The Quacks Fight Back

 
Last week David Colquhuon gave a talk sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry and the University of Toronto Secular Alliance [Quackery in Academia] [Science in an Age of Endarkenment].

During his visit to Toronto he was interviewed by Michael Enright of the CBC Radio show The Sunday Edition. The interview was broadcast on Sunday, January 27th. As you might imagine, there were lots of comments and emails and a second show was required in order to restore some "balance." The second show was broadcast on Sunday, February 3rd [The Sunday Edition].

A stirred-up hornet's nest is a mild disturbance compared to the firestorm we unleashed last week over my conversation with Dr. David Colquhoun. Dr. Colquhuon is a gangly, pipe-puffing British pharmacologist who thinks all alternative medicine, all of it, is a fraud perpetrated by quacks. But he went further, somehow suggesting that those who believe in it probably supported Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and the Ayatollah Khomeini. He pooh-poohed acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, even vitamins.

Well, his remarks opened the floodgates of listener mail, screaming for Dr. Colquhoun's head on a pike. In a few moments, alternative or complimentary medicine strikes back. With the help of two experts, we will try to give the other side of contentious Colquhounism.

Two quacks were required to restore the rift in the space-time continuum caused by too much rationality: Dugald Seely of the Canadian College of Natrupathic Medicine and Dr. Kien Trinh of the DeGroote School of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton. It's shocking that one of them is from a genuine medical school: he's in a Ph.D. program.

You can listen to the podcast on the CBC website but I can assure you that you won't learn anything new. There's some important issues here. Here's one of the letters that was read on the show ...

Most proponents of alternative medicine do not deny the place of Western medicine. It is too bad that for some the respect is not reciprocal.
                                 Dale Jack

The logic here is that just because some quacks are able to recognize the value of evidence-based medicine then it follows that scientists should extend the same respect to quacks who promote non-evidence-based medicine.

It's a mark of how silly our society has become that such an argument even merits a response. It would be like saying that the most outlandish ideas deserve equal time as long as their proponents are respectful to the proponents of reality.

Here's a similar comment ...

He [Colquhoun] is the very representative of the darkness of the scientific method. He is one of the very ilk that would have driven the new hand-washing surgeons to suicide. As a past-President of the Complementary and Integrative Physicians of B.C., I do hope you will spend the next few weeks in contrition—to re-establish your usually balanced and worthwhile reputation.
                                 Steven Faulkner

Coming from a quack, I guess we shouldn't be surprised at the "logic" exhibited here. The first example is the old saw about truly brilliant innovators who were originally scoffed at. The idea is that because one person took on the scientific establishment and won, it follows logically that all renegades must be right. Conversely, scientists who scoff at quacks must be wrong.

No, this does not compute. As they say, people laughed at Galileo but they also laughed at Bozo the clown.

The second example of silly logic is the concept of "fairness" and "balance" that is used time and time again by quacks and IDiots. Apparently it doesn't matter how stupid your ideas are, society demands that you be given a hearing if you are attacked. Well I've got news for all you quacks out there. You don't get to promote your crazy ideas just because you have them. There's no rule that says you have to be given a platform on public radio just because you've been criticized.

If you want to be heard go the Hyde Park on a Sunday morning. Take a soapbox.

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