page_title: David Gorski
section_title: Skepticism of alternative medicine
hierarchical_section_title: David Gorski / Skepticism of alternative medicine
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr. David Gorski participating in a panel on The Truth About Alternative Medicine (along with Drs. Steven Novella, Harriet Hall, and Rachael Dunlop) at The Amaz!ng Meeting (TAM 2012) in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 15, 2012
context_page_description: David Henry Gorski is an American surgical oncologist, professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine, and a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, specializing in breast cancer surgery. He is an outspoken skeptic, and a critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement. He is the author of a blog, Respectful Insolence, and the managing editor of the website Science-Based Medicine.
context_section_description: Gorski is a skeptic of alternative medicine. In 2004, Gorski, under the pen name Orac, began writing a blog entitled Respectful Insolence at Blogspot and it was moved to the ScienceBlogs website two years later. In 2008 Gorski used his real name when he started blogging at Science-Based Medicine (he continues to use Orac for Respectful Insolence). He is currently their managing editor, and has posted on issues of medicine and pseudoscience, including the anti-vaccination movement, alternative therapies, and cancer research and treatment. Gorski recounted how in 2010 members of the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism wrote to the board of directors at Wayne State University and asked that he be prevented from blogging.
  Gorski contributed to the James Randi Education Foundation's series of EBooks: Science Based Medicine Guides. He is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He was a speaker at The Amaz!ng Meeting in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013. He has also participated in numerous panels on alternative medicine. He called attention to a paper by John P. A. Ioannidis on problems with published research. Gorski has commented on the increasing infiltration of pseudoscience in the medical field with the use of alternative therapies, acupuncture, detoxification alternative medicine, and dietary treatment of autism.
  He advocates for openness of the results of clinical trials and the use of only evidence-based medicine to treat disease. He has been critical of Senator Tom Harkin's support of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), now known as the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. He has criticized the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NCCAM for funding and publishing research on unproven therapies not supported by science-based evidence, and has  commented on medical ethics and methods of alternative medicine.
  Gorski has criticized popularization of pseudoscience by the media and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, and The Huffington Post. In June 2013 Gorski said he supported healthcare professionals speaking out against poor medical practices and the sale of unproven treatments. Gorski was interviewed by WPRR in 2012. He called the co-sponsorship of Integrative Medicine Day by the American Medical Students Association "quackademic medicine" and was described by the pro-CAM science writer David H. Freedman among: "prickly anti-alternative-medicine warriors." In 2014, Gorski and fellow skeptic Steven Novella published an article denouncing the study of integrative medicine as harmful to science.
  In January 2020, Gorski analyzed a 2020 review of systematic reviews ("Acupuncture for the Relief of Chronic Pain: A Synthesis of Systematic Reviews") concerning the use of acupuncture to treat chronic pain. Writing in Science-Based Medicine, Gorski said that its findings highlight the conclusion that acupuncture is "a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition." He also said this review "reveals the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials".
caption: Skeptics Steven Novella, Harriet Hall, David Gorski, and Rachael Dunlop on a panel at The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012
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