So called integrative medicine should not be used as a way of smuggling alternative practices into rational medicine by way of lowered standards of critical thinking. Failure to detect an obvious hoax is not an encouraging signhttp://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6979.full"...
Increasing concern has been expressed about the presence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) on the NHS. For instance, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recently reported critically on the evidence base for the use of homoeopathy in the NHS.1 Nationally and internationally, there has been a move to disguise the nature of CAM by renaming it “integrative medicine.”2 3 Of course, it is something of an insult to medical practitioners to suggest that they do not take into account their patients’ individuality, autonomy, and views as part of their daily practice. It is certainly a key tenet of evidence based medicine4 and to suggest that so called integrative medicine is somehow confined to the alternative world is a canard.
It is sometimes possible to test the status of a notion (the terms hypothesis and theory should be reserved for ideas that are related to at least some form of evidence) by a process of opposition. This involves testing the status of the notion by looking at the limits to which it can be pushed.5 Furthermore, there is an excellent tradition of testing research areas of dubious authenticity by means of a hoax. In 1996, Alan Sokal had a paper accepted in a cultural studies journal, in which he parodied postmodern philosophy and cultural studies by making a series of exaggerated, wrong, and meaningless statements about the potential progressive or liberatory epistemology of quantum physics in the style of the field.5 This he subsequently described in a book, bluntly called Intellectual Impostures.6 In the spirit of Sokal, therefore, I responded to a mass circulated email invitation to submit a paper to something called “The Jerusalem Conference on Integrative Medicine.”
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On 1 June 2010, I sent them the following invented nonsense: "I write to ask if you would be interested in a presentation on my recent work on integrative medicine. I am an embryologist by background, with an extensive publication record, in journals including Nature and the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and have written an award winning text book on medical embryology. Recently, as a result of my developmental studies on human embryos, I have discovered a new version of reflexology, which identifies a homunculus represented in the human body, over the area of the buttocks. The homunculus is inverted, such that the head is represented in the inferior position, the left buttock corresponds to the right hand side of the body, and the lateral aspect is represented medially. As with reflexology, the “map” responds to needling, as in acupuncture, and to gentle suction, such as cupping. In my studies, responses are stronger and of more therapeutic value than those of auricular or conventional reflexology. In some cases, the map can be used for diagnostic purposes."
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I fully accept that this is just one instance, relating to a particular conference. And conference abstracts are refereed less stringently than full papers. But I also believe that the idea I proposed was intrinsically and self evidently ridiculous. Whereas Sokal’s hoax parodied the incomprehensibility and reductio ad absurdum of some proponents of cultural studies’ approach to natural sciences, this particular hoax parodied the absurdity and credulity of so called integrative medicine. I do not believe that rational medicine could have been fooled with something so intrinsically ridiculous as in this case. Minimum standards of common sense should, I think, have led to a polite but firm rejection—or at least further inquiry. Alternative medicine is not noted for rigorous inquiry, for research designed to prove the null hypothesis, but rather accepts notions on face value. Therefore a face value test is fair.
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A full reading of the link is really necessary to get the full story.
Further assessment of this hoax can be found here:
Integrative Medicine is the Butt of a Sokal-Type Hoax
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=8954It is what it is.
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