Hen-house guarding by foxes in alternative medicine

Only quacks can criticize quacks, say quacks. It’s standard for them to protest that their critics are unqualified to judge them due to a lack of direct professional experience with the methods in question. Translation: only the fox is qualified to guard the hen house, because no one else truly understands hen-fox dynamics!

This is one of the universal truths of human nature: any group with interests to protect will end up complaining that their critics don’t understand their problems (sometimes true) and therefore shouldn’t criticize (never true). But the buck has to stop somewhere, and in health care it stops with objective standards to the greatest possible extent. Everyone claiming to do good for patients must be able to demonstrate it under controlled circumstances, to people who won’t benefit from making it look good. This is why we do not, in general, hold health care professionals accountable solely to the judgement of their peers, but to objectively verifiable evidence of efficacy. To science.