SCAM

I have discovered another site dealing with the way patients are ripped off by snake oil salesmen. Guardian columnist and doctor Ben Goldacre is a regular read for me but he has drawn attention to David Colquohoun's site. David is Professor of Pharmacology at University College, London. Recently, the Provost of UCL has cravenly asked David to remove his Improbable Science page from the University's server following a complaint from the husband of a purveyor of herbal remedies because David called her justification for her products 'gobbledygook'. For those who don't know University College is where Jeremy Bentham's body is preserved and was founded as a place where dissenters and others (those not members of the Church of England) could study.

SCAM is David Colquohoun's acronym for so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine.