This is a short guide, adapted and expanded from the list published here. It isn’t exactly a scientific review. but it seems to me to sum up most of what a patient needs to know. At least it is more accurate than HRH’s guide.
The guide has now been reproduced in the Financial Times (apart from the new last item). Perhaps it will even be read by more people than the original.
- Homeopathy: giving patients medicines that contain no medicine whatsoever.
- Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety.
- Acupuncture: a rather theatrical placebo, with no real therapeutic benefit in most if not all cases.
- Chiropractic: an invention of a 19th century salesmen, based on nonsensical principles, and shown to be no more effective than other manipulative therapies, but less safe.
- Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland.
- Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims about diet in order to sell you unnecessary supplements.
- Spiritual healing: tea and sympathy, accompanied by arm-waving.
- Reiki: ditto.
- Angelic Reiki. The same but with added “Angels, Ascended Masters and Galactic Healers”. Excellent for advanced fantasists.
- Colonic irrigation: a rectal obsession that fails to rid you of toxins which you didn’t have in the first place.
- Anthroposophical medicine: followers of the mystic barmpot, Rudolf Steiner, for whom nothing whatsoever seems to strain credulity
- Alternative diagnosis: kinesiology, iridology, vega test etc, various forms of fraud, designed to sell you cures that don’t work for problems you haven’t got.
- Any alternative ‘therapist’ who claims to cure AIDS or malaria: agent of culpable homicide.
- Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you have no evidence. Appeals to alternative practitioners because truth is irrelevant.
The last of these was inspired by Jack of Kent, the Prince among lawyers.
There is a translation into Spanish here.
And a translation into Flemish here.
The guide appeared as a sidebar in an article in the Financial Times
26 responses so far ↓
1 DocBee // May 25, 2009 at 09:38
Inspirational! I haven’t chuckled so much in ages.
2 NICE falls for Bait and Switch by acupuncturists and chiropractors: it has let down the public and itself // May 25, 2009 at 16:25
[...] Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh (follow it here) led to an addition to DC’s Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. (In the face of such tragic behaviour, one has to be able to [...]
3 A Beginner’s Guide To Reiki « jdc325’s Weblog // May 25, 2009 at 18:41
[...] reflexology, and other treatments. It’s also (in updated form) on Improbable Science here. Pass it on. Tell your friends. Tweet it, add it to delicious, link to it from your blog and digg [...]
4 Patients’ Guide to magic medicine in the Financial Times // Jun 3, 2009 at 09:18
[...] published the entire ‘Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine‘ as a sidebar on page [...]
5 En kort guide til alternativ medisin | unfiltered perception // Jun 3, 2009 at 21:32
[...] DC’s Improbable Science har postet en fin oversikt over alternative behandlingsformer. Denne inneholder vel stort sett det du trenger å [...]
6 Simon Singh will appeal! Keep the Libel Laws out of Science // Jun 4, 2009 at 00:02
[...] Put briefly, Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you have no evidence. Appeals to alternative practitioners because truth is irrelevant [...]
7 Chiropractic is stupid « The Cock Bucket // Jun 5, 2009 at 10:59
[...] DC has a lovely overview of alternative medicine in general in his Patients Guide to Magic Medicine. [...]
8 Alan Bird // Jun 14, 2009 at 14:21
There’s no mention of osteopathy – I had the impression this was another crank belief system. Or am I wrong?
9 BMJ defends freedom of speech (but censors my comment) // Jul 16, 2009 at 07:59
[...] Prompted by that prince among lawyers known as Jack of Kent there was a new addition to my ‘Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine‘, as featured in the Financial Times. Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when [...]
10 Keep Libel Laws Out of Science: The Simon Singh Affair « Science-Based Pharmacy // Jul 18, 2009 at 00:45
[...] blog, DC Science, has written extensively about this case. He maintains a fantastic list called the Patient’s Guide to Magic Medicine. He just added a new term to the list: Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you [...]
11 Liberal Conspiracy » More Bad Science from the Greens // Aug 11, 2009 at 17:44
[...] quackery, specifically nutrition, advanced nutrition, herbalism – which Prof David Colquhoun defines as ‘giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and [...]
12 Mea Culpa // Sep 13, 2009 at 17:01
[...] I can’t count how many times this accusation has been thrown at me by advocates of magic medicine. Oddly enough none of them has actually taken the trouble to find out where my research [...]
13 peter.burgess // Oct 24, 2009 at 14:25
This would make an excellent teatowel.
14 A consumer guide to boswellox « Mental Nurse // Feb 28, 2010 at 15:13
[...] guide to boswellox By zarathustra, on May 4th, 2009 Thanks to Marine Snow for pointing out this helpful list of complementary and alternative therapies that you may wish to explore, request and pay large sums [...]
15 University of Buckingham does the right thing. The Faculty of Integrated Medicine has been fired. // Apr 1, 2010 at 22:02
[...] of these advisory board members are the usual promoters of magic medicine. But three of them seem quite surprising,Stafford Lightman, Nigel Sparrow and Nigel [...]
16 Hot and cold herbal nonsense from Napier University Edinburgh: another course shuts. // Jun 22, 2010 at 21:58
[...] In the materials that I was sent, I see nothing to make me believe that herbalism is being taught as science. On the contrary, it all seems to confirm the definition given in the Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. [...]
17 Galdralækningar: Handbók fyrir sjúklinga « Eiður Alfreðsson // Jun 23, 2010 at 17:50
[...] er þýtt og staðfært úr grein eftir einn af mínum uppáhalds bloggurum, David [...]
18 Why the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) can’t succeed (in which DC gets fired) // Aug 11, 2010 at 17:30
[...] Patients’ guide to Magic medicine [...]
19 The true nature of Steiner (Waldorf) education. Mystical barmpottery at taxpayers’ expense. Part 1 // Oct 6, 2010 at 21:32
[...] Patients’ guide to Magic medicine [...]
20 Scandal of the University of Wales and the Quality Assurance Agency // Nov 15, 2010 at 21:46
[...] them would be rather reckless. They fall right into the description of any herbal medicine, in the Patients’ Guide, "Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown [...]
21 The A to Z of the wellbeing industry: From angelic reiki to patient-centred care // Apr 16, 2011 at 11:27
[...] is this confusion that forms the basis of the bait and switch tactics (see also here) used by magic medicine advocates to gain the respectability that they crave but rarely [...]
22 Which? magazine: “…high street nutritional therapists are a waste of money” // Jan 16, 2012 at 01:01
[...] Patients’ Guide to magic medicine defined “Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims [...]
23 An A-Z of Alternative Medicine « Stuff And Nonsense // Jan 22, 2012 at 19:15
[...] shorter guide can be seen here on David Colquhoun’s Improbable Science [...]
24 David Colquhoun, Twitter-addicted scourge of scientific quackery – The Guardian | News Tips Live // Apr 21, 2013 at 18:36
[...] Colquhoun. “I tend,” he says, with a guffaw, “to give them a version of my ‘Patient’s Guide to Magic Medicine‘, which was originally written as a response to the witterings of the Prince of Wales on the [...]
25 What's going on at RationalWiki // May 4, 2013 at 20:07
[...] ingredients, supplement companies are just unregulated drug companies selling untested drugs. As David Colquhon puts it, they constitute “an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness [...]
26 A curious letter from David Tredinnick MP, the government’s resident medical loon // May 15, 2013 at 20:53
[...] much like real doctors have, despite the fact that they make money by selling sick people "an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety" (as quoted recently in the House of [...]
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