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Big Herba’s Research Deficit: Why It Isn’t About The Money

March 8th, 2011 by ErikDavis in Opinion, Quackery Exposed
1 Comment »

This is a guest post from Erik Davis of Skeptic North.

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Bankers, Buyouts & Billionaires: Why Big Herba’s Research Deficit Isn’t About The Money

It’s a scene from the blogosphere that’s become all too familiar. A skeptic challenges a natural health product for the lack of an evidentiary base. A proponent of that product responds that the skeptic has made a logical error — an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and in such a scenario it’s not unreasonable to rely on patient reporting and traditional uses as a guide. The skeptic chimes back with a dissertation on the limits of anecdotal evidence and arguments from antiquity — especially when the corresponding pharma products have a data trail supporting their safety and efficacy. The proponent responds that it’s unfair to hold natural health products to the same evidentiary standard, because only pharma has the money to fund proper research, and they only do so for products they can patent. You can’t patent nature, so no research into natural health products gets done.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t a scene from an actual blog. The participants are way too civil, the arguments too coherent, and no one has been compared to Hitler. But it’s not a straw man either (look here, here, and here for recent examples), merely a distillation of an argument I’ve seen made repeatedly — that the deck has been stacked by Big Pharma, which has set a research bar that the much poorer natural health industry can’t possibly meet given the costs and lack of financial upside.

In my observation, skeptics don’t often have a good response to this argument beyond their basic scientific disposition toward only making assertions based on positive evidence. Typically, that’s not a disposition shared by the proponent, and thus they simply agree to disagree (read: trade barbs until the thread peters out from fatigue). Yet this need not be a purely philosophical debate. After all, there’s a testable premise embedded in this disagreement — that the natural health industry isn’t rich enough to sustain proper research. Is that true? Read more »

Homeopathy: Why Is The Canadian Government Regulating A Scam?

January 17th, 2011 by Dr. Val Jones in News, Quackery Exposed
1 Comment »

Regular readers of the Better Health blog are familiar with the shoddy science behind homeopathy (an outdated system of “medical” treatment that relies on water dilution and shaking to ‘”strengthen” the effects of drugs). But because homeopathic placebos have been marketed so successfully (even receiving paid endorsements from hockey teams), the Ontario government has decided to regulate homeopathic practices.

In this terrific news exposé, reporters ask if it’s appropriate for the government to regulate health scams. In doing so, are they not lending credibility to modern-day snake oil? Check out these videos and let me know what you think. Is there a roll for government in regulating homeopathy?

Part 1:  

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Bad Science And The Gift Of Medical Skepticism

January 6th, 2011 by Berci in Research, Video
1 Comment »

Discover magazine had an article about Dr. Ben Goldacre, a British physician who writes for The Guardian, is the author of the new book “Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks,” and is considered a gift to skepticism. His column is also called “Bad Science,” and he recently gave a short and interesting talk about non-evidence-based medicine at the Pop!Tech conference held in Camden, Maine. Enjoy!

Ben Goldacre Talks Bad Science from PopTech on Vimeo.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*