So many great ideas to suppress, so little time. I’m posting this today as a nod to PZ Myers, whose post Christopher Maloney is a quack brought to my attention another instance of something I’ve talked about recently, applying censorship to quell your detractors rather than simply being right.

In this case, a student named Michael Hawkins criticized Christopher Maloney, a naturopathic “doctor”. His arguments were based on the fact that providing the title “doctor” to a naturopath is dangerous because naturopathy is not a scientific discipline. And I agree with this. I have friends who are very much in belief of naturopathic medicine and I can honestly say I do not know if it works or not, but I am highly dubious because I have not seen it withstand any rigorous testing applied to it. Suggesting that black elderberry is a suitable alternative to H1N1 vaccination when there have been no valid studies to show this relationship is dangerous to say the least.

A doctor does not get called a doctor because he thinks the term is neat. A doctor must go through many years of education and subsequent training, and must go through a myriad of certifications and approvals by various agencies, all for the benefit of assuring the public that this is a person who is to be trusted with our health. To contrast that, let’s take a quick eyeballing of the CCNE web site, the Canadian Council of Naturopathic Examiners. Or you could try the Naturopathic Medicine Council of Canada (NMCC), the information is the same and appears to be almost identical right down to the look and feel. Wow, that’s completely spooky actually. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this, but it’s bloody creepy to read the two side by side.

To see what qualified as accredited medical college programs for this, I went to the web site of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. They offer the ND Program (Naturopathic Doctor), which appears to be a four year degree with a Bachelor’s degree prerequisite. Of course, it could be any bachelor’s degree, so let’s not assume that holds any bearing on the educational experience. Calling a spade a spade, that makes it a four year program. However, it’s a four year program that comes with a fragrance-free policy, so that’s something.

Geez, looking at their course listing they have three courses specifically called Homeopathic Medicine I, II, and III. That’s a lot of succussing! I wonder how long it takes to learn that water cures everything there is?

This is simply not the same level of education and rigorous scientific practice that an “allopathic” doctor would go through. And you can tell they’re trying to put on the mask of science by claiming on the NMCC web site that “Practitioners must be licensed, required to take continuing education, and subject to peer review” (emphasis mine). Wikipedia tells me¬†that peer review is ridiculous in naturopathic medicine, because as we all know, the cures are specific to the sufferer. All peer review would do in this sort of situation would be to let others go, “Yeah, I guess that could work, depending on the patient…”

Michael Hawkins does not want to see the same designation given to medical doctors given to naturopaths. Doctor is a legally protected term, and means something. Giving it away weakens the term itself, and strengthens the position of the quacks in the eyes of the people. But rather than argue about it and show how naturopathic medicine deserves the title, Christopher Maloney felt the need to simply censor his detractors. In my world, we call that cowardice.

So how do we respond? Well, as PZ Myers suggests: 

Now not only is Maloney a quack, but he’s a stupid quack. Shutting down blogs that criticize him? That never, ever works. In fact, it tends to backfire rather severely ‚Äî because now a much bigger blog is going to spread the word that Christopher Maloney is a quack. I’m also going to ask all of you out there who reads this to echo the message: Christopher Maloney is a quack. Won’t that be fun? Poke the net, and the net pushes back.

Share the message. Let the whole world know that Christopher Maloney is a cowardly quack.

Please, spread the word.

Jim