this is the script and annotations for the multi-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 015, aka s02e05, titled “The JACM 2019 Special Issue on Naturopathy”.
in this first third of Episode 015 Part 1, I begin a traipse
concerning 'fake integration' versus 'true integration' particularly as
relates to hacking and ignoring evidence as seen through naturopathy’s
knowledge-type coining, fake labeling, camouflaging, and recalcitrance.
this Subpart 1 includes:
incidences within the SIN, which lead to a close look at ND Pizzorno of the 'science-coinage' [counterfeiting?] and a recently published quite opaque take on naturopathy by NDs Zeff and Snider in Pizzorno's IMCJ as compared to what's been published by Zeff in the AANP's Journal of Naturopathic Medicine:
001. Episode 015a Script and Annotations:
Standard Introduction:
Welcome to, as that robot voice says, The Naturocrit Podcast, and thank you for boldly listening.
What ARE we even talking about?
Well, this podcast series is my take on naturopathic medicine, an area I've been studying for about twenty years, including my time in so-called 'scientific nonsectarian naturopathic medical school'.
My approach is a pairing of scientific skepticism and a deep knowledge of naturopathy's intimate details.
In previous episodes of this series, I established that naturopathy is, essentially, a kind of knowledge blending, misrepresentation, and irrationality.
I have termed naturopathy both 'an epistemic conflation falsely posing itself as an epistemic delineation' and 'the naturopathillogical':
the science-exterior is mixed with what is scientific, and then that whole muddle is absurdly claimed to be science as an entire category, while particular sectarian science-ejected oath-obligations and -requirements are coded or camouflaged, therein effectively disguising naturopathy's system of beliefs in public view.
Naturopathy's ultimate achievement is a profound erosion of scientific integrity and freedom of belief packaged in the marketing veneers natural, holistic, integrative and alternative and improperly embedded in the academic category science.
Episode Synopsis:
In this Episode 015, also known as Season 02 Episode 05, titled “The JACM 2019 Special Issue on Naturopathy”, aka SIN, I’ll be primarily looking at a collection -- as published [2019 archived] in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and sponsored by the University of Technology Sydney, Australia -- of around 15 articles specifically about naturopathy from contributors largely located in Australia and North America.
I will also look at some of the issue’s contributors’ various publications, some of the issue’s referenced sources, the Journal’s other naturopathy and kind articles, associated institutions, mentioned individuals, and provide, at times, example naturopaths and their practices.
One cautionary statement I’ll make before I delve down deeply into the naturopathic muck and such is:
just because one has a doctorate or is a ‘doctor’ and is doing research and publishing it, that doesn’t mean one is necessarily doing science.
And it doesn't mean that one has properly prioritized 'what must be communicated effectively for the public good.'
In other words:
just because an ISSUE is about naturopathy, that doesn’t guarantee that it deals with naturopathy’s ISSUES; and just because ‘doctors’ of various kinds are publishing ‘research’, that research could be crap.
Ultimately, it gets really interesting when the UTS research project, this SIN, explicitly states that scientific rigors must be loosened to allow for the area in question to fall within such a knowledge and methodology domain – as in science done without distinctions, without controlled variables, without clarity, as in science done naturopathillogically – while simultaneously claiming, particularly for commerce outcomes, to be of normal science boundaries.
[aka for the former Schloss et al. writes “begs adoption of other types of research methods appropriate for generating different types of evidence”, and for the latter the PR stating naturopathy is a “scientifically advancing form of practice.“]
Some may term that a masquerade, an hypocrisy, or even -- as I have done in the past -- a mindfucking grift.
Overall, regarding naturopathy’s supposed INSTITUTIONAL 'of science and of evidence' posture, as compared to naturopathy’s 'for-decades historical preponderance and core or what's essentially naturopathic', what I can say is, as evidenced by this special issue and its associations:
the ruses continue, the delusions continue, the junk thoughts continue, the denials and aversions of gaze from the big glaring issues continue…
And therefore ‘naturopathillogical mindfucking grifting and voluntary sectarian self-delusion’ marches on.
