{"id":5690,"date":"2026-03-21T15:08:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=5690"},"modified":"2026-03-21T15:08:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:08:28","slug":"irrational-medicine-and-the-publics-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/21\/irrational-medicine-and-the-publics-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Irrational medicine and the public&#8217;s minds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"772\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-772x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5691\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.7539024948500801;width:442px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-772x1024.jpeg 772w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-226x300.jpeg 226w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-768x1019.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-1158x1536.jpeg 1158w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype-1544x2048.jpeg 1544w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 772px) 100vw, 772px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8220;by opening the door to irrational medicine alongside evidence-based medicine, we are poisoning the minds of the public&#8221;<\/strong> &#8211; Baum and Ernst 2009 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amjmed.com\/article\/S0002-9343(09)00533-6\/fulltext\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Homeopathy_and_Its_Kindred_Delusions\">Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions<\/a><\/em> in 1842. Over 180 years later, we&#8217;re still fighting, and the &#8220;lifeless delusions&#8221; are not so different. Anti-vax nonsense, COVID conspiracies, anti-pasteurization, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Breast cancer researcher <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Baum_(surgeon)\">Michael Baum<\/a> is one of the standard bearers of this fight. He and Ernst warned <em>&#8220;if we don&#8217;t put a brake on the increasing self-confidence of the homeopathic establishment, they will cease to limit their attention to self-limiting or nonspecific maladies&#8221;<\/em> and similar caution is called for today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speak up. Call it out. Demand evidence and rigor, even in casual conversation. It&#8217;s our job. It&#8217;s our role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>After more than 200 years, <strong>we are still waiting for homeopathy \u201cheretics\u201d to be proved right<\/strong>, during which time the advances in our understanding of disease, progress in therapeutics and surgery, and prolongation of the length and quality of life by so-called allopaths have been breathtaking. <strong>The true skeptic therefore takes pride in closed mindedness when presented with absurd assertions<\/strong> that contravene the laws of thermodynamics or deny progress in all branches of physics, chemistry,<br>physiology, and medicine.<\/em>  &#8211; Baum and Ernst 2009 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amjmed.com\/article\/S0002-9343(09)00533-6\/fulltext\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"172\" src=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5693\" srcset=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image.png 576w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-300x90.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>From Holmes. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/homoepathyitskin00holm\/page\/72\/mode\/2up\">Source<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1-1024x444.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5694\" srcset=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1-1024x444.png 1024w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1-300x130.png 300w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1-768x333.png 768w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png 1222w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Sr_daguerreotype.jpeg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;by opening the door to irrational medicine alongside evidence-based medicine, we are poisoning the minds of the public&#8221;<\/strong> &#8211; Baum and Ernst 2009 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amjmed.com\/article\/S0002-9343(09)00533-6\/fulltext\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oliver&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/21\/irrational-medicine-and-the-publics-minds\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5695,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5690\/revisions\/5695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}