Yes, I’ll take the credit for seeing this one first. 🙂 The New York City Skeptics blog Gotham Skeptic has a post about recent pro-science articles appearing in the mainstream media. The post suggests we might finally be emerging from what a friend of mine refers to as the Golden Age of Woo and into a time when skepticism and sound science are again acceptable public positions to support.
They first mention Amy Wallace’s incisive piece in Wired magazine “An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All”, which has been discussed several times over at Science-Based Medicine. They then mention several other examples, including a piece by the Associated Press reporter Marilynn Marchione, whom I previously lauded back in June for her excellent reporting on CAM and pseudoscience. Hmm, I wonder if this might be evidence that I have psychic powers….. 😉
There does seem to be an encouraging trend in at least a few major news sources of good skeptical articles critical of CAM. My local paper has even run the AP stories, despite a lot of advertising by CAM practitioners. (We are only about 25 miles north of Sedona). I think some of the local weeklies and monthlies would probably go out of business without the advertising money from naturopaths, chiropractors, “intuitive healers” etc.
Hopefully it is the start of something, not just a brief blip on the radar.