Along the way in this delve, you’ll see that so many institutions – of education, government, and commerce – are tarnished and even incriminated in the process of supporting and promoting the continuing irrational illness which is ‘this unethical sectarian pseudoscience falsely posing as rational, legitimate, scientific medicine’.
Episode
015 Part 1: The Fake Integration and Integrity of Integrative Medicine:
An overarching quote:
"Science is never sectarian; philosophy is never sectarian. Sectarian teaching begins when you ask a man or a child to assume what can not be proved, for the sake of keeping within the dogmatic lines that fence round some particular creed."
-- Popular Science Monthly, 1889.
First, for this Episode, a kind of framing essay here, in three parts:
watch out for labels that are not true and sources of advice that forget to include themselves.
Examples will be provided!
Aka falsehoods, fakes, and sentiments that are not-carried-on-through!
Oh the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy!
The three subparts of this Part 1 are:
i. Hacking and Ignoring Evidence, which speaks of true integration, naturopathy’s knowledge-type coining and fake labeling, camouflaging, and recalcitrance;
ii. Canadian ND IM Examples, which are the web pages of two Ontario practices that allow me to go into detail about ‘the essentially naturopathic integrative pseudoscientific’;
iii. an Australian ND’s Advice to Employ Critical Thinking and Demand Evidence, which is my gateway to Australia’s naturopathy by way of a surprising invitation to be critical and discerning.
Subpart 1:
Hacking
and Ignoring Evidence:
'True integration is neither opaque nor false.’
Quote me on that.
‘The idea of a university education, I hope, is to create intellectual integrity by way of integrated minds containing various, compared and measured, transparent, and most importantly ASSAILABLE knowledges and methods.’
Quote me on that, too.
And then there’s naturopathy:
narrow, false, opaque, doctrinaire.
This first section kind of stands alone and is something I’ve been ruminating upon for a bit:
naturopathy’s fake inclusive posture by way of ‘integrative’, naturopathy’s fake ‘critical thinking’ -- fake since both are encouraged ‘so long as you don’t take it too far’.
The now waning ‘fake inclusive’ label sCAMs once-upon-a-time more abundantly used was ‘wholistic’, spelled ‘wh’ or ‘h’, as in ‘everything’.
Now they’ve adopted ‘integrative’, as a marketing refinement, as a worse kind of ruse because integrative quite often claims ‘deliberately all the best.’
Integrative poses that a greater amount of vetting has been done than wholistic.
But what you find is the same stuff within that was within the previous ‘wholistic’ marketing strategy.
I’d argue, particularly by way of this SIN, that ‘wholistic’, generally with a ‘W’, hasn’t gone away in Naturopathyland.
After all, in the SIN, the word “whole” occurs at least 95 times [checked].
I’ll be dealing with that in a subsequent section because in the SIN ‘whole’ is an important emphasis.
Though this section could stand alone, in an essay kind of way, it is quite appropriate for this Episode in that:
a) the JACM's SIN employs the root “integrat” at least 108 times [checked] and “integrity” zero times [checked] while at the same time the root “ethic” is in the SIN 12 times‘ [checked];
b) “scien” occurs 122 times at least [checked] and the root “eviden” at least 169 times [checked];
c) “naturop” occurs at least 1192 times [checked], yes, while Pizzorno occurs at least 69 times [checked];
d) and “critic” is in there at least 92 times [checked].
Mind you the SIN is roughly only 134 pages.
The editors pose that in the SIN:
“each article represents critical appraisal of naturopathic theories, concepts, or practices by researchers with naturopathic backgrounds, that we anticipate will be of very real interest and importance to stakeholders outside the naturopathic profession.”
That was “critical”; supposedly critical.
