Edzard Ernst is a Fake 3
March 11th, 2010Becoming a Professor at Exeter University
Lately I have been thinking that I might seek to become the U.K.’s first Professor of Fossil Anomalies and I would naturally prefer this post to be established at Exeter University, where you can apparently become a Professor in things you know virtually nothing about.
Most universities, of course, would not allow that. The least they would require, if they were looking to find the ideal candidate for a Professor of History - for example - was that the person was at least an historian. Any Chair in the field of Mathematics, naturally you are looking for a mathematician. This is because the role of a Professor is to “profess”, and in order to do that, expert knowledge is required. Here is a handy list from Wikipedia of the fundamental tasks that any Professor might be expected to be able to attend to:
Professors are qualified experts who may do the following:
Conduct lectures and seminars in their field of study (ie. they “profess”), such as the basic fields of science, humanities, social sciences, education, literature, music or the applied fields of engineering, design, medicine, law or business
Perform advanced research in their fields
provide pro bono community service, including consulting functions (such as advising government and nonprofit organizations)
teach campus-based or online courses with the help of instructional technology
train young or new academics (graduate students)
carry out administrative or managerial functions, usually at a high level (e.g. deans, heads of department, librarians etc.).
The summary goes on to explain that the exact balance of these tasks will vary from one situation to another. Nevertheless the pre-requisite here in all cases is that the Professor needs to be a qualified expert (my emphasis) in his/her field.
Now this rather rules me out, when it comes to being the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Fossil Anomalies because although I have seen and handled fossils on occasion, I have no training, qualifications or useful experience in that field. Or rather this would rule me out were it not for the extraordinary precedent of Edzard Ernst, who became the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University without knowing anything about complementary medicine at all really. Exactly how this came about is a bit of a mystery when one considers that there are so many medical practitioners in Europe who also provide CAM therapies as a matter of routine… or to quote Ernst directly:
“On the continent, CAM practitioners would normally be doctors.”
Ernst is a doctor, but he is not a CAM practitioner and never was. Obviously there are a lot of scientists out there who might be fine doing the research part of the professorship in Complementary Medicine, but they aren’t doctors, so that might let them down at the interview stage because of the assumed ‘medical’ angle. Then there are CAM practitioners who are doctors, but don’t really have the ’scientific research’ background. Ideally - it rather goes without saying - the successful candidate for the Professorship would have to have all three. Ernst is a doctor, and as a former head of department at a Viennese medical school he certainly has a research background. So far so good. But I would have loved to have been present at his interview for the post of the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine when they asked him: “So, Edzard: tell us what you know about the field of Complementary Medicine!” Because according to what we know from the various tales told about all this in the media over the years, his knowledge is limited to:
“He comes from a culture where alternative therapies have long blended with the mainstream. He is from four generations of medical doctors but, he says, “Even as a young boy I was treated with complementary therapies - mostly homeopathy.”
“His first post was in a homeopathic hospital in Munich, where he was greatly impressed.”
“He treats his French wife with homeopathy, he says. “We were both brought up with it.”
What - and that’s IT? You have no formal training in any Complementary Therapy? You have never provided any form of Complementary Therapy professionally as a physician? You’ve used homeopathy on your wife even though you have never had formal training? And that makes you an expert, who can profess to the world about it?
By the way, the above ‘qualifications’ are evidently sufficient to persuade some media commentators that his subsequent and relentless demolition of the credibility of CAM therapies through the deeply suspect meta-analyses route is:
“…particularly important since Ernst is a former advocate for CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) who was able to objectively look at the scientific evidence…”
Wrong! In truth this is part of the Ernst media-myth: he has never been an advocate of CAM or a practitioner himself, so this suggestion that his supposed ‘conversion’ adds to his overall credibility is utterly fake.
No allegiance, and indeed no connection with it whatsoever. Edzard Ernst has clearly anticipated the predictable objection to his total lack of training and experience with regard to the professional provision of CAM therapies which might normally preclude even brief consideration for a Professorship in that very subject… by suggesting that research into the effectiveness of CAM therapies will only arrive at the truth if:
“…well-trained scientists (rather than CM enthusiasts with a mere veneer of science to hide their biases) conduct the research.”
Oh, really? That’s assuming that even well-trained scientists might lose their scientific objectivity if they have any enthusiasm for what they are studying, is it? Tell that to NASA. Or is it just a swipe at CAM enthusiasts particularly, a sort of Catch 22 that if you are a CAM enthusiast you cannot possibly be a well-trained scientist? Or is it a clumsy attempt at self-justification from a man who knows damn well that in reality, he didn’t even have a “mere veneer” of specialist knowledge about CAM therapies when he was mysteriously appointed to a Professorship in that very subject!
Now, Professor - let me ask you this: What happens if a pathological skeptic with a mere veneer of scientific objectivity conducts the research? We get 17 years of over-zealous CAM-bashing posing as objective scientific enquiry using the badge of the university to give it credibility, and the university starts to get a bit uneasy about it, naturally.
By the way, Exeter - I may know nothing about Fossil Anomalies but that’s actually an advantage according to Ernst. Professing about such things doesn’t require any specialist knowledge, it just requires a Science Badge and a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. Well, Ernst certainly has a lack of enthusiasm for CAM therapies - that’s pretty damn clear - but that did not develop gradually over time, it was there from the start. All that media bullshit about supposed connections to homeopathy were just a cynical ploy to try to appear objective! But you have to be a bit of a clod to imagine that you can say things like that in the media, then behave like the most anti-CAM campaigning zealot and no-one will notice the difference!
CAM-bashing gets you an instant following from all the people who know nothing at all about the field of complementary medicine but just assume it is all fake, even dangerous. All Ernst has really done is stir it up like a hornets’ nest, which is very easy to do and you can easily make a name for yourself in the short-term. But the majority of people are not that cynical, and will know of people who have benefited from CAM therapies or have used them themselves, and they will realise at some stage that this is not objective scientific enquiry, it is simply posing as such. It is, and always has been from the start a relentless cynical CAM-bashing exercise and it does not belong in a British university.
Ernst has said that he has had several tempting offers from the U.S. where he has quite a following. “For a long time, I loved going over to America because they would fall over with admiration there. I felt so flattered.”
Yeah, they would. That’s the land where they have TV adverts with people dancing and singing about Viagra. You’d fit right in, you CAM-bashing Pharma-loving cynical Professor Against Complementary Medicine. So here’s my suggestion: you go there, get fat, rich and flattered and stop pretending to be any sort of expert when it comes to the practice of complementary medicine because you never have been, and I’ll abandon my idle notion of bringing the academic world into disrepute by becoming a Professor of Fossil Anomalies.
Filed under: Drugs on Trial, The Campaign by Chris
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