Pro-reason bloggers are doing a better job than scientists at challenging alternative medicine. Long may it continue
ALTERNATIVE medicine has never enjoyed such popularity and respect. Therapies once dubbed “pseudoscience” or “quackery” are now typically referred to as “alternative”, “complementary” or “holistic”. Practices that used to circulate on the fringes are now accepted as mainstream.
The rise of alternative medicine poses a problem for defenders of science. Many see the fightback as a lost cause. I don’t. I believe that the factors that allow quackery to prosper can and are being harnessed for a counter-revolution in defence of science.
In the past, those exploring alternative lifestyles joined groups of like-minded people and subscribed to countercultural magazines. They now participate in online communities and surf the internet, where they encounter alternative websites by the dozen, but also come across mainstream scientific viewpoints.
The web has proved to be a crucial mobilising instrument for pro-science activists. When the British Chiropractic Association sued writer Simon Singh for libel, his supporters used Twitter and Facebook to keep abreast of the case. A community of pro-science activists and bloggers has also sprung up. Their actions are not merely intellectual. Singh’s supporters flooded the British Chiropractic Association with complaints about individual chiropractors, all of which required investigation.
As British activist and physician Ben Goldacre wrote in 2009: “A ragged band of bloggers from all walks of life has, to my mind, done a better job of subjecting an entire industry’s claims to meaningful, public, scientific scrutiny than the media, the industry itself, and even its own regulator. It’s strange this task has fallen to them, but I’m glad someone is doing it, and they do it very, very well indeed.”
In other words, the defence of science is increasingly being undertaken by members of the public. Such defence was once conducted primarily by scholars; today the battle is often fought at an individual level via cut-and-thrust debate in blog postings.
This social phenomenon of “angry nerds” and “guerrilla bloggers”, dedicated to defending evidence-based medicine and challenging quackery, is important. Rather than relying on scientists to defend the boundaries of science, we are seeing a much more socially embedded struggle – a popular enlightenment project.
Can such a project work? Reasserting goals of progress through reason and evidence is one thing, but whether it has any effect remains an open question. How easy is it to persuade people through factual corrections?
JunkScience.com 