Cohen has been involved with numerous studies examining psychosocial and integrative medicine interventions to improve quality of life and outcomes for patients with e.g. cancer, including reiki, energy medicine, acupuncture, and yoga, and he is not afraid to integrate pseudoscience into his inquiries. At best, it’s a waste of resources and taxpayer dollars to investigate implausible claims we already have significant evidence to think are false, but an (even) more worrisome consequence is the sheen of legitimacy Cohen’s projects give various quack treatments, especially when the results are spun as providing support for these modalities. And of course they are spun that way. Here is a (discussion of a) fine example of an acupuncture study led by Cohen himself.
So Cohen claims for instance (in a HuffPo piece) that it is “time for acupuncture to become part of standard care” citing a (then) recent review article of which he is the senior author (he doesn’t mention that!) in which, as he put it, “41 studies were found” that evaluated acupuncture for treating symptoms of cancer therapy: pain, nausea, hot flashes, fatigue, dry mouth, constipation, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. He doesn’t mention that of these 41, all but one (concerning nausea) were found to be highly biased and scientifically worthless by his own review. The last one, on nausea, was a small, unblinded study with serious group selection problems and whose results are contradicted by a newer, larger and better done study that tried to replicate the results and failed resoundingly. Cohen doesn’t mention that, of course, for that’s not the kind of person he is. Rather, Cohen is the kind of guy who at the time of his HuffPo piece, had a $777,886 grant to study acupuncture and was director of the center’s Integrative Medicine Program, where offering acupuncture to cancer patients (at steep costs) is an important part of their activities. Acupuncture, for the record, is theatrical placebo. But despite the dearth of real evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture, Cohen – undaunted – continues to promote it. Here is a discussion of another try.
Cohen’s cancer quackery isn’t limited to acupuncture (though acupuncture is a mainstay), and his channels for promoting such quackery aren’t limited to places like HuffPo – Cohen’s got clout, and in 2014, for instance, he was a keynote at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) session Integrative Oncology: The Evidence Base, where he talked about “Mind-Body Practices in Cancer”. Yes, it’s woo, and although Cohen is good at spinning, his justification of mind–body practices in question is precisely a mix of speculative victim-blaming (‘you should work on your attitude to your disease’) and rebranding. According to Cohen, though really not the evidence (and he was admittedly careful about lying about the evidence outright), reversing “bad” mental states can contribute to improved cancer survival, citing e.g. this study, which in reality found “no significant association” between (in this case) support group support and ovarian cancer survival. As for rebranding, Cohen also cited exercise and beta-blockers, which may well be beneficial, as examples of mind-body practices. ASCO later even endorsed the Society of Integrative Oncology’s pseudoscience-laden guidelines for breast cancer care, written by Cohen and a number of other serious woo-proponents (like Heather Greenlee and Judith Fouladbakhsh). “But what is really integrative oncology?” you may ask, and yes: that is indeed an illuminating question to ask.
Cohen’s books include Integrative Oncology: Incorporating Complementary Medicine into Conventional Cancer Care (with Maurie Markman) and Integrative Medicine in Oncology: Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America (with Moshe Frenkel). The former book is discussed here. Together with Jun J. Mao – another important and influential promoter of quackery in cancer treatment – Cohen is also the editor of a monograph on The Role of Integrative Oncology for Cancer Survivorship (defending integrative oncology) published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Care“, which is briefly discussed here. And yes, in their propagandistic introduction, Cohen & Mao cover all the usually talking points: that patients are requesting integration of quackery into their treatments (appealing, of course, to the common dishonest ploy of including e.g. diet, exercise and lifestyle changes as part of the “complementary” umbrella to inflate the popularity of CAM), and the anthology as a whole is (predictably) striking in it focus on promoting the concept of integrative oncology rather than on examining the ideas and concepts of integrative oncology, or the (lack of) evidence underpinning it. As David Gorski points out, integrative oncology is “a brand, not a specialty, and it’s a brand that, as Mao and Cohen put it, they want to see ‘incorporated within the standard of care worldwide’.”
And what does he say to his critics? Well, he sometimes admits that his suggestions aren’t always unambiguously supported by science, but remember: science was wrong before (yes: he actually pulls that gambit – as well as, for good measure, the Galileo gambit.
Diagnosis: One of the most important and influential promoters of woo and quackery in the US, and though Cohen is admittedly hardly a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, his techniques for promoting quackery (bait-and-switch, rebranding, spinning negative results) are, despite a veneer of scientific legitimacy, your typical pseudoscience gambits. The sad thing, though, is that Cohen, by all hallmarks, has the skills and resources to do real good; that he wastes those skills on bullshit instead is a real tragedy.
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