REVIEWED BY HARRIET HALL, M.D.
Societas/Imprint Academic Ltd., 2018, 220 pp. $29.90 PB, ISBN-13: 978-1845409708
AS THE WORLD’S FIRST PROFESSOR OF complementary medicine, Dr. Edzard Ernst set out to apply rigorous scientific standards of evidence to find out which alternative medicine treatments worked and which didn’t. After 25 years of research and a torrent of published studies, he had determined that most of them didn’t. A lot of people were unhappy about his conclusions, and Ernst was forced into early retirement. If his enemies were hoping to silence him, their plan backfired. He no longer has to worry about political correctness or unhappy employers. Retirement freed him to devote all his time to thinking about all he had learned and communicating his findings to the public. In a profusion of books, articles, blogs, and public talks, he has become ever more willing to speak out strongly and call a spade a spade.