hungarianelephant:

I'm in.

How?

I think we need to figure out what destroyed the authority of the scientific consensus in medicine between 1990 and now. Medical scientists used to denounce quackery as such, and none could gainsay them.

There's a third year med student, Tim Kreider, blogging at SBM. From today's piece:

...It advertised the “Holistic Series” offered this autumn by the School of Nursing. Listed were four day-long sessions:

* Reiki: Certification in Level 1 Attunement
* Holistic Nursing
* Nursing in Herbal Medicine
* Aromatherapy for the Healthcare Provider

...Our typical patients have few resources and little science education, and they trust us as one of the few sources of care accessible to them. I believe that such promotion of “unconventional” CAM philosophies does our patients a disservice. It is hard enough for healthcare providers to teach patients how to manage their complex chronic diseases like diabetes and AIDS without having magical thinking encouraged on the hospital grounds. Fine if you want to fight over the merits of QiGong in the halls of academia, but presenting homeopathy to the public as a noncontroversial treatment option seems wrong to me.

WTF?

Years ago this kind of woo was found in small storefronts and home offices, mixed with palm reading and psychic services. You would never, ever find this at a place like Harvard Medical School.

What happened? Why are we teaching the next generation of physicians and nurses "holistic" or "spiritual" healing practices?