In Exchange for $200 Million, UC Irvine Legitimizes Pseudoscience

By Julianna LeMieux — September 22, 2017

For some time, infusion clinics and naturopaths have been cropping up in between nail salons and hardware stores in strip malls across the country. But, integrative medicine crossed a line this past week that will allow it to be deeply and firmly rooted in a major, reputable academic institution.
This line was crossed with a $200 million donation made to University of California, Irvine - the seventh largest donation ever made to a public university in the United States.

The money, given by Susan and Henry Samueli, is given to develop "the nation’s first university-wide enterprise to embed integrative health approaches in research, teaching and patient care." With the money, UC Irvine will build a new facility and hire up to 15 new faculty members.

Not only that, but what this money does is to give alternative medicine - such as homeopathy and acupuncture - a leg to stand on. These practices are pseudoscience and, although popular, are not backed by scientific evidence. This move legitimizes these practices, which is not something that science has been able to do thus far.......To Read More.....

My Take - Overall - and this may seem a bit strange given my positions on most of this stuff - but I'm only emotionally in agreement with the conclusions of this article.  I'm probably seeing this a bit differently than most, and the reason why is I like the idea of doing research on "alternative" medicine, even if it's not peer reviewed.  Why? 

Because whatever they come up with will lead to clarity since eventually they will have to publish their work somewhere and when that happens - we'll get "citizen" peer reviewers like Julianna, the ASCH team and others, who are not part of the research group or the university but have expertise in what will be presented by these researchers.  And even if they're lying, they'll be exposed.  If they're not lying - then hooray for everyone - because either way - that will lead to clarity.  Acceptance of that clarity may be problematic, but truth will patiently wait for us.

Having said that - here's what I really take away from this article is how grant money is now the holy grail of science.  Not truth - grant money.  And 200 million bucks is a lot of grant.  And grant money has made scientific integrity an oxymoron.