'The opposite of science'
Can a blog force a university to close a degree course? David Colquhoun, the University College London pharmacology professor behind the "Improbable science" blog would like to think so. Since 2003, Colquhoun has used his blog, along with freedom of information requests, to draw attention to universities running courses in complementary and alternative medicine (Cam). He argues that the treatments are unproven, degree courses unscientific, and universities wrong to award students bachelor's or master's of science qualifications."It's particularly offensive that they're called BSc," he says. "You have to address the question: 'Is it worth lying to patients to get that placebo effect?'. They keep publishing what they call trials but are actually customer satisfaction surveys - you have no means of knowing how many people would have got better anyway. Students are learning the very opposite of critical evaluation. And they have to believe the homeopathy story in the end...
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