Psyche, Science, and Society

Just waht is “alternative” medicine?

December 4th, 2006

Revere at Effect Measure has an interesting discussion — Chicken soup for the soulless — of the difficulties separating “alternative medicine” from “traditional medicine”, “scientific medicine”, or whatever.

Chicken soup for flu and colds has to qualify as alternative medicine, I would think. The question I have is this. What would allow it to escape the slings and arrows of Orac’s mighty pen?

It turns out that it is quite hard to describe a criterion that will clearly allow it to move from the “alternative” to the whatever-the-other medicine category.

Entry Filed under: Psychology, Public Health, Research Methods, Science