Good list. My one small
nitpick is that osteopaths don’t belong in the same category as
chiropractors and acupuncturists. As I understand it, osteopaths are
actually fully accredited medical doctors, they just do other
chiropractic type nonsense in addition to that.

Perhaps instead of “osteopath” a better example would be “naturopath”

Great evolution on the original, after reading the arguments I tend to go with you on the inclusion of oseopath in the chart above, even if they are also MDs their support for aspects of treatment that are not evidence based means they have a bit too much  woo for the zoo, and anything that did work has been included in ‘medicine’ as you eloquently sum up in the final panel. Great work.

“Magnetic bracelets don’t do anything” sure they do. They are attracted to ferrous metals.

There is a HUGE difference between D.O.’s and osteopaths. D.O. means Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, to separate it from straight osteopathy. The entrance standards are different, but not to a degree that the osteopathic schools are sub-par. There are some schools (Michigan State University) with an MD and D.O. program, where the students are taught all the basic sciences side by side and learn in the same hospitals. Also, it is much harder to get into a good D.O. program in the states than it is to get into an MD program in the Caribbean – American D.O.’s are much better trained than Caribbean MD’s, yet the Caribbean graduates still get to carry the MD behind their names (if they manage to pass the licensing exams and get an American residency. The only quacky part of Osteopathic Medicine is one small subset of osteopathic manipulative therapy called cranio-sacral manipulation, which an overwhelming majority of osteopathic students denounce and have created several attempts to get it removed, but unfortunately it’s a political issue.

ad “Western Medicine”

not sure about other countries but here in Germany there is some kind of pseudo-medicin called “Germanische Neue Medizin” (Germanic new medicine), a miracle cure mixed with antisemitism.

I believe other western (whatever this means) cultures have similar quackeries

Chiropractors fix your back when it’s screwed up. It’s not nonsense. I’ve screwed up my back, and been in agony for days until I went to a chiropractor. Afterwards I felt better. End of story.

I think there are a lot of people these days that are jumping on the “rationalist” bandwagon. Unfortunately, in many cases, it means that people aren’t acting rationally at all–in many cases they are just parroting what the last self-styled “rationalist” has said.

Skepticism is good in moderation, but ad populum is still a fallacy.
 

Any chance that a future version could address anything advertised as an alternative to vaccines?

Umm.. the “helps your body…” one really should be removed since that covers a good 90% of modern medicine. A simple example of this is if you look at an immuno-compromised patient (e.g. someone with late-stage AIDs). No matter how many antibiotics you pump them full of they’re going to die from a common bacterial infection since antibiotics don’t actually heal anything, they merely give the body’s immune system some help. Likewise with a huge number of other common treatments, like stitches, in most cases they’re not necessary and merely “help” the body to heal a little faster and with less scarring, but the stitches don’t actually heal a damned thing. Neither does that band aid you put on your finger, it just helps to keep dirt out of the wound. Many medications also merely prod your brain into producing more (or less) of something, in effect giving your body a nod and a wink in the right direction.

The “helps your body” bit really underlies most medical treatments. Ask any M.D. what treatment they’d prescribe for someone who’s immune compromised or who’s regular cellular regeneration cycle has been interrupted and in 99% of cases they’ll say there’s nothing they can do, simply because almost all treatments rely on the body doing a lot of the healing work on its own. In short, Maki, you’re dead wrong on this one.

Regarding your update about osteopaths —

 ”DO school is easier to get into than MD school. They have
separate schools and separate residency programs.”

 ”Since it’s easier to get in, easier to complete the school work,
and they have their holistic/natural approach, some people are attracted
to it, as you know. But the reality is they have to keep fighting to be
 seen as equals in academic circles and associations.”

–

Tell your physician friends “CITATION NEEDED”, see “appeal to authority”, and “the plural of anecdote is not data”. 

There is some historical grudges between that MDs have over DOs that would be clouding their judgement. 

I am an M.D., trained in NY State, and now I am a faculty member at a program that trains both M.D.s and D.O.s in Family Medicine.  Their knowledge bases and skills are equal, almost without exception.  They train in evidence-based medicine and have to pass the same licensing and board exams.  Having been in practice since 1999, I can say that the VAST majority of D.O.s practice in exactly the same way as M.D.s.

