My friend and colleague Emily Willingham has written a similar checklist with autism (and other conditions) in mind, at Distinguishing Between Science and Pseudoscience at the Thinking Person's Guide To Autism
The Quack Clinic Checklist.
By Dr. Steven Novella Saturday, 12 May 2012 09:00
I am asked almost daily about one kind of medical pseudoscience or another. The free market has produced a seemingly endless variation of medical quackery and nonsense for sale. I could never address all of them, because by the time I worked by way through the catalogue of chicanery there would be a fresh crop waiting for me.
There are, however, a couple of strategies for dealing with the thousands of claims and products. The first is to lump them into categories - many dubious claims are just variations on a pseudoscientific theme, and if you understand the themes you can quickly size up a particular manifestation of the theme. For this reason defenders of science-based medicine will often deconstruct these pseudoscientific themes, such as energy medicine, detox treatments, homonculus-based diagnostic schemes, and nutritional fallacies.
Another strategy is to build a list of features or red flags that should alert a savvy health consumer to the questionable nature of a practitioner, claim, or product. That is what I am going to cover in this article, exploring some of the most common features of medical quackery.Dr. Novella goes to list the red flags:
- The Lone Maverick
- Conspiracy Theories
- "I'm too busy seeing patients to publish" excuse
- Too good to be true
- Indication Creep
- "Do You Suffer From Any of These Common Ailments?" Ploy
- Just over the Border
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