that I talk about.”
“I intensively study them. I have given my family these products. . . . If you can lose a pound a week more than you would have lost by using them, it jump-starts you and gets you going. I think it makes sense.” “I’m surprised you’re defending this,” McCaskill replied. “It’s something that gives people false hope. I don’t see why you need to go there.”
Another journalist commented that the Senators repeatedly placed him on the defense over his weight loss products: “I know you know how much power you have. I know you know that. You are very powerful and [with] power comes a great deal of responsibility,” Senator Claire McCaskill , who led the Senate’s consumer protection hearing titled “Protecting Consumers from False and Deceptive Advertising of Weight-Loss Products…You are being made an example of today because of the power you have in this space…We didn’t call this hearing to beat up on you but we did call this hearing to talk about a real crisis in consumer protection. You can either be part of the police here or you can be part of the problem.”
Oz insisted he was no huckster but admitted the products promoted on his show don’t always have “the scientific muster” to present their benefits as “fact…I actually do personally believe in the items that I talk about in the show. I passionately studied them. I recognize that oftentimes they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact but nevertheless I would give my audience the advice I give my family all the time. And I have given my family these products,” he said.
Dr Oz also said that some alternative treatments, such as prayer, cannot be tested scientifically. “I don’t think this ought to be a referendum on the use of alternative medical therapies. Because if that’s the case, listen, I’ve been criticized for having folks coming on my show talking about the power of prayer,” he said. “I can’t prove that prayer helps people survive an illness.”
No, Dr Oz! I know you are mistaken! I have done the research – both on alternative slimming aids and on spiritual healing. The results quite clearly show that these methods are not more effective than a placebo.
There are many terms for this type of treatment: energy healing, Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, spiritual healing and para-normal healing are just some of the better-known ones. These interventions are based of the belief that some sort of ‘energy’ can be channelled by the healer into the body of the patient to assist its capacity for self-healing. Needless to say that their biological plausibility is suspiciously close to zero.
This new study was aimed at testing the effectiveness of energy healing on the well-being of patients and at assessing the influence on the results of participating in a randomized controlled trial. A total of 247 colorectal cancer patients were included in the trial. One half of them were randomized to either:
- healing (RH) or
- control (RC)
The other half of the patients was not randomized and had either:
- self-selected healing (SH) or
- self-selected control condition (SC)
All patients completed questionnaires assessing well-being Quality of Life (QoL), depressive symptoms, mood, and sleep quality), attitude toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and faith/spirituality at baseline, 1 week, and 2 months post-intervention. Patients were also asked to indicate, at baseline, whether they considered QoL, depressive symptoms, mood, and sleep quality as important outcomes.
Compared with controls, no overall effect of healing were noted on QoL, depressive symptoms, mood, or sleep quality in the intervention groups (RH, SH). Effects of healing on mood were only found for patients who initially had a positive attitude toward CAM and considered the outcome in question as important.
The authors of this study arrived at the following conclusions: Whereas it is generally assumed that CAMs such as healing have beneficial effects on well-being, our results indicated no overall effectiveness of energy healing on QoL, depressive symptoms, mood, and sleep quality in colorectal cancer patients. Effectiveness of healing on well-being was, however, related to factors such as self-selection and a positive attitude toward the treatment.
Survey after survey shows that ‘energy healing’ is popular amongst cancer patients. But medicine is no popularity contest, and the existing clinical trials have mostly failed to show that these treatments work beyond a sometimes remarkably strong placebo-effect. Consequently, several systematic reviews have arrived at conclusions that were far from positive:
There is no robust evidence that Therapeutic Touch promotes healing of acute wounds
This new and fairly rigorous trial clearly points in the same direction. Thus we a faced with the fact that these treatments are:
- utterly implausible
- not supported by good clinical evidence
What follows seems as simple as it is indisputable: energy healing is nonsense and does not merit further research.
In the early 1920s, a French physician thought he had discovered the virus that caused the Spanish flu. It oscillated under his microscope, and he thus called it oscillococcus. Not only did it cause the flu, in the opinion of his discoverer, but it was also responsible for a whole host of other diseases, including cancer. In fact, the virus does not exist, or at least nobody ever confirmed it existed, but that fact did not stop our good doctor to make a homeopathic remedy from it which he thought would cure all these diseases. His remedy, Oscillococcinum, is made from the liver and heart of a duck because the imaginative inventor believed that the fictitious virus was present in these organs of this animal.
To understand all this fully, one needs to know that the duck organs are so highly diluted that no molecule of the duck is present in the remedy. It is sold in the C200 potency. This means that one part of organ extract is diluted 1: 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (a note to Boiron’s legal team: I had a hell of a time getting all these zeros right; in case, I got it wrong after all, it is an honest error – please do not sue me for it!). The dilution is so extreme that it amounts to a single molecule per a multitude of universes.