Yet, in the SIN, as a subset of naturopathy, the root “homeop” occurs 17 times [checked] within the article “Naturopathic Medicine for the Management of Endometriosis, Dysmenorrhea, and Menorrhagia: A Content Analysis”, alone, that is coauthored by two of the SIN's editors and in sum has three PhDs listed as coauthors in terms of credentials.
They are recommending homeopathic remedies in that article!
If you can’t even criticize such nonsense as homeopathy, well IMHO, your “critical appraisal” is lacking that essential critical part.
So, therefore, I’ll be Naturocritical.
I’ll work those listed occurrences backward.
ND Pizzorno is first, who is not a contributor to or editor of the SIN, but is the editor of the journal “Integrative Medicine”.
Ah, the confluences and the connections…
QUITE abundantly across many sources of Internet pages, but here I’ll use one current Bastyr University page [2019 archived], we’re told:
“Dr. Pizzorno is a leading authority on science-based natural medicine, a term he COINED 40 years ago as founding president of Bastyr University in 1978. He is a licensed naturopathic physician, educator, researcher and expert spokesperson”;
while Bastyr states, categorically, in “About Bastyr” [2019 archived] also at bastyr.edu, “Bastyr offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in science-based natural medicine that INTEGRATES mind, body, spirit, and nature”;
including, from a bastyr.edu academics page [2019 archived], “naturopathic medicine […which] emphasizes […] the self-healing process […and is] BLENDING centuries-old knowledge and a philosophy that nature is the most effective healer with current research on health and human systems.”
It’s all there right there:
a claim of ‘science subset all that stuff.’
And remember that verb, that admission, ‘coined’.
That is not the verbs ‘proved, established, or earned’.
Science is a rigorously delineated kind of knowledge, but, obviously here, we have science claimed to be a blended laxity of knowledges one just conjures up, including the naturopathic supernatural, the coded vitalistic, and the archaic.
We have, as my introduction emphasizes, ‘an epistemic conflation falsely posing as an epistemic distinction’.
All that stuff falsely claimed or coined as categorically “science.”
Doesn’t that say it all?
I’ve written about that to death:
the science that was faked or coined.
It is quite ignorant to claim all that under the banner “science”, and ignorance is not true integration.
In the SIN, one reference that occurs at least 2 times is Pizzorno’s Textbook of Natural Medicine, which is rife [checked] with the science-ejected and science-exterior even though it is posed category as “science-based.”
As the current amazon.com TNM 4th ed. page states [saved 2019-11-10], descriptively:
“the content is based on science rather than opinions or anecdotes."
I do believe that is an epistemic delineation.
Bullshit, same as it ever was bullshit:
40 years and counting of epistemic and academic fraud, at the doctoral regionally-accredited .edu level, and nowhere in the SIN is any Pizzorno reference being criticized.
Actually, with so many incidences of Pizzorno, what is instead happening within the SIN is homage [checked].
What I’ll argue is that science and therein too evidence, and the idea of integrating or integration, have been hacked by naturopathy and kind, as exemplified by Pizzorno.
What’s ignored are all the better reasons and evidence as to why the essentially naturopathic is not science.
And again, ignorance is not true integration:
if ALL knowledges and their significations were being appreciated, then, truly inclusively, well, one reasonably comes to the conclusion that naturopathy is not categorically science and that instead the essentially naturopathic is indeed science-exterior.
True integration would lead to that kind of granularity.
But naturopathy is ignoring, in a narrow or sectarian manner, ALL knowledges while claiming broad categorical labels as if not:
like integrative, like science, like university.
And all that is quite ethically and intellectually BAD.
If they were broad and actual, they’d be accurate and truthful about the ‘kind’ of their contents:
unethical sectarian pseudoscience.
Naturopathy is truly a narrow or sectarian lack of integration, because to integrate one needs to include and compare, rank, prioritize and choose, in order to be medically ethical and academically sound.
In order to have integrity.
Pile that amongst naturopathy’s so many reversals of value:
science that’s not, integrative that’s not, rigor that’s not -- while they claim virtue anyway.
