Proponents of what used to be called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) tend, at present, to prefer the term “integrative medicine”. The reason for the preference is obvious: the label “CAM” indicates that what they practice is not really medicine, and the name change accordingly serves their effort to mainstream non-evidence-based treatments – CAM proponents want their woo to be seen as equal to scientific medicine, even though the woo they sell remains as unproven and/or disproven as ever, and hence that pseudoscience and science can coexist and work in tandem, at least as long as those who are concerned with science and evidence and such tone down their imperialistic tendencies and stop pestering CAM proponents with requests for evidence and accountability.
CAM proponents even got a government-sponsored institution to back their efforts, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, the proponents of woo at NCCAM take their woo so seriously that they even use it as a topic for health disparities research, research that seeks to identify and remedy disparities in disease prevalence and health care based on socioeconomic status, race, gender, and so on. Given their commitment to normalizing woo, it is not entirely surprising that the CAM proponents at NCCAM would try to investigate disparities in CAM care. And thus we end up with things like “Limited Health Knowledge as a Reason for Non-Use of Four Common Complementary Health Practices” by Adam Burke, Richard L. Nahin and Barbara J. Stussman, published in PLoS ONE, where they conclude that the “disparity” in the use of a range of CAM modalities (acupuncture, chiropractic, natural products, and yoga) is due to lack of “knowledge”. “Knowledge” is not the right word here, and the “tooth-fairy science” label doesn’t even begin to cover the effort. The study is discussed here. It would have been laughable if it weren’t so sad.
Adam Burke is affiliated with the Institute for Holistic Health Studies, Department of Health Education, San Francisco State University. He is also a former member of the advisory council for NCCAM, together with people like e.g. homeopath Brian Berman and Timothy Birdsall. Indeed, the majority of advisory committee members at NCCAM have been practitioners and advocates for pseudoscience and woo, several of them, like Birdsall, explicitly denying that science can properly be applied to their favored techniques. And given the mandate of the advisory council, real science will never be the part of NCCAM’s activity that it’s mandate suggested it should – instead, it will continue to epitomize cargo cult science, carry out worthless tooth-fairy studies like the one mentioned above and serve as a center for marketing various types of quackery and pseudoscience. And taxpayers are paying for it.
And though his credentials – “PhD, MPH, MS, LAc” – might look impressive to some at first glance, Burke has no biomedical training: his graduate degrees are in Social Psychology and Health Education, and his healthcare “degree” is not from a serious educational institution but from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, where he is also on the faculty. And he doesn’t even like science: contemporary medical science has “shut out millennia of understanding of human illness that could enrich our understanding of healing people.” Examples? “Distant healing”: Burke is very impressed by the work of the Institute of Noetic Sciences which has a real Astronaut among its founders. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The American Acupuncturist, the official publication of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AAAOM) and former chair of the CA Department Affairs’ (DCA) Board of Acupuncture, certifying (yes, providing state approval for) TCM training programs in California.
He is, however, presumably a different guy from this Adam Burke.
Diagnosis: Adam Burke may not be the most familiar name on the rooster of purveyors of dangerous woo and pseudoscience, but that’s the group he belongs to, and he has all the more power and influence for appearing superficially coherent and level-headed. And he has certainly used his position rather effectively, making the world a slightly darker and more dangerous place, especially for people in vulnerable situations.
Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence
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