"Treating evidence with contempt"

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2063

Published 13 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2063
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2063

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Alternatives to debate

"Treating evidence with contempt"

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For 15 years I have studied the effectiveness and safety oftreatments such as acupuncture and homeopathy. Often, the resultswere not what the proponents of these treatments had hoped for.One would have thought that this might lead to debate, furtherresearch, or even health policy changes. Sometimes it has, butrecently we have witnessed a new phenomenon. People or organisationspromoting highly questionable treatments are treating the evidencewith contempt and flex their legal muscle to have it their way.

The New Zealand Journal of Medicine recently published an articleshowing that most chiropractors use the title "doctor." Theargument was that this might mislead patients and cause harm.As a consequence, the chiropractors sought to silence the journalby threatening legal action.¹ Fortunately the attempt failed.

The Guardian was sued for libel by Matthias Rath. The paperhad exposed Rath’s strategy of convincing South Africa’sgovernment that . . . [Full text of this article]

Edzard Ernst, Laing chair of complementary medicine¹

¹ Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth PL6 8BU

Edzard.Ernst@pms.ac.uk

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