We live in a time where health-related pseudoscience and misinformation are rampant and causing real damage. THE pandemic clearly stated this fact. Pseudoscience and disinformation have notably been able to spread under the guise of “alternative medicine”. That is to say by definition, alternative medicine encompasses health practices that exist outside of conventional health care. In reality, these approaches to health are either unproven or disproven, and they are often pseudo-scientific in terms of their theoretical justifications and the set of arguments on which they are based.
While regulated health professionals, including psychologists, are required to promote and practice evidence-based health care, as dictated by their ambitious codes of ethics and legal standards of practice, people can obtain and do obtain information about their health from sources other than healthcare professionals, for example via social networks and celebrities. Unfortunately, celebrities often have a large platform from which they can amplify pseudoscience and misinformation. And some are very powerful.
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Ernst biography
This brings us to the heir to the British royal family’s throne, Prince Charles, who has been the most persistent champion of alternative medicine in the United Kingdom and perhaps even the world. To better understand exactly how Prince Charles came to fight for alternative medicine and its associated societal impact, I just finished reading Dr. Edzard Ernst’s fascinating new book, Charles, the alternative prince, an unauthorized biography.
For those less familiar with Dr. Ernst, he is a retired physician and scientist and is widely considered one of the world’s leading experts in alternative medicine. He earned this title in part through his experience in alternative medicine as a patient, clinician and scientist. According to a recent analysis, it has been class as the most cited researcher in the “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” category.
Not only does Dr. Ernst’s expertise make him the perfect person to write a book that details Prince Charles’s love affair with alternative medicine, but what makes this book so interesting is that Dr. Ernst also details the how their respective timelines converge. For example, in 1993, Dr. Ernst was appointed president of the complementary medicines at the University of Exeter, responsible for scientifically investigating all aspects of alternative medicine. Prince Charles was aware of the position and even marginally involved in its creation – he also participated in its dissolution 20 years later.
The structure of the book follows Prince Charles’s alternative medicine activities in roughly chronological order. Since the 1980s, Prince Charles has made vigorous efforts to improve the image of alternative medicine, make alternative therapies more accessible to the general public, lobby for financial coverage of alternative medicine, and influence politicians to gain his support. In the book, whenever a new type of alternative medicine is discovered, Dr. Ernst incisively contrasts Prince Charles’s perceptions with the scientific evidence available at the time. As such, most chapters are divided into four parts: (1) a brief introduction to the subject of alternative medicine, (2) Prince Charles’ perspective, (3) an overview of the evidence, and (4) a comment on the consequences.
In particular, the “evidence” section of each chapter provides a valuable and concise overview of the current state of evidence for a variety of alternative medicine approaches, such as osteopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine and homeopathy, among others.
Propaganda tactics
The least explicit – yet equally important – layer of the book is its ability to highlight various propaganda tactics used to bolster alternative medicine, such as the reliance on pseudo-scientific journals and logical fallacies (e.g., making appeal to nature, appeal to tradition) to cajole the public. For example, at least two chapters are devoted to helping people understand the misleading nature of “integrative medicine,” which is a rebranding approach that seeks to integrate alternative medicine with conventional health care to give it a veneer of legitimacy. scientist. Dr. Ernst describes how integrative medicine can endanger public health and deceive patients, for example via the bait-and-switch tactic of offering evidence-based treatments (e.g. exercise) and then switching to promoting unsupported, pseudo-scientific treatments (e.g. , homeopathy).
After reading the book, I was both surprised and pleased to learn that, despite Prince Charles’s status and influence, most of his lobbying efforts to promote alternative medicine for more than half a year -century ended in failure. was always too strong to overcome. However, unfortunately, it is the less tangible aspects of the widespread promotion of alternative medicine that can have equally disastrous consequences due to the spread of misinformation. Indeed, if the pandemic has had a silver lining, it is that it has highlighted the dangers of tolerating a culture that allows pseudoscience to go unchecked. Dr. Ernst’s new book is a must-read for those interested in how pseudoscience, masked as alternative medicine, can be unmasked.
