Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9083
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Journal Article
Spurgeon D.
UK universities offer degrees in 'pseudoscience', Nature article says
BMJ 2007 Mar 31; 334:(7595):659
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7595/659-d
Abstract:
A subject that many researchers see as a pseudoscience is achieving scientific status within the British education system, says a news report in the science journal Nature (2007:446;352-3, doi: 10.1038/446352a).
In an accompanying commentary (pp 373-4, doi: 10.1038/446373a), David Colquhoun, of University College London’s pharmacology department, says, “The least that one can expect of a bachelor of science (BSc) honours degree is that the subject of the degree is science. Yet in December 2006 the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service advertised 61 courses for complementary medicine, of which 45 are BSc honours degrees.
“Most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is not science because the vast majority of it is not based on empirical evidence. Homeopathy, for example, has barely changed since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is much more like religion than science. Worse still, many of the doctrines of CAM, and quite a lot . . .
