Download Lectures on Biostatistics (1971). Corrected and searchable version of Google books edition
Download review of Lectures on Biostatistics (THES, 1973).
This is a short guide, adapted and expanded from the list published here. It isn’t exactly a scientific review. but it seems to me to sum up most of what a patient needs to know. At least it is more accurate than guide sponsored by HRH Prince Charles -the Quacktitioner Royal.
The guide has now been reproduced in the Financial Times (apart from the new last item). Perhaps it will even be read by more people than the original.
- Homeopathy: giving patients medicines that contain no medicine whatsoever.
- Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety.
- Acupuncture: a rather theatrical placebo, with no real therapeutic benefit in most if not all cases.
- Chiropractic: an invention of a 19th century salesmen, based on nonsensical principles, and shown to be no more effective than other manipulative therapies, but less safe.
- Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland.
- Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims about diet in order to sell you unnecessary supplements.
- Spiritual healing: tea and sympathy, accompanied by arm-waving.
- Reiki: ditto.
- Angelic Reiki. The same but with added “Angels, Ascended Masters and Galactic Healers”. Excellent for advanced fantasists.
- Colonic irrigation: a rectal obsession that fails to rid you of toxins which you didn’t have in the first place.
- Anthroposophical medicine: followers of the mystic barmpot, Rudolf Steiner, for whom nothing whatsoever seems to strain credulity
- Alternative diagnosis: kinesiology, iridology, vega test etc, various forms of fraud, designed to sell you cures that don’t work for problems you haven’t got.
- Any alternative ‘therapist’ who claims to cure AIDS or malaria: agent of culpable homicide.
- Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you have no evidence. Appeals to alternative practitioners because truth is irrelevant.
The last of these was inspired by Jack of Kent, the Prince among lawyers.
There is a translation into Spanish here.
And a translation into Flemish here.
The guide appeared as a sidebar in an article in the Financial Times
30 Responses to Patients’ guide to Magic medicine
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Inspirational! I haven’t chuckled so much in ages.
[…] Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh (follow it here) led to an addition to DC’s Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. (In the face of such tragic behaviour, one has to be able to […]
[…] reflexology, and other treatments. It’s also (in updated form) on Improbable Science here. Pass it on. Tell your friends. Tweet it, add it to delicious, link to it from your blog and digg […]
[…] published the entire ‘Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine‘ as a sidebar on page […]
[…] DC’s Improbable Science har postet en fin oversikt over alternative behandlingsformer. Denne inneholder vel stort sett det du trenger å […]
[…] Put briefly, Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you have no evidence. Appeals to alternative practitioners because truth is irrelevant […]
[…] DC has a lovely overview of alternative medicine in general in his Patients Guide to Magic Medicine. […]
There’s no mention of osteopathy – I had the impression this was another crank belief system. Or am I wrong?
[…] Prompted by that prince among lawyers known as Jack of Kent there was a new addition to my ‘Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine‘, as featured in the Financial Times. Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when […]
[…] blog, DC Science, has written extensively about this case. He maintains a fantastic list called the Patient’s Guide to Magic Medicine. He just added a new term to the list: Libel: A very expensive remedy, to be used only when you […]
[…] quackery, specifically nutrition, advanced nutrition, herbalism – which Prof David Colquhoun defines as ‘giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and […]
[…] I can’t count how many times this accusation has been thrown at me by advocates of magic medicine. Oddly enough none of them has actually taken the trouble to find out where my research […]
This would make an excellent teatowel.
[…] guide to boswellox By zarathustra, on May 4th, 2009 Thanks to Marine Snow for pointing out this helpful list of complementary and alternative therapies that you may wish to explore, request and pay large sums […]
[…] of these advisory board members are the usual promoters of magic medicine. But three of them seem quite surprising,Stafford Lightman, Nigel Sparrow and Nigel […]
[…] In the materials that I was sent, I see nothing to make me believe that herbalism is being taught as science. On the contrary, it all seems to confirm the definition given in the Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. […]
[…] er þýtt og staðfært úr grein eftir einn af mínum uppáhalds bloggurum, David […]
[…] Patients’ guide to Magic medicine […]
[…] Patients’ guide to Magic medicine […]
[…] them would be rather reckless. They fall right into the description of any herbal medicine, in the Patients’ Guide, "Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown […]
[…] is this confusion that forms the basis of the bait and switch tactics (see also here) used by magic medicine advocates to gain the respectability that they crave but rarely […]
[…] Patients’ Guide to magic medicine defined “Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making untrue claims […]
[…] shorter guide can be seen here on David Colquhoun’s Improbable Science […]
[…] Colquhoun. “I tend,” he says, with a guffaw, “to give them a version of my ‘Patient’s Guide to Magic Medicine‘, which was originally written as a response to the witterings of the Prince of Wales on the […]
[…] ingredients, supplement companies are just unregulated drug companies selling untested drugs. As David Colquhon puts it, they constitute “an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness […]
[…] much like real doctors have, despite the fact that they make money by selling sick people "an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety" (as quoted recently in the House of […]
[…] treatment work or not? It caused me to write a much shorter, but more accurate, version, the Patients’ Guide to Magic Medicine. The PFIH guide was arguably a danger to public health. When, very properly, it was […]
[…] er þýtt og staðfært úr grein eftir einn af mínum uppáhalds bloggurum, David Colquhoun.) kvartiraarenda.com.ua […]
[…] via Patients’ guide to Magic medicine. […]
[…] was given £37,000 of taxpayers’ money to produce his Patients’ Guide (I produced a better version for nothing). And he was paid an astonishing £900,000 by DH to prepare the ground for the […]