Alternative medicine debate

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 9, November 2009, Page 473 Letters
By: Tim McDowell, MD,

I read with interest and enthusiastic support Dr Oppel’s first letter condemning CME credits for what I like to call “so-called alternative medicine” (or SCAM.) I couldn’t agree with him more. I think it is reprehensible that outright quackery can be considered legitimate education for physicians. His response to the “woo woo” thinking of Dr Stephen Faulkner was also right on the money.

However, I disagree with both of them when they agree that “physicians are the most grounded and least gullible group of individuals.” Sadly, that is not true. The level of physician belief and acceptance of nonsense like homeopathy, therapeutic touch, crystal therapy, or even acupuncture is unfortunately quite high. Michael Shermer, president of the Skeptics Society and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, has published a book called Why People Believe Weird Things, and had to have a chapter in it titled, “Why Smart People Believe Weird Things.” In a nutshell, the answer is because they are smart and well educated, they assume they can’t be fooled. They can. The fake healers count on it.

—Tim McDowell, MD
Sechelt

Tim McDowell, MD,. Alternative medicine debate. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 9, November, 2009, Page(s) 473 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply