Quackwatch’s Hatred of Acupuncture.

Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD

Progressive Radio Network, November 18, 2019

 

The author of the Quackwatch entry for Acupuncture entitled “Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong and Chinese Medicine” is Quackwatch founder Stephen Barrett. It represents Quackwatch’s official position on acupuncture that has served the purposes of Skeptic organizations, including Skeptic editors on Wikipedia, for falsely discrediting this ancient Chinese medical practice. Barrett is sometimes careful to personally call medical practices that have a large following as pseudoscientific. Rather he is fond of referencing others who are more adversely critical. He quotes Harriet Hall (a sitting member of the Quackwatch board of science advisers and one of the four editors of the Quackwatch-related Science Based Medicine blog) to draw the association between acupuncture and “quackery.”

“Acupuncture studies have shown that it makes no difference where you put the needles. Or whether you use needles or just pretend to use needles (as long as the subject believes you used them). Many acupuncture researchers are doing what I call Tooth Fairy science: measuring how much money is left under the pillow without bothering to ask if the Tooth Fairy is real.”

 

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