Lying is one thing - suppressing facts, gaslighting, the whole lot. I agree - that’s bad and there should be ways to address it (although not always the Gvt’s problem… things like medical journals should return to doing that better than they currently do, and should not be pre-approved favorite-solution biased. I’m not at all convinced that more government regulation for the med-publishing industry is the solution.)
Lying is an entirely different topic than using a method of evaluation that is not appropriate or effective to the thing being measured. This is where you and I part company. I thing AMA-approved western-medicine oriented methods of evaluation are great for evaluating things where the controls can be effectively applied and the number of variables to be studied is very VERY small.
I think it does a VERY poor job of evaluating complex situations where there are many MORE variables and the ability to control and isoloate is low. This is necessarily the case in natural medicine where you are not isolating a single compound, or synthesizing it, but are studing a complex set of compounds in their natural matrix on a complex suite of biological symptoms, also in their biological matrix (people), and assessing the response of multiple systems as they interact and bounce off each other.
I think this is the problem with having a really good tool that you really like using. A hammer is an awesome tool. That doesn’t mean every problem is a nail.
I’ve watched construction pros like my hubby set and drive home 2" nails in 2 strokes, over and over, accurately, reliably, for hours with never a miss. He is a Master Hammer User. And in his hands, a hammer is a brilliantly effective tool.
However if he were using that hammer to join PVC pipe, it would be shattering left and right, and he might be inclined to conclude the PVC pipe was brittle, unreliable, entirely not suitable for the job of plumbing. Because, you know, it fails when using his Really Excellent Hammer with his Really Excellent Hammering Skills.
You have to have the right tool for the job.
You cannot effectively measure many of the things in the natural and alternate medical domains by standard AMA rules. It’s the wrong tool for the job.
Let me provide one more example.
I had an off-the-track thoroughbred horse we were retraining to be a hunter/jumper. He was a nervouse, high-strung fellow with chronic recurring back issues that radically shortened his gait and were significant enough that we sometimes couldn’t get him to move faster than a walk.
We tried rest, drugs, physical therapy, heat/cold, cortisone shots, and every other thing the western medicine trained veterinarian could offer. No significant progress. Limited temporary relief but no return to anything like full function EVER.
Finally we resorted to hocus pocus. We brought in an acupuncturist. They spent 40 minutes with him. For 3/4 of that time we saw… nothing. And then all of a sudden the muscles started to tremor, pop up, gave a massive rise, and then laid down into a NORMAL position for the first time in the years we’d owned him. This high-strung nervous horse gave a HUGE sigh, and went to doze off. When we walked him out of the treatment area, he literally was a different horse. ZERO evidence of any issues. All gait anomalies gone, all stiffness gone. He was calm, relaxed, and moving smoothly, and just as Nature Made Him To Be.
It was SPECTACULAR. It was something the vet had said COULD NOT BE DONE.
It’s worth noting that there is NO placebo effect in horses. You cannot convince them they feel better if they don’t. They do not recover because they believe in the vet or the meds.
And yet, studying accupuncture under western trial methods is not going to give you the same sort of results as if you were studying surgery, or western single-complex drugs. It’s the wrong tool.
So… now I’ve said that 4 or 5 different ways. I’m done talking about it.