[BPSDB] There was no follow-up to the letter published prominently in the Guardian on 13 June 2009, on which I have commented before. I have followed this up with a letter to the paper’s Readers’ Editor. I actually wrote on two different issues, so this is an extract from the letter.
On Saturday 13 June you published prominently a letter from three physicians (Dr Lewith et al). This consisted of an unfounded claim (see http://apgaylard.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/false-positives/) about evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy, in which the signatories appear to have a direct financial interest.
I expect that there were many letters (including my own) in rebuttal of this claim, but none appeared in the paper. It appears to me that homeopaths and their supporters get an easy ride in the paper (outside of Dr Ben Goldacre’s columns) despite the fact that it is to medicine pretty much what astrology is to astronomy.
For information, this is the public information on the involvement of the three signatories with homeopathy:
They all use the weasel word “integrative” or “integrated”, which has come to be a warning sign for serious bullshit whenever it is associated with the word “medicine”. Homeopathy is fake medicine. It imitates the protocols and procedures of medicine (but not necessarily the ethics), while the theory behind it, and the remedies themselves, are as empty of real content as the magic in the Harry Potter books.
Filed under: badscience, pseudomedicine, pseudoscience, quackery, scepticism | Tagged: alternative medicine, CAM, complementary medicine, homeopathy, pseudomedicine, quacks, scepticism
