Sysiphus Speaks

actual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions

Which brings me to Complementary and alternative medicine from the Mayo Clinic, with the subtitle

You've heard the hype about complementary and alternative medicine. Now get the facts.

Given that they have an Integrative Medicine Department, I was wondering how they would spin 'the facts.'

The curriculum for the Doctorate program starts with Introduction to Evidence-Based Medicine and Critical Thinking and Reasoning in Clinical Practice. If taught correctly, there would be no need for the rest of the classes: Advanced TCM Diagnostic Techniques, Advanced Acupuncture and Moxibustion Therapy, Advanced Chinese Herbal Treatment as well as various 'Integrative' courses. It would save the student around $30,000 in tuition.

It never occurred to me in my training that measles, polio, mumps, and the rest of the preventable infectious pathogens would be anything but occasional curiosities, imported from counties where vaccination rates were low. Until this century that was true.

The naturalistic fallacy is probably more common in users of alternative medicine, but I can't find the proof. I went looking at all the surveys of alternative medicine use that proliferate like mushrooms after a rain, I could find none that correlated use of pseudo-medicines and various cognitive biases such as the naturalistic fallacy.

The clinical education of NDs is woefully inadequate. It occurs mostly in ND school-based clinics, where they are supervised by an ND faculty. The range of diseases and conditions they treat is limited and their exposure to patients not in ambulatory out-patient settings, such as nursing homes, hospitals, and rehabilitation centers, is practically nil. And they can go into practice immediately after they graduate from school, no residency required.

The discussion is that of how to interpret a p value.

There is a product called Immutides Spray that is supposed to boost the immune system.

From a prior plausibilty perspective, any positive effect from acupuncture is likely due to a combination of bias and poor study design.

But that never stops the Cochrane collaborative, who will run anything and everything through their grinder to produce a meta-analysis sausage. Unfortunately, unlike sausage, I often know what goes into the meta-analysis.

Acupuncuture is the rodent hair and insect parts the Bratwurst that is Acupuncture for treating acute ankle sprains in adults. . Can I beat a metaphor to death or what.

Doctors must take off their lab coats and engage the people of their communities and states. They must be willing to defend and spread the good news about science-based medicine. If doctors themselves are unwilling to defend medicine, how can we expect others to do so?