Given these facts it seems unlikely that the remedy has any effects on human health which go beyond those of a placebo. Let’s see what the current Cochrane review says about its effectiveness: There is insufficient good evidence to enable robust conclusions to be made about Oscillococcinum(®) in the prevention or treatment of influenza and influenza-like illness. Our findings do not rule out the possibility that Oscillococcinum(®) could have a clinically useful treatment effect but, given the low quality of the eligible studies, the evidence is not compelling. There was no evidence of clinically important harms due to Oscillococcinum(®).
Considering that the first author of this review works for the British Homeopathic Association and the senior author is the homeopath of the Queen, this seems a pretty clear statement, don’t you think?
Regardless of the scientific evidence, Oscillococcinum made of ‘Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum‘, as it is officially called, became a homeopathic best-seller. In the US alone Boiron, the manufacturer, is said to sell US$ 15 m per year of this product. Not only that, in France, where the remedy is a popular medicine sold in virtually all pharmacies and often recommended as soon as you walk into a pharmacy, it is hard to find anyone who does not swear by the ‘potentized‘ duck or is willing to discuss its merits critically.
The amazing duck, it seems, has turned into a ‘holy cow’.
If we search on ‘Medline’ for ‘complementary alternative medicine’ (CAM), we currently get about 13000 hits. A little graph on the side of the page demonstrates that, during the last 4 years, the number of articles on this subject has grown exponentially.
Surely, this must be very good news: such intense research activity will soon tell us exactly which alternative treatments work for which conditions and which don’t.
I beg to differ. Let me explain why.
The same ‘Medline’ search informs us that the majority of the recent articles were published in an open access journal called ‘Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine’ (eCAM). For example, of the 80 most recent articles listed in Medline (on 26/5/2014), 53 came from that journal. The publication frequency of eCAM and its increase in recent years beggars belief: in 2011, they published just over 500 articles which is already a high number, but, in 2012, the figure had risen to >800, and in 2013 it was >1300 (the equivalent 2013 figure for the BMJ/BMJ Open by comparison is 4, and that for another alt med journal, e.g. Forsch Komplement, is 10)
How do they do it? How can eCAM be so dominant in publishing alt med research? The trick seems to be fairly simple.
Let’s assume you are an alt med researcher and you have an article that you would like to see published. Once you submit it to eCAM, your paper is sent to one of the ~150 members of the editorial board. These people are almost all strong proponents of alternative medicine; critics are a true rarity in this group. At this stage, you are able to suggest the peer reviewers for your submission (all who ever accepted this task are listed on the website; they amount to several thousand!), and it seems that, with the vast majority of submissions, the authors’ suggestions are being followed.
It goes without saying that most researchers suggest colleagues for peer reviewing who are not going to reject their work (the motto seems to be “if you pass my paper, I will pass yours). Therefore even faily flimsy bits of research pass this peer review process and get quickly published online in eCAM.
This process explains a lot, I think: 1) the extraordinarily high number of articles published 2) why currently more than 50% of all alt med research originate from eCAM 3) why so much of it is utter rubbish.
Even the mere titles of some of the articles might demonstrate my point. A few examples have to suffice:
- Color distribution differences in the tongue in sleep disorder
- Wen-dan decoction improves negative emotions in sleep-deprived rats by regulating orexin-a and leptin expression.
- Yiqi Huoxue Recipe Improves Heart Function through Inhibiting Apoptosis Related to Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Myocardial Infarction Model of Rats.
- Protective Effects of Bu-Shen-Huo-Xue Formula against 5/6 Nephrectomy-Induced Chronic Renal Failure in Rats
- Effects and Mechanisms of Complementary and Alternative Medicine during the Reproductive Process
- Evidence-based medicinal plants for modern chronic diseases
- Transforming Pain into Beauty: On Art, Healing, and Care for the Spirit
This system of uncritical peer review and fast online publication seems to suit many of the people involved in this process: the journal’s owners are laughing all the way to the bank; there is a publication charge of US$ 2000 per article, and, in 2013, the income of eCAM must therefore have been well over US$2 000 000. The researchers are equally delighted; they get even their flimsiest papers published (remember: ‘publish or perish’!). And the evangelic believers in alternative medicine are pleased because they can now claim that their field is highly research-active and that there is plenty of evidence to support the use of this or that therapy.
But there are others who are not served well by eCAM habit of publishing irrelevant, low quality articles:
- professionals who would like to advance health care and want to see reliable evidence as to which treatments work and which don’t,
- the public who, in one way or another, pay for all this and might assume that published research tends to be relevant and reliable,
- the patients who have given their time to researchers in the hope that their gift will improve health care,
- ill individuals who hope that alternative treatments might relieve their suffering,
- politicians who rely on research to be reliable in order to arrive at the right decisions.