So, alternative medicine’s marketing label or slogan “integrative” as a claimed ‘best of all whatevers’ is a fake proposition.
Yet, or quite appropriately from a coiner scientist as opposed to an actual scientist, we’re told by Pizzorno [2019 archived] that he is:
"editor-in-chief of Integrative Medicine: A Clinicians Journal.”
So:
‘coined science subset naturopathy and IM’.
And just to explicitly state what I’d term ‘truly integrated’, as opposed to coined “science-based natural medicine that integrates body mind spirit and nature”, when ‘truly integrated’ that would have to be rewritten as:
‘the nebulous term nature which has almost no intellectual utility but serves well as a marketing lure; “science” amongst the science-exterior supernatural, the science-ejected vitalistic and kind, and the archaic; all falsely categorized as science-based and of intellectual integrity’.
Truly integrated would, therein, get that granular.
Here’s a recent example from Pizzorno’s journal, of the typically naturopathic.
And I find this to be an amazing example of naturopathic opacity, of subterfuge, of the crazy naturopathillogical.
And mind you, the journal is claimed to be “peer-reviewed” [2019 archived].
‘Integrative Medicine: A Clinicians Journal’ recently published an article by NDs Snider and Zeff in their vol. 18, no. 4, August 2019 edition [behind paywall].
Zeff, by the way, only occurs once in the SIN, as a reference within a CAM book chapter I’ll deal with in the ND Myers section [checked], since Myers is the first listed author for that book chapter.
Though it is titled “Unifying Principles of Naturopathic Medicine Origins and Definitions”, it fails to transparently and honestly identify or define naturopathy’s essential premise, vitalism.
In this 2019 Zeff and Snider article, there are no occurrences of “vital […or] force” employed in any truly essentially naturopathic way.
And that’s crazy in terms of a basic thing that must happen:
veracity [checked].
We are told, instead:
“[the] AANP’s House of Delegates formally reaffirmed the 5-page Definition of Naturopathic Medicine Position Paper and Principles […] the Position Paper was formally reviewed in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 by HOD's Position Paper Review Committee with no changes recommended. The following are the definitions of the unifying principles of naturopathic medicine. Principles: [#1] the healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturae) -- the healing power of nature is the inherent self-organizing and healing process of living systems which establishes, maintains and restores health. Naturopathic medicine recognizes this healing process to be ordered and intelligent. It is the naturopathic physician’s role to support, facilitate and augment this process by identifying and removing obstacles to health and recovery, and by supporting the creation of a healthy internal and external environment […aka] the body’s attempt to defend itself, to adapt and recover, to heal itself […#2] first do no harm […] naturopathic physicians respect and work with the vis medicatrix naturae in diagnosis, treatment and counseling, for if this self -healing process is not respected the patient may be harmed."
What’s also mentioned in the article is a World Naturopathic Federation 2015 Report wherein there was 100% agreement amongst the naturopaths surveyed concerning their principle “healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturae)” [checked] without any details about what that actually is.
And that, as I often say, is all you get.
This here 2019.
We’re told instead, concerning the naturopathic supernatural and the science-ejected vitalistic, which is the essentially naturopathic:
“after the profession’s decline in the 1950s and 1960s, during the profession’s rebirth in the 1970’s, the re-emerging profession became more grounded in medical sciences.”
No.
I’d argue that, instead of “grounded” in medical science, as exemplified by Pizzorno, science merely was thinly plated onto ‘the essentially naturopathic coded science-exterior and science-ejected’, like a chrome outer surface hiding a different metal underneath.
And thought that is quite easy to show, the authors speak of, crazily:
“the uniqueness and validity of the profession […as a] a separate and distinct medical profession.”
But when is disguise and irrationality valid?
And when is what’s distinct what’s blended and coded?
And what’s medical what’s manipulative nonsense?
