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Edzard Ernst

Edzard Ernst: The “natural” equals “safe” fallacy

August 15, 2012

Things that are natural must be safe—this fallacy is deeply ingrained in our minds; it almost seems that, as human beings, we are hard-wired to believe this myth. An entire […]

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Edzard Ernst4 Comments

Edzard Ernst: Research into implausible assumptions is likely to result in implausible conclusions

July 31, 2012

Evidence-based medicine is rarely concerned with the biological plausibility of medical interventions. This, I argue, may be a weakness, particularly when assessing the value of alternative medicine (AM). Many basic […]

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Edzard Ernst3 Comments

Edzard Ernst: The “middle ground” fallacy

July 11, 2012

When we are confronted with two opposing views, we tend to look for the comfort of the middle ground hoping the truth might lie somewhere between the two extremes. For […]

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Edzard Ernst4 Comments

Edzard Ernst: The “integrated medicine” straw-man

June 28, 2012

Proponents of integrated medicine want us to believe that they are offering “the best of both worlds” to their patients and claim that using a combination of alternative plus conventional […]

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Edzard Ernstintegrated medicine7 Comments

Edzard Ernst: My evidence is better than yours

June 12, 2012

Humans tend to remember their pleasant and positive experiences and forget those events which were disagreeable or negative. We are not natural talents at coping with cognitive dissonance, and therefore […]

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Edzard Ernst0 Comments

Edzard Ernst: Thousands of patients cannot be wrong or can they?

May 21, 2012

The subject of alternative medicine (AM) is littered with surveys, and it almost seems as though a new one crops up every other day. Typically these surveys assess how many […]

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Edzard Ernstalternative medicine, surveys3 Comments

Edzard Ernst: Pascal’s Wager and alternative medicine

April 26, 2012

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) argued that, because it is impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of God, it would be best to wager in favour of his existence. In […]

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Edzard Ernst3 Comments

Edzard Ernst: I don’t care how treatment works, as long as it helps my patients.

April 2, 2012

During the last two decades, many doctor’s attitudes towards alternative medicine have become more liberal. The general attitude seems to be: “I don’t care how it works, as long as […]

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Edzard Ernst4 Comments

Edzard Ernst: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

March 19, 2012

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Amongst the many misleading arguments, which are frequently used to promote useless treatments, this one occupies a prominent place. When I first […]

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Edzard Ernst7 Comments

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