Book Review - Ooops! Did I Say That Out Loud? - Correspondence with Authors (Post 4 of 4)

Correspondence with Dr. Edzard Ernst, M.D., author of Trick of Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, went from doubtful to hopeful to exciting to bad to worse, all within the space of a couple of days!  I hope that it served a purpose for the both of us, my getting angry with the good doctor, I mean.  It is said that "no shift in consciousness, however small, is ever wasted."  

At the end of the last post I had just suggested to Dr. Ernst that his arguments might be more convincing if he experimented with alternative healing.  What happened next is that......

(click here for post 1, post 2,  post 3). 


..... I fully expected never to hear from him again, he wrote back, informing me that I had failed him.  “You [Ahnday] failed to produce the good you had initially envisioned,” he states officiously in this reply,

you can tell your readers what you like!i have done and published about 30 clinical trials in this area.this correspondence shows,i think,that even the most well-meaning test on 1 or 2 individuals is scientifically not meaningfull.you approached me asking whether i would be willing to do a test with you ,i responded positively provided that this test would be meaningfull.as it turned out,it is not.now you are asking me to come up with a design that is conclusive.to the best of my knowledge,such a design does not exist given the restrictions of the experiment such as sample size and distance.the way to test the efficacy of treatments is to conduct a rigorous clinical trial which,under the constraints of the present situation,we cannot do.

i conclude that i gave it a try but you failed to produce the goods you had initially envisaged.
in my view,this was an interesting lesson to learn.
best regards

So, after reading this, I’m thinking, “This correspondence doesn’t show anything, except that the doctor wants to say ‘no.’ What ‘goods’ is he talking about? The only thing I promised him was free healing and we never even got that far!”

The good doctor had finally gotten my goat.  As far as I was concerned there was no good reason for him to blame his own unwillingness on me or on alternative healing!  On April 4, I banged out the following response,

All due respect, Mr. Ernst, what I have learned through my professional career is that when either doctors or lawyers start accusing others of not being smart or good enough - as you did in this email exchange with me when you said that "I’m beginning to suspect that you fail to understand the essentials of trial design" or "you failed to produce the goods you had initially envisaged" - it is because these doctors or lawyers really don't have a worthy argument, so personal attack becomes the only avenue of saving face.

I never promised you scientific design. The only thing I promised you was 12 free healing sessions. I agreed to a scientific design when you requested it. However, I also asked you several times to set forth parameters for your suggested design and you did not - facts which show that perhaps it is you who is not following through.

You are helping me to remember how quickly the scientific community can move to bullying of those with new ideas, as if science has somehow forgotten all the pioneers who allowed themselves to be laughed at and who moved forward anyway to make important new discoveries - Louie Pasteur and Wright Brothers among them. (For what it's worth, I believe that the scientist that finally proves the existence of chi will win a Nobel prize, and, I expect to eventually encounter a scientific mind open enough to try.)

It appears that you can dish it out but are less comfortable taking it. You spent an entire book denigrating the work of countless devoted alternative health care practitioners but are unwilling to engage in an objective dialogue about the soundness of your ideas.

Just know that you are not fooling me with your scientific blustering ... I also know that exploring ideas like the ones I have suggested, and openly communicating with the public about your personal experience, could well be professional suicide. I can see that at this juncture in your career you have every motivation to protect yourself. Accordingly, I respectfully accept that you have declined my offer and I leave you to your paradigm, as restrictive as it may be.

I wish you the best. As always, if you change your mind and actually want to get on with the business of designing an experiment then, my offer is still stands. Just know that I am more likely to respond to emails with substantive content, polite tone and proper punctuation.

Take care,
Ahnday Meweh
Spontaneous Mystic

And so it goes....I haven't heard back from Dr. Ernst.