Speaking of nonsense, NDs Zeff and Snider in the article speak of naturopathy having created “a peer-reviewed scientific journal (Peter D'Adamo, ND)” with that ND in parentheses.
More homage?
That journal was “The Journal of Naturopathic Medicine.”
Again, they term ‘it all’, categorically, “scientific.”
But let’s delve deeper, to the root – beneath.
Pizzorno's Textbook of Natural Medicine is cited three times in terms of its chapter “A Hierarchy of Healing: The Therapeutic Order. The Unifying Theory of Naturopathic Medicine” in the ND Snider and Zeff 2019 IMCJ article.
It is rather self-referential, since that TNM chapter was coauthored by Zeff and Snider, and Australian ND Myers, an SSNT graduate [2019 archived].
A school that will get a great amount of attention in this Episode, later.
From the 2005 TNM 3rd edition, those chapter authors tell us:
the vis medicatrix naturae, the vital force, the healing power of nature. This is the first step in the hierarchy of healing and what naturopathic physicians may call the overarching clinical theory of naturopathic medicine: the therapeutic order [...] the therapeutic order is a natural hierarchy of therapeutic intervention [...] it is the natural ordering of the modalities of naturopathic medicine and their application [p.034...] box 3-3 [...] stimulate the healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturae): the self-healing process [...] harmonize with your life force [...] in this step, the physician is essentially 'removing the obstacles to cure, and allowing the vis medicatrix naturae to do its work' […] many naturopathic modalities can be used to stimulate the overall vital force [...] homeopathy and acupuncture are primary methods of such stimulation.”
Obviously, THAT is not what their 2019 article communicates.
THAT is what that 2019 article camouflages.
And I could go on and on with the ESSENTIAL vitalism that naturopaths are so adept at burying, by way of this article’s citations.
Now, specifically regarding the JNM, I have every printed issue of that Journal, and there’s an interesting similar comparison to be made between ND Zeff articles in it from 1997 to 2000, and the language of this new Zeff-Snider coauthored article.
Zeff's 1997 article is titled “The Process of Healing: A Unifying Theory of Naturopathic Medicine” [2019 archived].
Zeff writes there:
“our medicine is based upon the observation of innate healing. From this observation we have extracted six principles by which we define ourselves […] the primary intention is to set forth a clarification and expansion of naturopathic philosophy […] the first of these naturopathic assumptions is contained within vis medicatrix naturae […] we rely upon the healing wisdom, vital energies and intelligence of the organism to restore normal and healthy function […] a natural hierarchy results from an examination of potential therapies via the naturopathic model. Such a hierarchy may present as follows: 1. General stimulation of the vital force […] stimulate the ‘vital force’ […] specific stimulation of the vital force. This is accomplished through: a. homeopathy, a patient specific system of stimulation of the vital force, which works through bioenergetics, and b. acupuncture, a patient specific system of stimulation and balancing, [which is] more invasive than homeopathy […] naturopathic medicine is vitalistic, relying upon the wisdom and intelligence of the body […] restoration of health can be defined by four principles […including] stimulation of the vis medicatrix naturae.”
Comparatively, it seems that in 2019, when you write about what is essentially naturopathic, you DON’T transparently speak of the essential vitalism at the heart of naturopathy such as within this 1997 article by Zeff.
The ‘v’ word that dare not expose itself.
And just to illuminate the naturopathic nutty, Zeff quite absurdly states at the end of this article with all its science-ejected vitalism and kind:
“the naturopathic model for healing therefore presents a scientific basis for evaluation, in both teaching settings and clinical practice.”
Again, Snider and Zeff had stated in their 2019 article that this journal was peer-reviewed and scientific.
The 1998 JNM article by Zeff is titled “The Cornerstones of Naturopathic Medicine” [here, 2019 archived; here, 2019 archived].
And therein, he writes:
“naturopathic medicine is a defined discipline, a system of medicine. It is not the accumulation of various natural therapies. It is not a vague alternative medicine, complementary medicine, or holistic medicine. It is a separate and distinct branch of the healing arts."
