So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) likes to present itself as a champion of disease prevention. Its advocates routinely claim to promote health before disease develops, to strengthen the body’s defences, and to address root causes rather than symptoms. This rhetoric is highly attractive, because prevention sounds proactive, humane, and economical. Crucially, it is also good for the SCAM practitioner’s bank account. Yet there is a snag: almost none of the preventive claims made for SCAM are supported by reliable evidence, whereas the prevention that works comes overwhelmingly from conventional medicine and science.
To show preventive benefit, an intervention must demonstrably reduce the incidence of symptom, disease, complication, or mortality in properly designed studies. That may require randomised trials, epidemiological studies, large cohorts, reproducible findings, and enough follow-up to show that fewer people actually experienced the given endpoint. Mainstream medicine has repeatedly met this standard. Immunization, blood pressure control, smoking cessation, lipid lowering, cancer screening, and risk-factor modification are all products of biomedical research, not of alternative healing traditions.
SCAM, by contrast, tends to use prevention in a loose, impressionistic, and unfalsifiable way. A practitioner may claim that a treatment “balances energy,” “supports immunity,” or “keeps the body in harmony,” but such phrases do not establish a preventive effect. They are placeholders for evidence, not evidence itself. In practice, the absence of disease after treatment is treated as proof that the treatment worked, even though the same outcome occurs every day without any intervention at all.
Acupuncture is a good example. Its defenders portray it as a preventive system capable of preserving general health or warding off illness, but the evidence base does not support that claim. Some reviews do suggest that acupuncture may help with some pain-related and symptom-focused conditions, yet its preventive value is largely unproven. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that acupuncture prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Chiropractic care is even more revealing because preventive claims are often tied to the doctrine of spinal “subluxation” and nervous system dysfunction. Yet the literature on prevention is thin and methodologically weak. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that chiropractic prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Herbalism benefits from the romantic appeal of “natural” remedies, but that appeal should not be confused with demonstrated preventive efficacy. Individual plant compounds have certainly inspired real drugs, yet that is a triumph of pharmacology, not of herbalism as a system. When herbal medicines are tested for prevention, results are usually weak, inconsistent, or insufficient to support recommendation. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that herbal medicine prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Homeopathy is one of the most extreme cases within SCAM. It is often sold as gentle, individualized, and even preventive, but its basic principles are scientifically implausible, and its clinical evidence is either flawed or negative. Preventive homeopathy, including ideas such as “homeoprophylaxis,” is particularly problematic because it can give people a false sense of security while displacing interventions that genuinely prevent disease, such as vaccination. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that homeopathy prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
SCAM speaks almost constantly about prevention, but the evidence for actual preventive benefit is close to non-existent. What we know about prevention, what truly reduces disease incidence and improves population health, comes from conventional medicine, epidemiology, public health, and biological science. SCAM will no doubt continue to borrow the language of medicine and prevention, but – as far as I can see – it has failed to supply the proof.
10 Responses to The lucrative lie: SCAM and disease prevention
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Also note that SCAM often touts healthy lifestyle interventions such as a balanced diet, moderate exercise and other well-known beneficial lifestyle factors – while trying to give the impression that it was SCAM that came up with these principles(*).
Which is of course a lie: it is science and, by extension, science-based medicine that identified the benefits of good hygiene, proper diet and exercise, NOT SCAM. The best we can say is that SCAM’ers can spend more time on each patient in the role of ‘lifestyle coach’ – because it is the patients themselves who pay for this extra time and attention. But then these gullible patients also get a hefty dose of useless SCAM with each consultation, which may easily cost € 100 a pop or more.
Generally, it’s as the old adage goes: “What is good about SCAM is not special, and what is special about SCAM is not good.” (not sure who came up with this one – maybe Harriet Hall?)
*: Then there are of course also some SCAMmers who promote arguably bad dietary habits, such as YouTube quacks Sten Ekberg, and in particular Eric Berg.
$100 a pop? That might be my special 90% discount offer for all CAMibals like Richard who may fancy a walk on the wild side.
Professor
Your critique of the alternative medicine industry’s preventive claims remains as sharp and necessary as ever. Yet reading your latest piece in the current cultural landscape highlights a striking evolution: the selling of unproven prevention is no longer the exclusive domain of classical “So‑Called Alternative Medicine” — what you aptly term SCAM.
