Serendipitously, just after I had joined Twitter and was considering writing about osteopathy, a tweet appeared that Edzard Ernst would be giving a talk in Eastbourne to a local sceptics’ society. Now Ernst was the first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine, at Exeter University. He is pretty down on osteopathy, and I remember the day…
Edited with new photos and comment, September 2016 I have spent so long thinking of osteopathy as a profession twinned with chiropractic that physiotherapy has passed me by. I would never have thought to consider it as a career, because it seemed to be a dull occupation, lacking the depth, the sophistication, and the intellectual and…
Time and time again I read something about “cranial osteopathy”, which seems to describe something which is nothing like what I do. It is often assumed that we sit there “head-holding”. I saw a description this week that we claim to”magnetize the blood”. I’m not surprised that there is such confusion, even amongst osteopaths. I…
Ben Goldacre is a physicist and science writer. Along with Richard Dawkins and Simon Singh, he is a high profile advocate of rigorous scientific method, and is furiously exasperated at the dumbing down of science. This book is his attempt to educate the reader to look critically at science. He begins by conducting some…
As someone who couldn’t even work Facebook nine months ago, it came as something of a shock to find I was involved in a Twitter spat with Simon Singh, one of osteopathy’s fiercest critics. What next? A public fracas with Richard Dawkins? However several emails and a long phone call later, feathers were unruffled, a…
One of my patients used to run a health food shop which sold various herbal, homeopathic and assorted alternative remedies. One of the most annoying questions people asked her was “Does it work?” She likened it to a pharmacist being asked if paracetamol works. ‘Well, it does work for some people and some conditions, but it…
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