Sceptics seem to get rather upset with anyone who criticise the pope of Scepticism the infallible professor Ezard Ernst I have never met Edzard Ernst, however I can say with confidence he has very little understand of what goes on in my practice. Because I do not find professor Ernst a “sweet and mild mannered German teddy bear of a man”, it does not follow, I hate him with a passion” which apparently make me “look even uglier” than I am without hair. Ernst is probably a typical academic who will never play outside the minor leagues, and if it was not for Simon Singh few outside the blog community would have ever heard of him.
Below is what “Scepticat” has to say
Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine, has always struck me as a sweet and mild-mannered German teddy bear of a man, yet the quacks hate him with a passion that makes them look even uglier than they are already. It’s no longer a surprise to me that quacks ignore the science and prefer instead to vilify their critics – they don’t have many proper arguments, after all. But it was a bit of surprise that someone sent me a link to a post on the ironically named ‘Truth Will Out’ blog entitled, Edzard Ernst is a fake-3. As that post is a particularly vacuous attempt at character assassination, I assume it was sent to me so I could give it the treatment it deserves.
The writer is one Chris Holmes, a hypnotherapist and author of a self-published book about nicotine. Edzard evidently winds Chris up so much that he spent some 2,000 words (and that just on part 3) huffing with resentment and pushing a monstrously fallacious argument, which amounts to this:
P1. To be a professor, you must be a “qualified expert”;
P2. To be a qualified expert you must have professional experience as a practitioner; To read on Scepticats Blog
This explains where the expression “Those that cant do: teach”! must come from.
