Alternative Medicine
Alternative medicine - Wikipedia
| Alternative medicine | Alternative medicine |
|---|---|
| AM, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), complementary medicine, heterodox medicine, integrative medicine (IM), complementary and integrative medicine (CIM), new-age medicine, pseudomedicine, unconventional medicine, unorthodox medicine, altmed | AM, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), complementary medicine, heterodox medicine, integrative medicine (IM), complementary and integrative medicine (CIM), new-age medicine, pseudomedicine, unconventional medicine, unorthodox medicine, altmed |
| Claims | Alternatives to science-based medicine |
Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others resort to the supernatural or superstitious to explain their effect or lack thereof. In others, the practice has plausibility but lacks a positive risk–benefit outcome probability.
Research into alternative therapies often fails to follow proper research protocols (such as placebo-controlled trials, blind experiments and calculation of prior probability), providing invalid results.
History has shown that if a method is proven to work, it eventually ceases to be alternative and becomes mainstream medicine.