a convenient truth

Apparently, It is unscientific to pour wholesale scorn on complementary medicine. Catchy title, you have to agree. After you’ve read the article you might find it’s URL amusing too.

Of course pouring scorn, wholesale or retail, isn’t directly a scientific activity. “It is unscientific to eat poached salmon” is as true a statement, but I guess rather less encouraging if you’ve got a word limit and a deadline.

The thrust of this offering is pretty startlingly original. The author’s premise is that complementary medicine is getting a really bad press from scientists, and that this is unscientific. She goes on at some length to say that the reason it’s unscientific to criticise complementary medicine is that complementary medicine is a load of rubbish. Yep, apparently complementary medicine has no evidence to support it, and most rational people would agree that it’s nonsense and therefore it’s unscientific to criticise it.

This is a use of the word ‘unscientific’ I’ve not been previously acquainted with.

The author, reasonably, says that lots of people have been treated successfully using complementary medicine and that this is due to the placebo effect. If you’ve seen the same claims made about Prozac, you’ll know that the placebo effect can be massive.

Not only can placebos induce things like reduction in pain, which seems obviously possible, but it can induce strong physical changes in the way the body behaves. The placebo effect can do all sorts of startling things, and this has been validated by experiment.

She also says that complementary medicine works because it’s pleasant. Reflexology, for example, involves having your feet massaged. This is nice. Having nice things done to you makes you feel better. This sounds pretty reasonable to me too - having your feet massaged is indeed very nice, and if you are unwell you are likely to appreciate it.

So, she says, complementary medicine works because it exploits the placebo effect and it makes you feel good.

Do either of these things make it unscientific to criticise it for being wrong? No, of course not. The purpose of science is to determine the truth as far as it can be tested experimentally. Is the author really suggesting that science should see that having your feet massaged is pleasant and back off? Or even, seeing the placebo effect deployed successfully that they should retire and investigate something else? That’s just bizarre.

Surely those being treated deserve more than this. I am rather less certain than the author that all complementary medicine is rubbish. Some of it is clearly transparent nonsense (homeopathy, I’m looking at you), but some of it could have more to it, and deserves further study.

Furthermore, there are some clear dangers in ignoring complementary therapy. I don’t see any aromatherapists in ambulances, and you shouldn’t see them anywhere near primary cancer care either. If people choose complementary therapy instead of science-based medicine in areas where they have a treatable problem then they could die or suffer completely unnecessarily.

Finally It’s quite possible these treatments have side-effects. The pat claims by some that complementary treatments can’t have side effects is a bizarre admission from those touting them that they probably do nothing. Certainly homeopathy is unlikely to have any side effects, but some herbal treatments use powerful drugs that can be dangerous. Patients deserve to know the facts about these treatments.

If you want to treat people with placebos, then do so. That’s fine - it works even if you tell people it’s a placebo (although it works better if you tell them it was expensive). But to claim that it is unscientific to investigate something is just dumb. What the author really means is that it is morally reprehensible to discourage people from treatments that might help them.

There is more grounding to this argument, even if she doesn’t understand that’s what she’s really saying. But even here I have to disagree. This is the same claim that’s often made about religious faith - that it’s good for you, and therefore that you should have faith. Faith makes you a better, happier person. I’m not going to debate this, or even draw your attention to the bizarre logical flaws in it, because it’s completely irrelevant. If it is a pack of lies it deserves to be exposed as such whether it makes you a better person or not. There are many practices and beliefs that might be beneficial, but how do we ever progress if we accept this as sufficient?

Believing the sun only comes up each morning because the king does a magic dance is probably quite good for you but IT IS NOT TRUE. Sorry. It just isn’t.

Throughout history conservatives have used this argument to defend the status quo, that even if it’s wrong it’s good for you, and it’s just plain unacceptable. Not only that, it’s incredibly patronising - the idea that somehow we know it’s rubbish but we’d better keep it quiet from them, the unwashed masses who are unable to cope with the truth.

UPDATE: I think I must be telepathic: PhD girl is killed by Chinese treatment