Bausell's book, Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, hasn't made much of a stir at UM's alternative medicine center.
Dr. Brian Berman, who founded the institution in 1991, said he skimmed the book, calling its arguments "misleading about what the state of research is." He called any conclusions about the value of CAM premature.
"It's not being given a whole lot of credibility," Berman said of the book. "Maybe if this was 15 years ago, it possibly could have had more of an effect.
"People are paying for this therapy," he added. "We're trying to figure out what's working and what's not. We'll find certain things don't work or are harmful. When the evidence is shown, we won't be using these therapies."
Kaptchuk, who sits on the advisory council of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, praised Bausell for "taking a critical and unbiased look at the field."
"His critical attitude and knowledge about CAM is refreshing," Kaptchuk said. "We either get people who attack CAM who don't know anything about CAM, or we get people who really advocate CAM stuff but don't really follow the research. His critical attitude is not inaccurate."
The world of alternative medicine is populated largely by believers, but Bausell, 65, is not one of them. He said he took the job with Berman to get back into the gold standard of scientific research: randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials. That he would be testing alternative medicine didn't matter.
"There was a possibility we'd learn something of interest," he said. "Why would you go there if you thought all this stuff is bogus?"
So Bausell went and learned and decided that it was "bogus," which he said "isn't a great scientific term, but it's as good as any."
He was soon convinced that much of the research into alternative medicine was shoddy, biased and rarely proved any benefit beyond a placebo.
At UM, Bausell said, he saw high-quality studies of therapies that fell flat. One of the best, he said, tested the use of acupuncture for dental pain. Those who believed they were receiving acupuncture (some patients received elaborately staged sham acupuncture) felt better than those who didn't think they were receiving acupuncture - regardless of who got the actual therapy.
In Bausell's analysis, there is no biological reason for any of it to be effective. Still, millions swear by CAM.
