Factors that shape alternative medicine: the role of the alternative medicine research community

The documented prevalence of alternative medicine practices in the United States warrants a critical evaluation of this field. Although adequate scientific evaluation is needed, it is doubtful that such research will take place unless other factors are taken into account that remain overlooked. We have previously proposed a conceptual definition of alternative medicine practices and outlined those sociological, political, economic, and regulatory factors independent of the alternative healthcare community that could potentially hamper the optimal evaluation of alternative medicine. In the present article, we discuss other relevant issues to which the alternative healthcare community contributes. These factors originate both from within biomedicine (e.g., demands for specific scientific approaches, explanatory models) and within the alternative medicine community itself (e.g., the use of jargon, insularity, a profit-minded research agenda).

Is the scientific publishing of complementary and alternative medicine objective?

Bias expressed by conventional journals against the field of "alternative," "integrative," or "complementary" medicine has been said to drive the appearance of new journals dedicated to this field. We examined two examples of recent articles on complementary and alternative medicine that appeared in two major medical journals in 1998. One is an editorial on the risks of alternative medicine, published in The New England Journal of Medicine and the other is a study on Therapeutic Touch, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. We evaluated whether information and opinions presented in this editorial and article are objective or not. We found that these examples reflect, at best, misinformation or misunderstanding of the field, or at worst, disingenuousness. We consider the possibility that this apparent bias may be due to the fact that some of the concepts implicit in alternative medicine are outside the current biomedical framework. Yet, it is only by exploring knowledge outside the boundaries of existing dogmas that real (as opposed to incremental) progress can occur.