In Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, M.D., set out to analyze the scientific literature on acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine, and a host of other modalities of so-called alternative and complementary medicine. The book begins with a long, fascinating chapter about the history of medicine and [...]]]>

In Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, M.D., set out to analyze the scientific literature on acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine, and a host of other modalities of so-called alternative and complementary medicine. The book begins with a long, fascinating chapter about the history of medicine and the emergence of the modern, evidence-based approach to medicine—i.e., conventional, Western, or allopathic medicine. Their stated purpose is to keep an open mind while applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to popular alternative modalities. Their backgrounds as medical outsiders and the careful, measured language of the introduction gave this skeptical reader confidence that the authors would be able to satisfy this goal.

But in my case, Singh and Ernst were preaching to the choir. I listen regularly to several podcasts that focus on science and skepticism (e.g., QuackCast and The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe) and I follow medical news and blogs (e.g., Science‑Based Medicine). So I probably have a better idea of the current medical consensus on some of these modalities than most members of the general public. I was not surprised by their conclusions, which found most alternative modalities to fall somewhere in the range between barely useful and downright dangerous.

I know a lot of alt-med True Believers, though, and I fear that Singh and Ernst are overly optimistic about the willingness of the proponents of alternative medicine to rely on science as the best way of understanding the world. Any sensible person who’s willing to spend 10 minutes googling “homeopathy” can figure out pretty quickly that this particular form of “medicine” has absolutely no plausible mechanism, and yet Americans spent $1.5 billion on homeopathic remedies in 2000. I suspect that believers in complementary and alternative medicine don’t want to know what science has to say about these modalities, because they don’t know enough about science to evaluate its conclusions. I would enthusiastically prescribe Trick or Treatment for anyone who’s interested in the facts about alternative treatment modalities. But I make no promises that it will cure the lack of intellectual curiosity that infects the alt-med True Believer.

“Did you know the happiest [...]]]> I received an e-mail today from Patty Gras at KUHT (Houston PBS). She’s a producer and the host of a “health and lifestyle” show called Living Smart. The show features topics related to health, alternative medicine, diet, self-improvement, and so forth. Here’s what she has to say about an upcoming show:

“Did you know the happiest man on the planet is a Buddhist monk? Scientists checked his brain waves and found him to be the most joyful person on earth, so we decided to talk to another monk, Master Jian Xiao Shih, so he could share some of the secrets to happiness!

“Master Shih of the Chung Tai Zen center of Houston will share the art of happiness this Sunday at 3 p.m.”

Now, let me start off by saying that I like Patty Gras. She’s a talented singer—I used to enjoy going to hear her group Barandúa, which played music in a variety of Latin American folk styles, and I’ve also heard her perform with a group called Quartus and as part of a duo. She seems smart, cool, liberal, and keen on social-justice issues that I care about. But sometimes her show ventures too far into the area that I like to call “woowoo,” and the promo above is a prime example.

Let’s take a look at the claim she makes in this e-mail message. “The happiest man on the planet is a Buddhist monk.” Hm. Right off the bat, my hyperbole detector is registering dangerous readings. The happiest man in the world? By what measure? I want to ask. And then she’s right there with an explanation: “Scientists checked his brain waves and found him to be the most joyful person on earth.”

Wow. There’s a lot of information in that statement. If this is true, it’s big science news that hasn’t made it into any of the science blogs or magazines I’ve been reading. Have scientists really found a way to use brain waves to detect joy? Is happiness an emotion that can be measured by bioelectric activity? I am inclined toward skepticism, but I’m entirely willing to believe that this assertion is based on research about which I’ve never read. (I’ll get to googling at my earliest opportunity.)

But my skepticism rises to an irresistible level when I get to “…and found him to be the most joyful person on earth.” Even if I accept as a given that scientists have found a way to measure happiness, is she asking us to believe that they’ve found a way to measure brain waves remotely for everyone on the planet? I, for one, have not had my happiness brain waves measured yet. At least not that I know of.

Is this merely careless language? Or is it careless thinking? I almost hope it’s just a poor representation of an inexact understanding of some real findings of some real scientific research. But how can an intelligent person put forward an assertion that’s so ridiculous on its face? How much credulity can one successful professional broadcaster possess?

