Integrative medicine and the point of credulity

Avraham Fried writes "Besides, I will add that if I would be a
researcher or an academic member of Durham University, I would be a bit
concerned by the fact that on my campus there is a researcher who writes
to international scientific committees about his research he never made
and about results he never found and that never existed, while he signs
his letter with the campus's official title.

Avraham Fried also writes "These issues have nothing to do with the
legitimate debate on the subject of integrative and complementary or
alternative medicine."

In the first statement, my response is that I would be concerned if I
had a colleague who was sufficiently gullible to accept such obvious
nonsense as offered by Prof. McLachlan. Furthermore, to the second point,
it 'is' an issue of "legitimate" debate when it is determined that those
"disciplines" have no filter for claptrap. What kind of 'debate' do you
have between science and nonsense? Hint: the scientific literature tells
us that acupuncture, cupping and reflexology are all nonsense.

How does one improve medicine by integrating bogus methods?

I don't think this argument from the conference organisers stands up
to much scrutiny (much like most CAM). They basically say "because the
author was well-known in his field (embryology) we didn't scrutinise his
abstract at all." Can you see any other field of medicine doing that? If
the embryologist professor had tried to submit similar nonsense to a
conference on, say, hand surgery do you think the organisers would have
been so overawed by his record as to not apply some critical thought to
it?

They also make a big thing about Prof McLachlan's ability to tell the
'truth' and are willing to accuse him of fraud. He did tell the truth in
his article - that he made up the abstract to (successfully) highlight the
laxity of CAM regulation.

The bottom line is this is the christmas issue and we all look
forward to it with relish as a bit of light banter in the world of
academic writing that can sometimes be a creative-free earnest-heavy zone.
It might have sat more easily if the author had declared his playful role
in his application but some of the humour is seeing sensible people trying
to cope with what is obviously tosh - or should I say tush. Avaham Fried
delivered an excellent repost(erior) and I hope we can continue the
tradition of dialogue between our different perspectives.

I believe the Rapid Response of Avaham Fried, Director, the Jerusalem
International Convention on Integrative Medicine needs to be published in
the paper journal on the basis of the merits of his counter-arguments and
responses to McLachlan's piece. In light of what Fried is saying, the
original piece almost reads like slander.

I can understand what Brett L. Kinsler means when he says that "we
all feel a little bit sick for participating in the joke." I certainly do.

Prashant Sharma