Science—you’re doing it wrong

[haggholm]

Sen. Tom Harkin, the proud father of the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that NCCAM had disappointed him by disproving too many alternative therapies.

"One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short," Harkin said.

The senator went on to lament that, since its inception in 1998, the focus of NCCAM has been "disproving things rather than seeking out and approving things."

Skeptics have complained all along that Harkin and his allies founded this office to promote alternative therapies at public expense, not to test them scientifically. Harkin's statement at the hearing explicitly confirms that hypothesis.

Majikthise, via Pharyngula

In other words, the point of this institution was not to figure out if alternative therapies work and promote the ones that do, but rather to promote them whether they can be shown to work or not. There are already groups that do this: They’re called advertisers (and alternative medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry). No one’s tax money should fund it.