Indeed, in the early 1980's, a committee chaired by the late Congressman Claude Pepper published a lengthy, sobering yet remarkable report on the wide variety of ineffective or fraudulent treatments being sold to the public. We do not mean to imply that all unconventional treatments are ipso facto suspect. The critical point to be made is that the advocate of any treatment, conventional or unconventional, allopathic or homeopathic, surgical or psychological, has an ethical and moral obligation to provide high quality, convincing evidence that satisfactorily demonstrates the treatment is effective and that the benefit is clearly proportionate to the risk. This meets the intent of the Kefauver Commission which in 1962 mandated that pharmaceuticals must be shown by their manufacturers to be effective for their intended purpose. Claims asserting that scientific research standards are inappropriate or irrelevant to alternative practices are flawed.
Science is neither an entity nor a belief system, but merely a disciplined method of investigation.
For science, data rather than opinion are determinative. It is the only instrument that permits a mathematically sound statement of the probability that a particular cause will result in a specific effect. A casual and unsystematic linkage of cause and effect is too often erroneous in biological systems. For those reasons, prudent clinicians are loath to accept anecdotal evidence, a few cases, or subjective judgements as proof of efficacy. Treatments should be offered patients only after there has been provided convincing evidence of effectiveness and acceptable adverse effects.