Shall we chip in to fight against charlatans in medicine?

Joint strike against charlatans

A.P., "Trinity variant" No. 3-2014

Pseudoscience has always existed and will continue to exist as long as science itself exists. And its representatives are parasitic, perhaps, in all areas of scientific knowledge. However, not all of them are equally harmful. A person who claims that the whole history of Russia is encoded in the picture "Rooks have Arrived" (and such a person really exists and has published a monograph on this subject) may even be ridiculous. At least, such a book can become entertainment for a cheerful company.

But nowhere are charlatans and false scientists more dangerous than in medicine. And nowhere are there so many of them as in medicine. The reasons are clear – if there is no hope, they even grab such opportunities. As a result, time is often lost for the patient, and when he does get to a real specialist, it is already too late.

The Moscow laboratory "Esculab" (SQLab) has been systematically studying medical charlatans since 2011. Here's what they write about themselves:

"We are collecting a database of quack methods of treatment, presented theses at conferences, published research results in scientific journals. The idea to study the Rospatent database in the field of medicine turned out to be a good one. So in 2011, we collected more than 400 patents in the field of narcology and accurately assessed the content, harm and danger of so-called "coding" in narcology, which, of course, are quackery."

Now the laboratory staff decided to summarize their experience in a popular science publication and turned to the now popular crowdfunding experience. That is, fundraising on the Internet.

"Aesculabian" Sergey Soshnikov (Candidate of Medical Sciences, Associate professor of the Department of Medical Statistics and Informatics of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and a specialist in the field of evidence-based medicine) started a project on the popular crowdfunding portal Boomstarter.

You can support the project (of course, after reviewing all the results of the team for three years) by visiting the project page.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.02.2014