Quackery Then and Now

[HuckleB]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/quackery-then-and-now/

“The forces of graft and unrighteousness are peculiar to no country or clime, and they have their champions in the high places and the low. Until the people themselves are better educated concerning the danger and iniquity of quackery, they must be protected from the forces that prey. The popular understanding of these matters is becoming better every day, and, aided by proper laws, the time will come, perhaps, when quackery will be unprofitable.”

The above quote is from a recently published JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) article. I should say that it is republished, because it first appeared on June 8, 1912. The brief article outlines the issues surrounding the regulation of medical practice so as to protect the public from “quackery.” It is interesting to see that the issues faced 100 years ago are virtually identical (in broad brush strokes) to those we face today. Despite the fact that so much has changed in medicine over the last century, in this regard very little has changed.

To put this article into historical context, it was published just two years after the Flexner Report, generally recognized as the turning point in American and Canadian medical education when it truly embraced scientific and evidence-based practices. Mainstream medicine in 1912 was barely making the transition from being based upon tradition and authority to having scientific backing and genuine standards. Life expectancy in the US had just passed 50, up from a low of around 40 thirty years earlier. Phrenology was still practiced by mainstream psychiatrists and neurologists – although it was on the way out (having recently been refuted by scientific studies) and was increasingly being pushed to the fringe. The last purely homeopathic medical school in the US would not close until 1920. Patent medicines were still the norm, and the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act had only recently been enacted to establish some standards of safety in the medicine marketplace (this would essentially transform into the FDA in 1930).

...

In other words, the control of quackery is a matter of public education and effective regulation. That, in a nutshell, is exactly the agenda of Science-Based Medicine, the Institute for Science in Medicine, and other organizations dedicated today to opposing pseudoscience and quackery in health care. Our perspective tends to exist in a temporal bubble – we think that the conflicts of today are unique to us, and that we innovated the ideas we use to defend our causes. History, however, tells a different story. The conflict between reasonable standards in medicine and quackery is as old as medicine. It is no wonder that the notion of “eternal recurrence” is so common in literature and popular culture, from Peter Pan to Battlestar Galactica: “All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.”


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I know this will disliked by many, but the scientific process is quite democratic, and it's time to let it win out over propaganda.

[Celebration]

1. yeah, and maybe alternative practitioners will end up like Semmelweis

http://www.cutenemo.com/2010/01/washing-hands-before-surgery-story.html

[HuckleB]

3. If that's all you can offer as a defense of alternative BS, well....

... it's mind boggling.

Do I need to name the logical fallacy?

[MineralMan]

4. Seems quite unlikely to me.

More probably, they'll end up like those who ridiculed Semmelweis: long dead and forgotten.

But, hey, they can sprinkle sugar water on women who just gave birth, right? The water memory will kill the bacteria that cause puerperal fever. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Celebration]

5. Semmelweis is a perfect example

There were empirical differences in outcomes depending on whether surgeons washed their hands, but because there was no known mechanism at the time that could account for this, he was hugely ridiculed. Yet he was merely ahead of generally accepted scientific theory.

[MineralMan]

7. Not so. Semmelweis recognized that it was

a microbial invection, and recommended carbolic acid as a disinfectant. Your information is faulty.

He used the scientific method to isolate the cause of those infections, and then reasoned out a preventative measure. It worked marvelously well, but was ignored by doctors who refused to accept his findings.

There is an excellent book on the subject. I suggest reading it.

[Celebration]

8. and he wasn't believed

because it was not accepted by the scientific community at the time.

[HuckleB]

9. Can you count the logical fallacies you've offered as a way of defending quackery...?

And opposing actual science?

Goodness, gracious.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[longship]

6. Meh! My homeopathic remedies still work the same!

That is... Not at all.

Snake oil sucks. Quackery is ubiquitous. Wiki Hulda Clark for an example. They prey on the weakest, the most vulnerable. I hate them like the heat of a thousand suns.

Don't get me started about Jenny "I can eat boogers on MTV" McCarthy and her galactically ignorant anti-vaccine lunacy.

Don't get me started about SCAM (supplementary complementary alternative medicine). There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine.

Check out the Science Based Medicine Blog for details.

Or the Skeptics Guide to the Universe the best skeptical podcast in the universe.