British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Enquiry, Evidence and Facts: An Interdisciplinary Conference
How the alternative therapy industry promotes the public misunderstanding of evidence
Dr Ben Goldacre
Homeopathy represents the perfect model for examining evidence based medicine. These are sugar pills which perform no better than placebo, but are perceived as effective by the public and some health professionals for interesting reasons. The same is true of many alternative therapies, and this industry as a whole uses the same tactics as the pharmaceutical industry to confuse its lay audience, who are even more poorly educated in critical appraisal than doctors. They misrepresent trial data. They conflate in vitro lab data with evidence of efficacy. They conflate theoretical mechanism of action with evidence of efficacy. They conflate non-intervention, observational data with proof of efficacy. They recruit - and pay - opinion formers. They cherry pick. They medicalise. Their claims are frequently covered uncritically in the media, and in the aggregate this undermines the publics' understanding of what it means for there to be an evidence base for an intervention. Ben Goldacre is a medical doctor who writes the Bad Science column in the Guardian, examining the claims of scaremongering journalists, quack health products, pseudoscientific cosmetics adverts, and evil multinational pharmaceutical corporations. He has recently won awards for Best Science Feature, Best Freelance Health Journalist, the Heatlhwatch award, and the Royal Statistical Society's inaugural award for statistical excellence in journalism. His work is archived at www.badscience.net and also appears in the BMJ, New Statesman, Time Out and Radio 4.