The ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine'' is a discontinued

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

medical journal A medical journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that communicates medical information to physicians, other health professionals. Journals that cover many medical specialties are sometimes called general medical journals. History The fi ...

published by the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. It was established by

Wallace Sampson Wallace Sampson (March 29, 1930 – May 25, 2015), also known as Wally, was an American medical doctor and consumer advocate against alternative medicine and other fraud schemes.Antiscience Trends in the Rise of the 'Alternative Medicine' Movem ...

(

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

) and

Paul Kurtz Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) was an American scientific skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at B ...

(

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...

) and claimed to be "the only peer-reviewed journal devoted exclusively to objectively analyzing the claims of 'alternative medicine.'" The journal's website stated: A statement "In Defence of Scientific Medicine," welcoming the founding of the journal, was signed by a long list of notable individuals, including five

Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

. The statement expressed

skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...

towards

alternative medicine Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and al ...

and the need for "objective, scientific critiques" of the field.Signers of the statement "In Defence of Scientific Medicine"
/ref> The journal was evaluated at least three times by the

National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...

(NLM) for indexing in

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

, but rejected each time. In an editorial published on the journal's site, Sampson says that NLM director Donald Lindberg revealed that the first review of the journal had been performed by fourteen individuals or organizations who support alternative medicine. Sampson contends that, because the journal critically examines alternative medicine, such a panel of reviewers would not be able to objectively consider the journal. According to Sampson, the only information he received regarding the third review was that it was conducted by

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

independent reviewers. Sampson states, "This was not what we had in mind when requesting outside review, as there was no assurance that the reviewers were either objective or authorities in pseudoscience."

References

External links

* {{dead link, date=August 2019 Alternative and traditional medicine journals Scientific skepticism mass media Publications established in 1997 English-language journals Publications disestablished in 2007