By Honest Skepticism Esq

I’m sure you are all as aware of the skeptic brigade as I am. It took an unacceptably long time for me to find the functional neurology treatment that I needed to save my life.

I saw the nasty review on Dr Melillo’s clinic. and have seen all sorts of garbage from sites that are allegedly science based or skeptical. With a bit of patience though you can find that they are based on non arguments.

Assistant Professor Stephen Novella is a clinical neurologist, very anti chiropractic, and apparently regards himself as quite the critical thinker (according to his wikipedia entry)

Fair enough, I’m critical of his thinking too. He has already  been humiliated on National TV after he debated Dr Oz on alternative Medicine.  Here is one where has a go at functional neurology, and the great Prof Carrick.

Now Im not going to go through the whole article this morning- but this is enough- for now.

“A search on PubMed for “Carrick T” yielded nothing, and searching on “chiropractic neurology” yielded mostly studies about neurological complications from chiropractic treatment. There was one letter from the President of the International Academy of Chiropractic Neurology.”

So he apparently believes that one should search authors on Pubmed by nickname. Carrick FR yields very different results. “Functional Neurology” is just not a good search term (nor, I guess, is “dill”, nor “shill” ). I was wondering why his searches were so incompetent, as it is inconceivable that an Associate Professor would have such dismal skills.

However many lay people do not have great skills. It seems that this is a little underhanded stunt to give the impression of academic authority and a scientific base. Something to suck in the people who are reading something they want to believe in the space that they occupy in the astroturf. Lets face it they are usually lab tehnicians and science groupiesrather than people who do science. I think this is a disgrace and should be reported as academic misconduct.