0000000000535027

AUTHOR

Edzard Ernst

showing 2 related works from this author

Dismantling the rhetoric of alternative medicine: Smokescreens, errors, conspiracies, and follies

2017

Alternative medicine is popular, and one of the reasons for this phenomenon is that it is relentlessly being promoted with the use of a wide range of fallacies, arguments which appear to be logic and true but which turn out on closer inspection to be illogical and false. In this article, I use my experience in alternative medicine research to discuss some of the most commonly employed fallacies. I conclude that they are used by proponents of alternative medicine to mislead the public such that even the most extravagant absurdities appear plausible. Collectively these fallacies constitute attacks upon rationality and progress in healthcare.

medicine.medical_specialtyMultidisciplinaryHistory and Philosophy of SciencePovertyOrder (business)media_common.quotation_subjectPolitical scienceRhetoricAlternative medicinemedicinemedia_commonLaw and economicsMètode Revista de difusió de la investigació
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Dismantling yhe rhetoric of alternative medicine : smokescreens, errors, conspiracies, and follies

2018

Alternative medicine has a high social prevalence, being promoted by well organized groups that have developed an intricate rhetoric in order to self-justify in the absence of evidence. This article will analyse some of these arguments, some of their fallacies ??ad populum, ad ignorantiam??, other styles of reasoning ??conspiracy theories?? and other misconceptions of scientific concepts ??placebo effect, scientific authority. The objective will be to highlight the poverty of the rhetoric of proponents of alternative medicine, with special emphasis on the dangers for the consumer.

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