Let's start with the impetus for this entry.  I give you the recent statement by Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA, in regards to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and its predecessor, the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM):

One of the purposes of this center [NCCAM] was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short. I think quite frankly that, in this center and in the office previously before it [OAM], most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving.

That would have been this week's statement, but it would have made the title too long.  Senator Harkin was instrumental in creating and shaping OAM/NCCAM, the branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that funds CAM research.  The original stated purpose of this center was to rigorously and scientifically evaluate CAM modalities.  This goal was, and may even remain, quite important.  Some of these treatments were very popular yet very untested, so determining their safety and efficacy was an important public health matter.

But, Senator Harkin just admitted that NCCAM's charge wasn't actually to investigate alternative medicine.  The goal of NCCAM was, apparently, to validate alternative medicine.  This isn't merely a verbal flub, nor is it simply Harkin hoping that the hypothesis he bet his nickel on wins.  Unless we pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, this is evidence of serious bias afoot at the NIH.

Investigate, Validate ... To-may-toe, To-mah-toe, Right?

NCCAM is charged with the scientific evaluation of alternative medicine.  I'm not getting all civics-lesson on you here; this is the only way to actually determine whether or not any type of medical treatment works.  While there are certainly pockets of mainstream medicine that aren't as science-based as they ought to be, medical treatments in general are investigated scientifically to determine their safety and efficacy.  This is most readily apparent in drug trials: phase one looks for toxicity in healthy people, phase two tests the efficacy and safety in the target patient group, and phase three compares the treatment's efficacy to currently-available treatments.

Many alternative treatments have not been subjected to this rigorous evaluation, especially not prior to efforts like NCCAM.  Alternative medicine was (and is) living off anecdotes and appeals to antiquity and popularity, the same sort of "evidence" that has kept the Four Humours in business for millennia (and counting).  Rigorous scientific testing would determine once and for all whether or not these treatments worked.

But wait ... Senator Harkin isn't interested in whether or not these treatments work.  He was looking for validation that alternative medicine does work.  Thus, Senator Harkin already had his mind made up back when he started the OAM/NCCAM.  He believed that alternative medicine worked; he just wanted science to give him an official-sounding rubberstamp to slap on it.  Senator Harkin was convinced by the anecdotes and fallacies mentioned earlier, and his mind was and remains closed* to the possibility that CAM modalities might not work.

*Bear this in mind the next time some true believer calls you closed-minded: any true believer is far more closed-minded than a skeptic, since the true believer's mind is already made up and thus closed to the possibility that they are wrong.  But, that's another story for another time.

Science doesn't work this way.  While anecdotes are not worthless, they are only useful as generators of hypotheses.  If tons of people are getting acupuncture and claiming that it somehow helped them, then it's worth investigating whether or not acupuncture has therapeutic value.  The trick here is that these anecdotes don't themselves prove the efficacy of acupuncture, since they're completely uncontrolled and unverifiable.  Any number of confounding factors could complicate the matter:  maybe these people would've felt better regardless of what they did, maybe these people are misremembering, maybe these people just needed a little personal attention, maybe these people only claimed to feel better to placate the acupuncturist, etc, etc, etc.

A scientific study of a CAM modality would strive to reduce these variables to determine the actual efficacy of the treatment.  The people participating in the study would be carefully and objectively monitored for unbiased data reporting.  Half of the study participants would receive a placebo, so that the treatment outcomes could be compared to a control outcome.  The testing would be double-blinded, so that neither the participants nor the therapists would know who received the placebo or the real deal.  This entire process would be repeated at different institutions, so that subtler biases or even research misconduct could be circumvented.  All these precautions would be necessary to eliminate the unconscious cognitive biases that creep into our everyday lives as humans.  Only after these steps do we have a chance of knowing whether or not a treatment is effective.

If you'll allow me to be so bold (or italic), that last sentence bears repeating:  Only after these steps do we have a chance of knowing whether or not a treatment is effective.  What I've described is a scientific investigation of an alternative medicine treatment.  Note the fundamental difference between this and a scientific validation of alternative medicine.  Validation assumes that the treatment in question has already been proven effective.  Validation is not something science does, except perhaps as training exercises.  (Your chemistry labs during school could be considered validating already-proven knowledge.)  Senator Harkin asked researchers to prove his beliefs correct, and then had the audacity to get annoyed at them when their data demonstrated that his beliefs are wrong.  Senator, as the LOLcats would say:  SCIENCE ... ur doin it rong!

Pseudoscience: The Only Bipartisan Thing in Washington

Senator Harkin communicated a variety of important points in his little spiel about alternative medicine.  One aspect I haven't addressed is that he reminded us that woo is eminently bipartisan.  Republicans certainly don't (and never did) have a monopoly on un-, anti-, and pseudoscientific positions.  A lot of pro-science folks have been understandably pumped about the Obama administration after years of what some have gone so far as to call a Republican war on science.  But, issues like alternative medicine make it abundantly clear that skepticism is necessary regardless of which political party is in power.

Complementary and alternative medicine needed to be investigated via science, not validated by it.  Many skeptics feel that NCCAM was wrongheaded from the get-go, via the argument that research dollars ought to be allocated according to individual treatments' plausibility.  While they have a point about prior plausibility, I disagree that NCCAM was unnecessary.  I believe that public's fascination with CAM warranted some scientific scrutiny, at least to check the safety of these treatments.  This is all academic, of course, since it's in the past.  What matters is that NCCAM spent millions of dollars over eighteen years investigating alternative medicine, and has demonstrated the efficacy of precisely zero treatments*.

*Special aside time again!  The bolding and underlining was not sufficient to highlight the starkness of that fact.  The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has yet to establish the effectiveness of a single alt-med modality.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  Furthermore, no flavor of CAM has been determined ineffective.  It seems that further research is always required.

The time for special NIH centers to study one Senator's sacred cow is over.  If alternative medicine advocates want federal research dollars to study their favorite modality, they should have to write grants and compete with other treatments on a level playing field.  If the treatment actually works, scientists are going to find it and doctors are going to incorporate it into regular old Medicine (M).  M gets to cheat that way.  As a quick example, everyone used to think that stomach ulcers were caused by too much acid in the stomach.  A couple guys during the eighties did some novel but overlooked work suggesting that bacteria caused ulcers, and eventually the evidence was abundantly clear and M changed its ways.  This story even has a Cinderella ending, since these guys won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.

I assure you that the same could happen to a chiropractor or acupuncturist, but the onus is of course on them to prove their theories.  Homeopaths should be even more excited by this story, since they'd also be shoo-ins for the physics and chemistry Nobels.  Best of luck, fellas!