I’ll argue that what makes naturopathy distinct is its vitalism and its pseudoscience.
If naturopathy is defined and not vague, if it is distinct as is insisted upon by Zeff there.
He goes on:
“we rely upon the healing wisdom, vital energies and intelligence of the organism to restore normal and healthy function [….] our first guiding principle is vis medicatrix naturae, ‘the healing power of nature,’ the observation that the body is a wise and intelligent organism with internal organization and self-healing in nature […] these six principles, along with a preface and statement of practice, were placed before the house of Delegates of the AANP at its annual conference in September of 1989 at Rippling River, Oregon, which unanimously approved them as the unifying definition of naturopathic medicine. We pledged to continually reexamine these statements in the light of further experience and scientific advancement.”
So, more vitalism and euphemisms of, and again that ‘false science categorical labeling’:
as if filtering, self-testing and self-correcting by way of science “continually”.
As such, naturopathy is definitely, specifically, distinctly:
pseudoscience.
The 2000 article by Zeff is titled “Cornerstones of Naturopathic Medicine II: Primum Non Nocere”.
Again, excuse me if I murder Latin.
Therein, Zeff writes:
“there is an order to the process of healing, referred to in naturopathic medicine as the therapeutic order or the hierarchy of therapeutics. The order is determined by how the body heals. It has six steps […step] 3. stimulate the vital force […] stimulation of the vital force will overcome the inertia of illness, and more rapidly propel the person toward normal function, helping to remove the residues of disturbance in the body. This is most directly done through hydrotherapy, homeopathy, acupuncture, and exercise […] naturopathic physicians respect and work with the vis medicatrix naturae in diagnosis, treatment and counseling, for if this self-healing process is not respected the patient may be harmed. This is a direct quote from the definition of naturopathic medicine as explicated by the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians […] stimulate the self-healing mechanisms (hydrotherapy, homeopathy, acupuncture).”
Lot’s o'vitalism as the centerpiece.
And I think something quite revealing about naturopathy’s core NOT being science is shared in the article by Zeff.
He writes, perhaps inadvertently:
“in standard medicine, reliability is considered to be based upon scientific experimentation and the statistical analysis of controlled studies. In naturopathic medicine we increasingly utilize controlled studies to evaluate our medicine, particularly outcomes studies. But we also rely upon the observation of the healing process that has accrued over millennia. As a result, we have a set of guidelines, a clinical philosophy based upon these observations, to instruct us.”
So, ‘antiquity subset observations subset philosophy subset guidelines’.
Therein, based upon ‘the prescientific holding-over’.
Ah, the Janus-faced naturopathic monstrosity…
And “controlled studies?”
Well, I’ve yet to see -- even a failed -- basic science experiment from naturopathy that supports the idea of a vital force and that a vital force is responsible for health and disease, as claimed, and that they can manipulate it.
And I’d like to see their scientific evidence for the naturopathic supernatural, too:
there isn’t such, yet they claim science anyway, upon all such, and they haven’t even attempted such, which is their essential rot, their essential crap, their essential lack of integrity and lack of integrating.
Yet, the IM project marches on with absurd claims that it is superior to actually inclusive and rigorous epistemic delineations and processes.
Their project is to pretend granularity is unnecessary, that what’s narrow is broad, that what’s low is high, that what’s coined is instead an authentic process.
My consolation is that too much is already known, and enough people are educated and of integrity, to let this pass in silence, to let this pass as science.
I will likely return to this small section’s concerns at the end of this episode:
naturopathy’s fake inclusion, its hack.
The opposite of natural – fake, and the opposite of truthfulness or veracity:
false.
But true integration is neither fake nor false.
And science and integration are not coined and therein shallow, they are through and through.
They are deep and actual.
This has been the first part of the Naturocrit Podcast Episode 015.
Thank you for boldly listening.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment