That certainly seems like a sound idea to me. Taking advantage of our natural “Us vs them” tribalism is certainly a time-honored manipulative strategy.

“Humans have a strong desire to be “in the know,” to be members of an exclusive club. It’s a primate thing, and quacks know it, so they sell their wares by claiming that their treatment is special and different. Patient satisfaction with the belief that they’ve acquired special knowledge can be so potent that it is pretty much indistinguishable from treatment satisfaction. Such patients often give a hearty thumbs up to a treatment that didn’t actually solve their problem. Patients look me right in the eye and earnestly tell me, without irony, that such a treatment “worked” … even though they are asking for my help with unabated chronic pain! What it worked on was their ego alone”.

The satisfaction with having esoteric knowledge is a strong motivation indeed (though I’m far from suggesting it’s the only one) – and, of course, CAM believers are often up for all sorts of other esoterisms, too, thus belonging to a whole series of exclusive clubs.
So much enthusiasm is there for esoteric (i.e., shared amongst a chosen few) type knowledge here, that there is even an Esoteric Fair, open to all…….hmmmmmm.

Well, it seems to me thatCAM use falls into a few categories:
1. Ideologically driven-hard core believers who think science is on the wrong track alltogether or think the underlying philosophy of naturalism is bunk.

2. The misinformed-people who are smart and reasonable but have not the information or the skills to see through CAM marketing and the common logical fallacies and cognitive blindspots that lie behind it

3. The manipulated-those who have been convinced by fear and lies or by the unscrupulous

I don’t see any point in blaming any of these people or in being unecessarily unkind or uncivil. I have great respect for many individuals who happen to believe things I consider to be nonsense, and I take the approach of agreeing to disagree. Apart from the outright delusional, such as Eric Weisman, or the deliberately deceitful, I try not to approach my relationship with users or providers of CAM in a antagonistic, good guy/bad guy sort of way. It isn’t productive, for one thing, and it is usually an oversimplification.

Now, I do get angry when I see pets suffering from the misconceptions of their owners, whether related to CAM or not, and I do see part of my job as advocating for the well-being of the patient if the owner’s interests seem inconsistent with what is best for the pet. And it does seem unethical to me when we use bogus therapies to treat the owners rather than the patients. This is a not unusual dilemma in our profession, and I don’t have a perfect answer, but I try to approach it in as constructive a way as possible, since alienating the client certainly isn’t going to help the pet in any way.

I may have to post about that-it seems there is a new form of woo every time you turn around. Thanks DSHEA.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s simply a control issue, the pet can’t speak out against the treatment and the owner gets the benefit of being in control of a treatment they can convince themselves is useful. I’m not referring to terminal disease, but common conditions that can be prevented, easily treatable and managed appropriately with science-based medicine.