Come to think of it, the vast majority of people should be less than enchanted with eCAM and similar journals.
It has often occurred to me that some people use alternative medicine not as medicine but as something entirely different. A new investigation sheds an interesting light on this question.
The aim of this study was to explore how and why Australian men with cancer use complementary therapies (CTs) and how their significant others (SOs) contribute to the regular uptake of CTs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 male cancer patients and 24 SOs. Participants were purposefully sampled from a preceding Australian survey investigating the use of CTs in men with cancer.
Three core themes were identified: men used CTs as (a) problem-focused coping (e.g., diet modification), (b) emotion-focused coping (e.g., meditation), and (c) meaning-based coping (e.g., prayer). Practicing CTs helped men to cope with physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns, although some men spoke of difficulties with practicing meditation to regulate their emotions. SOs were supportive of men’s coping strategies but were only rarely involved in men’s emotion-focused coping.
The authors conclude that CTs have the potential to facilitate coping with cancer, independent of any measurable physiological benefit. Our findings suggest that when clinicians engage in conversations about CTs use, they should consider the type of coping strategy employed by their patient. Such information may enhance the efficacy of some interventions (e.g., meditation) and also provide for an opportunity to discuss patients’ expectations concerning CTs.
If these findings are generalizable – I always have problems when researchers draw sweeping conclusions on the basis of two dozen patients – then it would seem to follow that alternative medicine is being used as some sort of ‘Ersatz’ religion. Religious coping strategies are effective in Spiritual growth that results in positive or negative situations. It is the perception of an individual’s relationship with God that brings meaning, purpose and emotional comfort when dealing with circumstances. Prayer, meditation, worship are all examples of religious coping strategies. Positive coping strategies associate with better mental health and negative coping strategies relate to poorer mental and physical health.
Leading researchers have split religious coping into two categories: positive religious coping and negative religious coping. Individuals who use positive religious coping are likely to seek spiritual support and look for meaning in a traumatic situation. Negative religious coping (or Spiritual Struggles) expresses conflict, question, and doubt regarding issues of God and faith. The effects of religious coping are measured in many different circumstances, each with different outcomes. Some common experiences where people use religious coping are fear-inflicting events such as 9/11 or the holocaust, death and sickness, and near death experiences.
I do not want to labour my point (that alternative medicine might be an ‘Ersatz’ religion) beyond reason. Nonetheless, I would be very interested to hear what my readers feel about it.
The fact that practitioners of alternative medicine frequently advise their patients against immunising their children has been documented repeatedly. In particular, doctors of anthroposophy, chiropractors and homeopaths are implicated in thus endangering public health. Less is known about naturopaths attitude in this respect. Now new data have emerged which confirm some of our worst fears.
This survey aimed at assessing the attitudes, education, and sources of knowledge surrounding childhood vaccinations of 560 students at National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, US. Students were asked about demographics, sources of information about childhood vaccines, differences between mainstream and CAM education on childhood vaccines, alternative vaccine schedules, adverse effects, perceived efficacy, and credibility of information sources.
A total of 109 students provided responses (19.4% response rate). All students surveyed learned about vaccinations in multiple courses and through independent study. The information sources employed had varying levels of credibility. Only 26% of the responding students planned on regularly prescribing or recommending vaccinations for their patients; 82% supported the general concept of vaccinations for prevention of infectious diseases.
The vast majority (96%) of those who might recommend vaccinations reported that they would only recommend a schedule that differed from the standard CDC-ACIP schedule.
Many respondents were concerned about vaccines being given too early (73%), too many vaccines administered simultaneously (70%), too many vaccines overall (59%), and about preservatives and adjuvants in vaccines (72%). About 40% believed that a healthy diet and lifestyle was more important for prevention of infectious diseases than vaccines. 90% admitted that they were more critical of vaccines than mainstream pediatricians, medical doctors, and medical students.
These results speak for themselves and leave me (almost) speechless. The response rate was truly dismal, and it is fair to assume that the non-responding students held even more offensive views on vaccination than their responding colleagues. The findings seem to indicate that naturopaths are systematically trained to become anti-vaxers who believe that their naturopathic treatments offer better protection than vaccines. They are thus depriving many of their patients of arguably the most successful means of disease prevention that exists today. To put it bluntly: naturopaths seem to be brain-washed into becoming a danger to public health.
