Skeptic North's "Guide to Magical Thinking" Series [highly recommended]

here, I cite from the very excellent Erik Davis penned Skeptic North series that will run with a new post each day of this week [see 001., below]:

001. Erik Davis writes in "A Skeptic’s Guide to Magical Thinking – Part 1" (2010-10-25):

"in my mind I’d formed a rough ontology that sorted all magical practices [...] in the first category, I put the sympathetic magic practices above.  In the second, I lumped everything that had to do with a life force or vital essence [vitalism...] in the third category was everything that posited some sort of internal or external super-intelligence [...yet] many practices fit in more than one of my categories [...e.g.] homeopathy, while generally identified as sympathetic magic, is often said to work by impacting a vital force [(that's what I was taught in ND school!)...and] some superficially similar practices have very different underlying mechanisms [...] animism is generally considered alongside theism as a religious belief, yet its spirits typically profess no intelligence, making them more akin to a vital energy than a god."

Note: I'm loving the material and the approach -- go there, read it,  gnaw at it, comment!

Salzberg on Acupuncture and Vitalism: Pseudoscience and Magical Thinking

Salzberg, S. (PhD Harvard 1989) writes in "Acupuncture Infiltrates the University of Maryland and NEJM" [2010-08-27]:

"in a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Brian Berman from the University of Maryland [...and] co-authors, Drs. Langevin, Witt, and Dubner [...explain] why acupuncture should be recommended for patients [...when] the evidence shows that there is no difference between real acupuncture and sham acupuncture [...and] it doesn’t matter where you place the needles, or even if you puncture the skin [...AND] most scientists would conclude, obviously, that acupuncture doesn’t work [...they] describe how 'internal disharmony is believed to cause blockage of the body’s vital energy, known as qi, which flows along 12 primary and 8 secondary meridians. Blockage of qi is thought to be manifested as tenderness on palpation. The insertion of acupuncture needles at specific points along the meridians is supposed to restore the proper flow of qi' [...] let’s be clear: acupuncture is pseudoscience. It’s based on magical thinking about a non-existent 'life force' that has never had one whit of evidence to support it [...] this pre-scientific magical thinking has no place in modern medicine, and no basis in biology, physiology, physics, or any other science [...] Berman’s work is an example of why I have repeatedly called on Congress and the President to eliminate NCCAM [...] an appalling waste [...] for further reading, I highly recommend the excellent blog posts on the Berman et al. study by Mark Crislip, David Gorski, and Steven Novella, all at Science-Based Medicine."

Note: hear, hear.  More quackademic medicine.  Notice, by the way, the number of NDs who have LAcs.