I worry, though, that there’s something worse going on here, which is a disturbing disregard for the very nature of science. Science is about evidence—about observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses. And although I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should be expected to test and verify any claim that’s presented as having a scientific basis, I believe that intelligent people—especially intelligent people who make it their business to communicate with the public about important issues—have an obligation to apply a measure of skepticism to such claims. In other words, if you’re planning to go on television and say, “Scientists have proven this thing I’m telling you about,” then you have a responsibility to find out exactly what the scientists had to say, and then to present it to the public in a way that honestly represents the science involved.

In fact, let’s make it a rule. Why not? We have FCC regulations governing decency and obscenity, why shouldn’t we have one simple rule about scientific truth: If you make a claim on television or the radio and you invoke the name of science, you should be required by law to cite your sources and provide an honest statement of what the research proves.

And if it turns out that there’s no real science behind the claims, then journalists with integrity have a responsibility to present that information, too. Or come clean and say, “I just like the idea that this Buddhist monk is the happiest person on the planet.”

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick

Today I had lunch with an old friend—an intelligent woman in her late thirties, the executive director of a thriving arts organization. We met at a vegan [...]]]> How open should an open mind be? What are the limits of tolerance and understanding, and what happens to those limits as our knowledge of the natural world grows?

Today I had lunch with an old friend—an intelligent woman in her late thirties, the executive director of a thriving arts organization. We met at a vegan Indian buffet. Since our last meeting had been at a vegetarian restaurant she’d picked, I asked her a few questions about her vegetarianism. She said she hadn’t eaten any meat or fish for 12 years. I admired her commitment. I told her that although I’m attracted to the environmental, social, and health benefits of vegetarianism, I enjoy eating a moderate amount of meat too much to make the complete change in eating habits.

Later, I asked what I thought was an innocent question: Is there anywhere in Houston where one can learn to practice meditation in an environment free of religious influences? I’ve been interested in exploring meditation for its supposed health benefits—lower blood pressure and stress-related hormones—and in hopes of gaining some relaxation, focus, and clarity of thought. I want to learn a few meditation practices from experts—people who’ve practiced and experimented and studied the methods and techniques they teach. But as an atheist with a scientific/naturalistic approach to knowledge and understanding, I’m not particularly interested in any particular mythology or theology or scriptural tradition in support of meditation.

To my surprise, without even asking me to give any further explanation for my question, my friend went on the attack. She accused me of closing my mind to the possibilities of what the religious meditative traditions have to teach me.

I said, “I don’t want to spend a lot of time studying ancient sacred texts.”

She answered, “How can any time spent learning be wasted time?”

I tried to say something to the effect that there are a million other things to learn that are more interesting to me than the mythologies of gods and goddesses and revered and sainted teachers. She sputtered something about the duality she sensed in me, and some other things I couldn’t quite make sense of.

She went on to suggest that my irreligiosity was the product, somehow, of my Catholic upbringing. She didn’t explain how Catholicism led to my secular humanist worldview, and I didn’t get a chance to ask. I was too busy trying to defend myself against the suggestion that wanting to learn a little something about meditation without having to endure religious teaching or preaching somehow signifies that I’ve closed my mind.

With astonishingly few words, she communicated that I was an unenlightened soul, the product of a twisted religious formation that I’d obvious failed to transcend, some kind of pragmatist asshole who couldn’t think of any learning except in terms of the specific benefit I might gain from it. I didn’t defend myself very effectively. But I think that my friend eventually sensed that she’d hurt my feelings, or insulted my intellect, or trampled on my worldview. (She’d managed to do all three.) As she paid for my lunch—it was her turn—she offered to ask around and see what suggestions she might be able to give me about the meditation question.

I drove home from lunch feeling browbeaten, trivialized, and ashamed of what an incompetent defender of my worldview I am. I tried to think of better ways I might have explained my request.

“Say, for example, we agree that the Roman Catholic Church offers some valid and useful moral teachings. But you’re a non-Catholic. Do you go to Mass every Sunday to try to find the two minutes of valid moral teachings mixed in with 48 minutes of rituals, incantations, readings from ancient scripture, and bake-sale announcements? Or do you find some experts who’ve distilled the best of Catholic moral teaching, and learn from them?”

Maybe she wouldn’t agree on the basic premise of that line of reasoning. Let’s try something else: “Imagine I go to a Zen center where they teach Zen Buddhist meditation. Suppose 50 percent of the lesson is practical instruction in meditation techniques, and 50 percent is teaching about the history of Buddhist spirituality, or the life of the Buddha, or other religious content associated with Zen Buddhism. Is it unreasonable for me not to want to waste half my time learning information that has no relevance to my worldview?”

Is my worldview inherently closed-minded? If I limit myself to knowledge of the world that can be understood and tested and verified by the scientific method, does that make me some kind of bigot?

I got to thinking about a podcast I listened to yesterday. The show was Point of Inquiry, the radio show and podcast of the Center for Inquiry, a secular-humanist think tank. The show explores issues related to pseudoscience, the paranormal, alternative medicine, atheism, secular humanism, nonbelief, and so forth. In this particular show, host D. J. Grothe was interviewing Dr. Joe Nickell, a research fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly the Center for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). I love the committee’s work, which is reported in Skeptical Inquirer magazine. They investigate ghosts, UFO sightings, crop circles, Madonnas sighted in pieces of toast, and all sorts of other extraordinary claims.

Dr. Nickell was talking about his work, and about the notion of skeptical inquiry. He said that the most important thing is to keep an open mind. He said that we must be willing to do the work of skeptical inquiry, to look into the reality of any claim of the paranormal or supernatural, to study it with the tools of science, and to reach conclusions based upon the evidence we find. He criticized those who have already made up their mind: “There’s no such thing as ghosts. There’s no such thing as Bigfoot. There are no alien visitors.” He said that it’s important to test each claim individually.

I felt a [1000 words] little betrayed by his criticism of us unflinchingly skeptical folks. There I stood, accused of close-mindedness by someone whom I’d thought of as a staunch ally in the war against unreason! And then I ruminated on his argument some more, and I thought about what I take for granted. I take for granted that people who are doing work like his—applying science and reason to extraordinary claims—have my interests (and those of humanity as a whole) in mind. I assume—in recognition of his education, his stature in the field of paranormal investigation, the reputation of CSICOP and the Center for Inquiry—that I can trust him to do the investigating for me. My confidence in the scientific method as a way to obtain knowledge and my faith in people who have demonstrated over and over again that they are committed to the scientific worldview make it unnecessary for me to test every claim myself. If Joe Nickell has visited the house and determined that there’s no evidence that it’s haunted, I have “faith” that the house isn’t haunted.

And I can further extrapolate, from the enormous and convincing body of scientific knowledge on the subject, that no other houses are haunted either.

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick

As he lounged in the bathtub catching up on his reading, he considered the possibility that the entire trajectory of human evolution [...]]]> Professor Harlebut believed that hot water was the defining characteristic of human civilization. “It’s what separates us from the savages. From the beasts, no less!” he was often heard to say at cocktail parties.

As he lounged in the bathtub catching up on his reading, he considered the possibility that the entire trajectory of human evolution had been established by the temperature of the pool of slime where the first amino acids congregated. He was absolutely convinced that the puddle in question had been warm. He used the big toe of his right foot to twist the handle labeled H. He settled deeper into the sudsy water.

Suddenly, he scrambled to his feet, sloshing water across the white tile floor. “Good heavens!”

He swiped a faded, tattered towel across his back, blotted his bare scalp just enough so his glasses wouldn’t slip off his ears, and knotted the towel around his waist. He padded down the hall, leaving a trail of wet footprints to the study. He pulled several books off the shelves and dripped bathwater onto the dusty pages. He couldn’t lay his hands on the passage he was trying to recall. He thought maybe he’d read something in Titus Livius, or maybe it was Suetonius. Or was it somewhere in Gibbon?

“Nevertheless,” he thought, “I’m sure my reasoning is sound.”

None of his colleagues could dissuade him from the experiment. In view of his family’s longstanding relationship with the university, the department chair was not inclined to deny him the resources he requested. Accordingly, the Harlebut Primate Research Laboratory was remodeled at the university’s expense to include the finest state-of-the-art bathroom fixtures that anthropological-research money could buy. As soon as the updated facilities were ready for use, Professor Harlebut and his team of graduate students began teaching personal hygiene to the chimpanzees and orangutans.

The first stumbling block was persuading the animals that the bar soap was not a foodstuff. Although Professor H. considered it a step backward in the bathing arts, he grudgingly acceded to the suggestion to replace his preferred Cashmere Bouquet with an institutional pink powder—a soap for which the chimps had no appetite.

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick