9 Red Flags that your chosen health modality is most likely bunk

Below are red flags (warning signs) that usually alert me to the fact that the product, treatment or service is suspicious or worthy of further inquiry.  Your views may differ, you might have additional red flags – feel free to add them in the comments.  These flags on their own are not necessarily indicators of bunkum but when two or more are present your your alert level should be raised.

• It comes under that very broad umbrella of Alternative Medicine.  In general I like to reference Tim Minchin on Alternative Medicine in his poem Storm.  Essentially alternative medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work.  Alternative medicine that works is called Medicine.  The category Alternative medicine is so broad that it can include crystal healing at one end to herbal medicines (naturally occurring pharmaceuticals at the other) which may indeed have medicinal benefit at the other.  Alternative medicine as a term that taps into our modern concept of the right to have choice, as wells offering a wide, deep harbour for a multitude of piratical purveyors of woo to hide in.

• It claims to be all natural.  The inference being of course that Natural is always good.  Honey is natural ( and has shown to have health benefits in certain applications) but so is arsenic.  What matters is what effect the product, or service can be shown, examined to have.

• It claims to have been developed over thousand of years, or to have a long heritage or lineage.  Chinese Medicine falls into this category despite the fact that modern Chinese medicine might be more a fabrication of Communist Chinese propaganda tha a long uninterrupted and fully integrated system of ancient science.  Again the fact that a product, service or modality has been used for a long time, says less about its efficacy and more about human psychology and perhaps gullibility. Blood letting was a treatment for a wide variety of ailments from antiquity to the formative years of western medicine, it has subsequently been found to be quite dangerous except for a small number of specific ailments.  What matters is weather a treatment can be shown to work – now under rigorous testing.

• It cloaks itself in pseudoscience, subverting scientific terminology to its own ends, relying on the general publics ignorance of science but on the respect scientific study and advancement has in modern society e.g. Most everything has a frequency inherent to it.  Some frequencies react positively with your body and others negatively. When the hologram comes in contact with your body’s energy field, it allows your body to interact with the natural, beneficial frequency stored within the hologram. This results in improved energy flow throughout your body “. - Powerbalance Website

• It relies almost entirely on anecdotal evidence i.e. testimony, to demonstrate its efficacy.  See these videos and then follow it by this demolition.

• It claims to have been suppressed by the government or at the behest of the Big Pharma/Medical Profession/Illuminati who simply “Don’t want you to know”.  Everybody likes a secret, especially when they are the ones with the supposed secret, special knowledge.

• It claims that it may be able to cure certain diseases/conditions.  In essence a modality, product or service that attempts to play word games like this is simply trying to get around health requirements not to make claims that can’t be backed by evidence.  A responsible health promoter should not be attempting to convince their clients when they don’t have the evidence, it’s dishonest.  See any service that claims that they may treat cancer or chiropractors particularly on the treatment of colic.

• It’s promoted heavily by Hollywood movie stars or celebrities with no medical background.  Essentially when talking about your health, don’t rely on anyone but a trained medical professional-  which does not include homeopaths or naturopaths etc. – these modalities are not subjected to the same rigours as modern medicine(even some medical training  is not as rigorously scientific as we should expect it to be).

• It targets peoples fears disproportionately, particularly with regard to children.

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