Science thinks way too highly ofd itself – there are many things which are beyond it’s understanding and indeed beyond its domain.  Just because you can’t see it, touch it, or run one of your materialistic experiments on it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.  My wife is an MD (a “Real one”), and her mom has a PhD in medicine and an MD, and her father has a PhD in medicine and does world-class heart research at his university.  All of them acknowledge (with over 75 years of experience between them) that there are many things scientists don’t understand and will prbably never understand.  And they all recognize there is a spiritual world beyond the physical. 

I’m generally with you. I can’t stand it when people put forth a theory, and then won’t answer questions about the evidence that supports it. However, G. Edward Griffin, Hoxsey, and Sugiura all run afoul of your “red flags,” and I believe that at least Sugiura was 100% following the scientific method, and standard peer-review protocols.  He was discredited and smeared by the AMA.  The AMA, FDA, and DEA have a long history of unscientific oppression and unwarranted brutality.  So, I guess my question is: if there is a ton of evidence of extra-legal oppression, then why do you ignore that (if you do), and why do you accept the word of powerful institutions without evidence?  Also, why do you ignore the sciences of emergent order and economics, and place all faith in perversely-incentivized, force-weilding government institutions?  When an institution has access to government force (monopoly), it removes itself from the arena of serious scientific debate.  As such, the first people to claim quackery are, themselves, the biggest quacks.  Of course, most of the red flags you point out are 100% correct, and incredibly amusing.  …The “quantum” healing one was particularly amusing ie: “I don’t understand how quantum mechanics works, and you don’t understand how quantum mechanics works. I don’t understand how nuclear medicine works, and you don’t understand how nuclear medicine works.  Therefore, we can have laymen’s discussions involving general “suitcase terms” and I can profile you for your lack of knowledge.  Then, I can claim a greater knowledge, because I’m secure in the position that you don’t have any more knowledge than I do. …And I never have to tell you where any atoms or molecules are, or precisely what they’re doing.”

Anyway, before you write off alternative cancer cures, I recommend reading the books “World Without Cancer” by G. Edward Griffin, and watching the video made from the book, as well as “Cancer: The Forbidden Cures” which is also available on Google video.  If you follow the links to the few studies that were done, you’ll also have enough knowledge to see that those studies are now illegal.  If you insist on performing such a study, and finally setting the critics to rest, you’ll instantly attract the violence of the FDA and AMA.

This threatening, backed with violence might make you reconsider your criticism of Burzynski.  (I don’t know too much about Burzynski, but I am more familiar with some of the other suppressed cancer treatments that have better suppression rates than chemotherapy.)

Summed up in a different way, I think it’s always bad to take the side of the oppressor, and true oppression is very commonplace in the medical industry.  Ray Kurzweil, an accomplished inventor and scientist of amazingly high stature uses stevia as a dietary sweetener.  He reversed his type II diabetes with this sweetener.  Yet, the FDA will, in fact, raid your factory and burn your inventory if you advertise your products as “sweetened with stevia.”

Is stevia sweet? Yes.  Can manufacturers claim it is? No. They are prohibited from doing so, and risk being raided, as Celestial Seasonings tea company was raided, when they made that claim.  We’re talking real medical benefits here: the control of type II diabetes, with a safe, minimally-invasive dietary cure.

So, the people who claimed stevia was “quackery” for all the years before the FDA was forced to allow it to be added to products as a “supplement” were on the side of quackery themselves. They helped oppress people who were silenced with true oppression, brutality, and government force, and they did it for free, as conformist shills of the status quo.  The AMA and FDA now silence, with the threat of government force, B17 or “laetrile” therapy.

The B17 advocates make testable claims about it.  …But no scientific journal will publish their peer-reviewed claims.  And the FDA and AMA raid –with police, guns, dogs, riot gear, and the local sheriff– anyone attempting to create a peer-reviewed, respectable study of B17 cancer therapy.  So, they’re painted into a corner, with violence.

Who is legitimate in this case?  I say, simply because the critics of B17 engage in violent suppression of even studying B17, that discredits them.  Whoever picks up the gun to win the argument is wrong.  This used to be the standard of western civilization, until we incrementally gave up proper jury trials.  But how many critics of quackery comprehend the science of economics? Almost zero.  There was Hayek, and he’s dead.  Maybe Bryan Caplan is a worthy replacement.

