Complementary medicine centres should be more critical, says Ernst

Too much research on complementary therapies is done by people who have already made up their minds, the first UK professor of complementary medicine has said. Edzard Ernst, who left his chair at Exeter University early after clashing with the Prince of Wales, told journalists at the Science Media Centre in London that, although more research into alternative medicines was now taking place, “none of the centres is anywhere near critical enough.”

That didn’t mean that no good research was being done in Britain and across Europe, he said. But it usually came from researchers with no axe to grind in alternative therapies, who moved into the …