Edzard Ernst

With doctors warning of the huge danger posed by antimicrobial resistance, herbal medicines are being tested by the NHS

In fact, the evidence suggests it doesn’t work at all.

Quackery can be appealing because it’s consistent with the American notion of freedom and individuality and resistance to control and dogma. And a major logical failing of the educated – although it’s rarely recognized for what it truly is – is simply prejudice, where everything “natural” is good an…

Infinite in All Directions is The Wire‘s science newsletter. Subscribe and receive a digest of the most interesting science news and analysis from around the web every Monday, 10 am.

A CANCER patient given two months to live by his doctors seven months ago is in remission – after injecting himself with mistletoe. Dave Reynolds, 50, was told in February this year that his Non-Hodgkin lymphoma was terminal. The father-of-three was told by the NHS that his treatment would have to b…

In these austere and difficult times, it must be my duty, I think, to alert my fellow citizens to a possible source of additional income which almost anyone can plug into: become a charlatan, and chances are that your economic hardship is a memory from the past.

It’s time to reject the pseudoscience of homeopathy and focus on evidence-based medicine that truly benefits people.

One of my teachers in medical school kept saying: ‘A treatment that has no side-effects is already a good one.’ These seemed to be wise words worth remembering. But today I think he may have been not entirely correct: there is no therapy that does not have potential to cause adverse effects. What re…

The ‘treatment’ can delay people from seeking more effective medicinces, says Muiris Houston

Edzard Ernst on writing his memoir ‘A Scientist in Wonderland’

Homeopaths and other alternative-medicine enthusiasts should look away now. They are “quacks”, “zealots” and “crackpots” who can’t think straight. Their “pseudoscience is a deceit practised on the

Why reiki masters can't lose | ScienceBlogs  ScienceBlogs

You wouldn’t be surprised that there are schools of magic in South Africa. After all, someone has to teach would-be astrologers, sangomas and fortune tellers the tricks of the trade. It is more alarming to learn that real universities participate in the charade. Welcome to the Hogwarts Schools at th…

A constitutional monarch is purely ceremonial and plays no part in politics. But in the UK it isn’t quite as simple as that. The first problem is that we have no constitution. Things haven’t changed much…

In Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, Paul Offit takes aim at the $34-billion-a-year alternative medicine industry, which he says peddles treatments that are unproven — and sometimes deadly. Victoria Maizes, of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, agrees…

Unprecedented approval for alternative therapies from health service watchdog

Newsnight - The faith healers who claim they can cure cancer  BBC News