We have entered the era of the “Secular Health Guru”, where the most influential purveyors of speculative prevention are not homeopaths or energy healers, but highly credentialed insiders who trade on institutional prestige.
Two emblematic figures are Dr Andrew Huberman and Dr Peter Attia. Both possess elite academic pedigrees. Both command vast, monetised media ecosystems. And both have popularised a new genre of health optimisation that uses genuine scientific authority to promote interventions lacking the very thing you have always insisted upon: hard clinical evidence of improved health outcomes.
What is fascinating is how closely this new movement mirrors classical SCAM across three structural dimensions:
1. The Monetisation of Noise
Public‑health prevention is famously simple: sleep, movement, nutrition, social connection, avoidance of tobacco. It is cheap, universal, and — crucially — unmonetisable.
To build a media empire, one must generate novelty, complexity, and endless micro‑optimisations. Thus emerges what might be called the “optimization noise economy”: a perpetual churn of speculative hacks, supplements, and protocols designed not to improve population health, but to maintain audience engagement.
This is not far removed from the commercial incentives of classical SCAM, where the product is not efficacy but attention.
2. Mechanistic Speculation Masquerading as Evidence
You have long criticised the tendency of alternative practitioners to justify interventions through theoretical mechanisms rather than clinical outcomes.
The same pattern now thrives in secular wellness culture.
Huberman routinely extrapolates from basic neuroscience to promote a vast array of consumer supplements. Attia advocates for aggressive early screenings and off‑label pharmaceuticals — Rapamycin being the most prominent — based largely on animal models and mechanistic reasoning.
This is precisely the epistemic move you have warned against: substituting biological plausibility for demonstrated benefit.
Until an intervention reduces morbidity or mortality in humans, it remains speculative — regardless of whether it is sold by a naturopath or a Stanford professor.
3. The Protocol as Ritual
The elaborate daily routines promoted by these influencers function as secular rituals. They offer followers a comforting illusion of control over ageing, disease, and mortality. The psychological mechanism is identical to that of acupuncture meridian charts or Ayurvedic doshas: a structured narrative that transforms uncertainty into agency.
The ritual is the product.
The sense of control is the commodity.
And the evidence remains optional.
A New Frontier for Scientific Skepticism.
If scientific skepticism is to remain effective, it must adapt to this new landscape. The grift of unproven prevention has not disappeared — it has simply been rebranded, professionalised, and embedded within the scientific establishment itself.
The challenge is no longer fringe pseudoscience, but credentialed speculation amplified by platforms with audiences in the tens of millions.
Your framework remains invaluable. But it now needs to be applied not only to homeopaths and energy healers, but to the charismatic, data‑literate, lab‑coat‑wearing entrepreneurs who have made speculative prevention mainstream.
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on how skepticism can best respond to this new class of wellness influencer — one whose authority derives not from rejecting science, but from selectively weaponising it.
Paul
I do not see them as belonging to a ‘new movement’; in my view it’s the same old SCAM in slightly modernised robes. Think of Chopra, or Weil – they have always existed and always played on their cedentials if they had any.
“The ritual is the product.
The sense of control is the commodity.
And the evidence remains optional.”
Looks like classic AI generated text.
Yes, it’s the same old SCAM — but the robes are now tailored by Stanford, amplified by Silicon Valley, and worn by people who speak fluent mechanistic biology. The psychology hasn’t changed, but the cultural power has — which is precisely how SCAM mutates into SCM: So‑Called Medicine, where the aesthetics of science substitute for its conduct.
“Why are you painting white lines along the road?”
“To keep the elephants away, of course!”
“But there are no elephants in the city!”
“I know – it works!”
There are lots of CAM artists spreading iCAM around on social media. Mr P T STEEPER could try his luck there and help save humanity from all the CAMees. Maybe Richard Rascal could show him the way on the Arnica groups.
Don’t forget to complain to the medicine agencies and the police about the many being harmed by CAMists. UK police being fantastic should be straight onto it.
Every epistemic ecosystem has its jesters… and in this one, JK, you’re welcome to be ours 🃏✌️.
There are a few jestees both human and bot, on this epistemic ecosystem who knowingly and unknowingly jest at a high level of jesterism.