A recent US study found that belief in conspiracy theories is rife in health care. The investigators presented people with 6 different conspiracy theories, and the one that was most widely believed was the following:
THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION IS DELIBERATELY PREVENTING THE PUBLIC FROM GETTING NATURAL CURES FOR CANCER AND OTHER DISEASES BECAUSE OF PRESSURE FROM DRUG COMPANIES.
A total of 37% agreed with this statement, 31% had no opinion on the matter, and 32% disagreed. What is more, the belief in this particular conspiracy correlated positively with the usage of alternative medicine.
Essentially, this implies that the current popularity of alternative medicine is at least partly driven by the conviction that there is a sinister plot by the FDA or more generally speaking ‘the establishment’ that prevents people from benefitting from the wonders of alternative treatments.
I think it was Woody Allen who noted that, just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not following you. So, let’s look for evidence suggesting that the FDA or any similar organisation is suppressing alternative medicine.
A prime candidate is, of course, the often implicated, thoroughly evil ‘BIG PHARMA‘. I am not a fan of the pharmaceutical industry and I know few people who are. But where is the evidence for BIG PHARMA’s conspiracy against alternative medicine? In the many years of researching this sector, I have never come across a jot of evidence to support this notion. On the contrary, BIG PHARMA seems all to keen to jump on to the alternative bandwagon and make a few quick bucks from the gullibility of the consumer.
What about the rest of the medical establishment? All I see is that universities, hospitals, charities and other organisations in health care currently bend over backwards in order to accommodate as much alternative medicine as they possibly can get away with in view of the often embarrassing lack of convincing evidence for the treatments in question. Conspiracy against alternative medicine? I don’t think so.
The closer we look, the more we arrive at the conclusion that the conspiracy against alternative medicine is a myth and a figment of the imagination of those who religiously believe in alternative medicine. They seem to long for an explanation why their favourite therapy is not in even more wide-spread use. Cognitive dissonance seems to prevent them to consider that the lack of evidence has anything to do with this situation. Consequently, they prefer to invent a conspiracy theory.
And this is where an interesting question emerges, in my view: do people who believe that the FDA or other organisations prevent the public from getting more alternative medicine really need more alternative medicine, or do they perhaps just need an effective treatment for their paranoia?
I have often asked myself whether it is right/necessary to scientifically test things which are entirely implausible. Should we, for instance test the effectiveness of treatments which have a very low prior probability of generating a positive effect such as paranormal healing, homeopathy or Bach flower remedies? If you believe in the principles of evidence-based medicine you might focus on the clinical evidence and see biological plausibility as secondary. If you are a basic scientist, you are likely to do the reverse.
A recent article addressed this issue. The author points out that evaluating the absurd is absurd. Specifically, he noted that the empirical evaluation of a therapy would normally assume a plausible rationale regarding the mechanism of action. However, examination of the historical background and underlying principles for reflexology, iridology, acupuncture, auricular acupuncture, and some herbal medicines, reveals a rationale founded on the principle of analogical correspondences, which is a common basis for magical thinking and pseudoscientific beliefs such as astrology and chiromancy. Where this is the case, it is suggested that subjecting these therapies to empirical evaluation may be tantamount to evaluating the absurd.
This makes a lot of sense – but is it really entirely true? Are there no legitimate reasons at all for testing alternative treatments that lack biological plausibility? Ten or twenty years ago, I would have disagreed with the notion that plausibility is an essential prerequisite for scientific testing; today, I have changed my mind a little, but not as much as to agree completely with the assumption. In other words, I still see more than one good reason why evaluating the absurd might be reasonable or even advisable.
- Using plausibility as the only arbiter of scientific ‘evaluability’, assumes that we understand everything about plausibility there is to know. Yet it might just be possible that we mis-categorise something as implausible simply because we are not yet fully aware of all the facts.
- Declaring something as plausible and another thing as implausible are not hard and fast verdicts but judgements which, at least to some degree, are subjective. Sceptics find the axioms of homeopathy utterly implausible, for instance – but ask a homeopath, and you will hear all sorts of explanations which, at least to them, sound plausible.
- If an implausible alternative treatment is in wide-spread use, we arguably have a responsibility to test it scientifically in order to demonstrate the truth about it (to those proponents of that therapy who are willing to accept that rigorous science can find the truth). If we fail to do this, it will be the enthusiasts of that therapy who conduct less than rigorous science and produce false positive results. In turn, this will give the impression that the treatment is effective and mislead consumers, politicians, journalists etc. Seen from this perspective, it might even be unethical to not do the science.
So, I am in two minds about this (which might be a reflection of the fact that, during different periods of my life, I have been a clinician, a basic scientist and a clinical researcher). I realise that plausibility and prior probability are important – much more so than I appreciated years ago. But I think they should not be the only criteria. The clinical evidence should not be pushed aside completely.
I’d be interested to learn your views on this tricky issue.
