Homeopathy 2008; 97(01): 48-50
DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2007.11.001
Letter to the Editor
Copyright © The Faculty of Homeopathy 2008

Response to Adrian Gaylard: The dangerous swan song of the straw man

Lionel R. Milgrom

Subject Editor:
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
14 December 2017 (online)

Sir,

Adrian Gaylard chides me for misrepresenting science's logical structure “in such a way as to not promote an accurate understanding” of it. I am also accused of mugging the “straw man” of naïve inductivism”, when, instead, I should have taken a pop at his altogether tougher friends, Karl Popper and the falsificationists. Then, failing to mention Thomas Kuhn's seminal work on paradigms, and omitting both Imre Latakos and Paul Feyerabend from my discussion, so “fatally flaws” my argument “no serious contemporary scientist would accept it.” Finally, Gaylard states “real scientists actually look for “black swans”

In the context of my article,[ 1 ] Gaylard makes it trenchantly obvious what he thinks of my putative philosophical shortcomings. In fact, I could assist him further by pointing to other ‘sins of omission’. For example, readers are invited to examine the work of Holmes et al, which appeals directly to the writings of Post-Modernist philosophers Michel Foucault[ 2 ] and Jacques Derrida,[ 3 ] in order to deconstruct the ‘fascist dictatorship’ of evidence-based discourse in the health sciences[ 4 ] (and yes, Popper was no Post-Modernist). I suspect practitioners of homeopathy and other forms of CAM, and their patients, might enjoy this refutation of naïve inductivism's dangerously[ 5 ] exclusive hegemony. However, before this response descends into a ‘who-can-name-drop-the-most-philosophers-in-a-sentence’ competition, or indeed an up-dated version of Monty Python's Philosopher's Drinking Song,[ 6 ] I should make it clear that I will not be throwing up my hands and admitting “It's a fair cop, guv!” just yet.

For there is a world of difference between what Gaylard believes somewhat idealistically scientists SHOULD do (and indeed the good ones probably do—in being open-minded enough to pursue ‘black swans’)—and what actually happens here, down on the ground, in real life. For example, consider this almost Churchillian utterance from the geneticist and science populariser Professor Steve Jones, “Science is a broad church full of narrow minds trained to know even more about even less.”[ 7 ] The reasons for this might include education, peer pressure, and control and access to research funds, etc. Nevertheless, it is clear to Jones at least, that Russell's naïve inductivist ‘turkey’ is alive, well and strutting around the biomedical ‘farmyard’,[ 7,8 ] regardless of Post-Modernism, Karl Popper, Latakos, Feyerabend, and the whole Philosophical Choir invisible still trying to wring its neck (I am deliberately equating narrow-mindedness in science with naïve inductivism, which is, of course, debatable). While Gaylard was no doubt fortunate to have received a tertiary physics education that included exposure to ideas from the philosophy of science, this is still a by no means common accoutrement of university courses,[ 9 ] especially in the biochemical and bio-medical sciences (though such interdisciplinary research is now being encouraged at the post-doctoral level).[ 10 ]

Thus the experience (admittedly anecdotal) of those of us who argue the case for homeopathy and other forms of CAM, especially in the face of equivocal data from double-blind randomised controlled trials, is that many scientists and science writers appear to be, and most certainly can behave as, unreconstructed bloody-minded ‘naïve inductivists’,[ 11 ] ie, ‘straw men”. I remember well a rather heated exchange I had with an ex-Astronomer Royal some years ago on the subject of homeopathy, which ended with him upbraiding me for being ‘dangerous’. Later, I was left in no doubt that the bestowal of this ‘cachet’ owed more to his strong feelings of ‘betrayal’ at my combined interest in science and homeopathy, than to any intellectual disagreements over the philosophy of science.

Of course, none of this detracts from Gaylard's ‘naïve idealism’, though I suspect it might well require some modification in the light of content to be found on the Internet in so-called sceptical web-sites. However, he needs to look no further than The Times newspaper, to see a particularly high-profile ‘straw man’ in action. This, from Edzard Ernst, the UK's first and only professor of CAM, “I don’t believe in anything I can’t prove. My only true belief is in science and its ability to sort out belief from factMy job is to establish whether or not they (CAMs) are evidence-based. There is no aspect of belief in this at all.”[ 12 ] Yet, in the same article, gerontologist and philosopher, Professor Raymond Tallis refutes Ernst's naïve inductivism with, “I believe so many things without proof that I am spoiled for choice. As Karl Popper pointed out, no belief can be legitimately placed beyond the reach of doubt. There is always the possibility of further observations that may prove it wrong.”[ 12 ]

Ironically, given this contradiction, Tallis was a co-signatory with Ernst of the recent letter, leaked to The Times[ 5 ] urging Health Trusts to ignore the ‘false claims’ of homeopathy and other forms of CAM. Since then, there have been reductions in NHS referrals to homeopathy, and the threats of closure to the NHS Homeopathic Hospitals. This illustrates the threat posed to patient's ‘owning’ their own health and expressing freedom of therapeutic choice within the NHS,[ 13 ] by an unchecked and arrogantly applied naïve inductivism. Not before time then, resistance to this threat is beginning to grow.[ 14 ]

Clearly, as far as arguments over the efficacy of homeopathy/CAMs are concerned, it seems there will continue to be plenty of ‘straw-men’ to, as Gaylard puts it, “take aim at” (regardless of how many falsificationists they might hide behind), and that real ‘black-swan’ hunters appear dangerously thin on the ground.