And then, there’s the result when the potential B17 study is completed: the AMA and FDA have BILLIONS of dollars at their disposal, with which to silence, smear, or spin the results of the study.  Why would they do that?  Well, let’s look at the example I used in the beginning: After the FDA made it illegal to print truthful claims on stevia-sweetened products, the majority of the people on the FDA advisory board that made the decision quit their jobs at the FDA and went to work at high-paid desk jobs for Searle and Associates, under Donald Rumsfeld, for “Nutrasweet.”

I just wanted to make it know that sometimes chiropractic care is tremendously beneficial. 

Several years ago I was in poor shape and did not use correct posture. I suffered through a pinched nerve severe enough to send me to the hospital, screaming in pain. I never fully recovered, but learned to deal with the pain. Some weeks I would be fine. Other weeks were escrutiating. Even after exercising my back religeously for almost a year and riding in spinning classes, my back would still hurt. My spinning instructor pressured me to go to his chiropractor for nearly a year before I broke down and went. 

The first session was a simple exam and X-ray. On the second day, he showed me how two disks were compressed on one side. He manipulates my lower back and used an electrical stimulation device on my lumbar. I felt no result the first time, but kept it up for two more sessions. After the third session I was pain free. The chiropractor believes that sometimes the muscles get used to being in the wrong positions, and simply need to retrained. After my experience, I  hold to that belief too.

I am very thankful to the chiropractor, and especially to my instructor for his continued efforts to get me to see him. 

Please make a 2nd version without words such as shit.
I can’t post this in my office at my college with 4 letter words. Thanks.

I’m going to use this as a bingo chart for my aunt. But I was wondering where anti-oxidants would fall under? And does light therapy and crystals fall under “Energy”?

Pyramids have not been heard of for while: they used to sharpen razor blades and break up gallstones. Have they stopped working?

Just one point – “avoid practitioners without an MD after their name” is highly US-centric and misleading. In many English-speaking countries (including the UK) the MD isn’t the primary medical qualification, so it’s misleading to suggest that someone without an MD isn’t a proper doctor – they might well be.

At Cambridge, for instance, the qualification to be a doctor is MB (Bachelor of Medicine), while MD is the higher doctoral research-based degree which only a few people ever get. I think they gave out 3 in the year my dad got his. At other medical schools the primary medical qualification might be BM, MBBS, or even MBChB.

Even if you say “Ah, but this is mostly aimed at people in the US!”, many foreign-trained doctors in the US won’t have an MD.

You need a t-shirt version of this with the image on the back of the tee.

To refer to osteopathic medicine, as it as practiced in the United States, as “quackary” is completely absurd and shows abject closed mindedness as well as a lack of understanding for the nuance of medicine practiced in the United States.  One can discuss entrance standards, practice patterns, and the theoretical pseudoscience of cranial osteopathy that is rejected by the balance of DO’s in the United States… it makes no difference, certain people will never see the reality that is.  I find it unfortunate that the “best” educated among us can’t be bothered to think and instead find it easier to hide behind the pulpit of the internet.  If it wasn’t so sad it’d be hilarious.

F*in magnets and f*in crystals

I’m sick of these double standards. Why, for example, does no one bat an eye when an MD says it will take 12 antibiotic tablets to rid you of an infection, or when prescribing someone LIFETIME medication for various chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, etc., or even 18 sessions of physical therapy to rehab a torn ACL, but God forbid a Chiropractor says it might take a few sessions to correct a neuro-mechanical fault in your spine (yes, a subluxation) to help ease your migraine headaches, people like Matt get all bent out of shape?

About “helps your body…”, isn’t that what a bunch of antibiotics do? When your immune system is weakened (whether we’re talking AIDS or just stress) and the bacteria grows with less resistance, don’t the antibiotics “help your body heal itself?”

Also, being a doctor doesn’t mean having an M.D. Someone with a D.O. may or may not be a quack, but they are a doctor. Psychiatrists, dentists, pharmacists and veterinarians are also doctors. Unfortunately, chiropractors are considered doctors in many countries. Nurses, physical therapists, masseuses, acupuncturists, fortune tellers and trepanners are not doctors.

>body deals just fine with removing unwanted chemicals
>except your body will wear down, and then you will die “of old age”
>that’s how exceptionally good it is at servicing itself