Quack science.

• Author: Sampson, Wallace
• Position: Letter to the Editor

Congratulations on Chris Mooney's expose of the "alternative medicine" story, a set of events unprecedented in medicine, and the greatest challenge to science since 1910. For the first time in a century, political pressures and mystical beliefs reached a critical mass, driving unnecessary research and promoting ideologically-based medicine. We have more negative studies disproving the most popular alternative methods than for any standard method proven ineffective. The reason the movement persists, as Mr. Mooney and Dr. Novella point out, is that advocates will not relieve themselves of their beliefs, no matter how much negative research surrounds them. And the public gets deluded into following them.

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