Chopra - Bailing Like Crazy

The latest piece of Choprawoo is really bad.  In fact, I find it hard to believe anyone who is a qualified MD could have written such a pile of drivel.  Except then I remember it is by Deepak Chopra – the guy whose confident made-up nonsense inspired me to start Skeptico in February 2005.  (Actually this latest article is attributed to “Deepak Chopra, MD Andrew Weil, MD and Rustum Roy, PhD” – but is on Chopra’s blog and the Huff Post under Chopra’s picture and name.)  This latest piece is entitled Leave the Sinking Ship – where he implores the Wall Street Journal to abandon its recent foray into rationality, The Touch That Doesn't Heal – an article by Steve Salerno critical of unproven therapies of the type Chopra favors.  But it’s clear from Chopra’s article that the sinking ship is really the one Chopra and his pals are traveling in.  Chopra is bailing like crazy, because his boat is the one that’s full of leaks.  [OK, enough with the leaking boat analogies.]

Chopra’s piece is just one logical fallacy after another.  This is Chopra's article, summarized:

• Ad hominem
• Appeal to authority
• Red herring
• Science was wrong before
• Appeal to other ways of knowing
• Straw man

Add claims of “concerted research and clinical practice” that his woo works, without one shred of evidence that his woo works, and you have Chopra’s entire article.  (He should employ me as his editor.)

Orac shredded Chopra’s piece in a slightly longer article (hard to believe, but true) than my summary, in a post entitled The woo-meister supreme returns, and he's brought his friends.  An excellent piece that pretty much covers it all.  Orac did leave me one small morsel to attack though.  It was this:

A new integrative medicine system would marry the superb options of high tech emergency care, its brilliant surgical achievements, the tried and least harmful pharmaceuticals, by empowering and educating its citizens to maintain wellness and prevent disease, through improved nutrition, exercise, stress-management, and a wide range of other proven integrative approaches. Sadly, mainstream medicine largely ignores these viable health approaches.  [My bold.]

“New”?  For many years, I remember being asked by my doctor, whenever I visited:

• Did I smoke?  (No – but if I had said yes she would surely have told me to stop)
• What did I eat – and advised me to reduce butter and cheese and meat intake
• How much did I exercise – and told me to exercise more

“Mainstream medicine largely ignores these viable health approaches”?  Bullshit.  As Orac and others have pointed out, this is just a bait and switch – Chopra is appropriating science based modalities (such as nutrition and exercise), and claiming they are part of the woo he is promoting.  Or as Mark Crislip writing today in Science Based Medicine, so brilliantly put it:

This is innocence by association. By branding normal or proven activities as alternative, it lends an aura of reputability to the unsupported nonsense.

“Innocence by association” – I’ll have to remember that. 

Comments

[Retromancy]

Yeah I heard an argument like this just last night at work - I finally snapped at the "without alternative medicine as well as chemotherapy only 3% of people get complete remission from cancer" and they listed things like relaxation techniques and nutrition as alternative - and "emotions cause disease" - when i disputed this, only one person agreed with me and I work in a medical laboratory - I don't think we're winning actually.

[TechSkeptic]

I had a similar experience. My sister was having a party. Most of her friends come from her daily beach volleyball activities, so they are of all stripes, doctors, lawyers, television people, homemakers, street cleaners. Its quite a variety.

So I was talking to a doctor. I am pretty sure she said she was a neurosurgeon. I asked her about how she felt about acupuncture and reiki. She responded that there was probably something to it. I was a little surprised so I asked her how she understood this to be true, as in what was the latest in studies, or any evidence at all.

Lets just say its lucky I got married. Apparently this skeptical stuff isn't that great for parties or flirting. :)

[The Perky Skeptic]

Oh, you're totally right, Techskeptic! I nearly broke up with my first boyfriend for doubting my "psychic abilities," back when I was still a WooAid-drinker myself.

[Skeptico]

UPDATE

I posted a comment on Chopra’s blog raising some of the points in the post above.  Although all comments are moderated, my comment was allowed, and two people responded, disagreeing with what I wrote.  Fair enough.  I wrote replies, but this time Chopra didn’t allow my comments to go through.  I emailed him to ask why, but I have had no reply so far.  It has now been nearly 24 hours, so I think we can assume no more comments from me will be allowed.

So Chopra allows me one comment, and then the replies from his supporters, but doesn’t allow my replies to them, leaving the impression that the two replies were so devastating that I couldn’t rebut them.  He didn’t even leave a comment stating that I had replied but that my reply had been disallowed.  Nor did he even have the courtesy or the guts to reply to my email to explain why my comment was disallowed.  What a sad pathetic little wanker Chopra must be.

It’s odd since several other critical comments were allowed.  Perhaps he allows one critical comment just so his cronies can reply to it, without the counter-replies?

Want to know what I wrote?  OK.  The following is the comment I wrote in reply to two posts by Rafael.  Rafael’s comments are indented, with my replies following.  This was it:

“What evidence do you want, beyond that of people dying each year of cancer after spending lots of money in chemotherapy and other treatments that only make suffering longer and don´t
succeed in curing the causes ? “

- how is this evidence that Chopra’s non-science based medicine works?

“How does that contrast to therapies such as that from Dr. Louise Hay, which teaches cancer patients to cure their emotional resentments which have caused the cancer in the first place, thereby having their physical bodies cured as a consequence ?”

- evidence please that Hay’s therapies have cured cancer.

“Yes, *very* manageable. After all, a definite treatment, ie: -teaching people to love and approve themselves- would kill the demand for drugs, ending the party of an industry that needs diseased people in the some way a restaurant needs hungry costumers.”

- evidence please that “teaching people to love and approve themselves” prevents AIDS deaths.

[End]

That was it.  Just three simple questions.  But apparently this was too much for the sensitive souls at Chopra’s “Intent” Blog.  Clearly Chopra’s intent is to protect his woo views from any  challenges.

As I said, what a sad pathetic little wanker.

[Retromancy]

"Dr. Louise Hay, which teaches cancer patients to cure their emotional resentments which have caused the cancer in the first place" - OMG really? So it's cancer patients fault they have cancer not DNA breakages - what a great compassionate lot these alt med people are. I suppose if they get remission they just didn't wish hard enough for it and it's their fault again.

[Retromancy]

I actually meant "get relapse again" there.

[Chris W]

I wrote similar questions and comments on Chopra's Huffington Post blog.

Surprise! They weren't approved. He's a fraud, and people are dumber for having to listed to his meaningless basturbatory "What the Bleep" level pseudoscientific pap. (I was much more polite in his comments section, promise!)